30
Shooting Notes from Tuckernuck and Muskeget by Anita Coffin Dammin IN THE SPRING and fall of the year, large flocks of waterfowl make their migration. At these times, years ago, sportsmen gunners came on Island to shoot birds. George Edward Coffin, my grandfather, put up many of these gunners in his Tuckernuck family home and in his Muskeget gunning shack. His relative, Isaac Dunham, of the North Head house, also put up sportsmen gunners. One who stayed with Uncle Isaac was George Mackay who kept extensive records of his shooting trips to Nantucket, Tuckernuck and Muskeget. My grandfather George E. Coffin was an honored member of the U.S. Life Saving Service as well as a gunner, carver of decoys, and a sea faring man who made several notable voyages on the whaleship E r a . He was a good shot and enjoyed putting up the off-island gunners and shooting with them. Other island gunners of the late 1800's and early 1900's of Tuckernuck and Muskeget who put up off-islanders or in other ways cared for them, were Alfred Byron Coffin, George W. Coffin, Charles Snow, Everett Chapel, Marcus Dunham, Robert Dunham, Herbert Smith and Dewey Sandsbury. Sportsmen gunners who came to shoot included Drinker, Nye, Means, Shattuck, Cobb, Mixter, Mackay, Meigs, Brooks and others, most of them physicians from Boston, and others from parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Besides the shooting at Tuckernuck and Muskeget, there was also a lot of gunning for birds on Nantucket, in and on the outskirts of town, before dawn, after sunset, and on moonless nights. It was not possible to retrieve many birds on such nights, so scarcely any cripples were saved. Among the birds shot in the 1800's and early 1900's were Brant, Scoter, Coot, Black Duck, Broadbill, Sanderling, Greenheads, Beetleheads, Doughbirds, Golden Plover, Canvasback, Eider, Oldsquaw, Snipe, Knot, Merganser, Scaup, Hudsonian Curlew, Sandpipers, Whistlers, Yellowlegs, Turnstones, Goldeneyes, Widgeon and Canada Goose. My father, Edward Brooks Coffin, told me of the practice of burning over the pastures. His explanation was that Plover enjoyed eating the roasted bayberries. He reached this conclusion from finding the seeds in the bird's gut. Plover and Canada Geese, in particular, could be shot easily since they "bunched up" and made good targets. On the water, according to old records, there were fantastic numbers of Scoters as far as the eye could see off the West Nantucket jetties - some estimated as high as half a million birds! In the late 1800's, Brant were seen numbering in the thousands in the Muskeget lagoon. During the first half of the 19th century, all species of Tern thrived in great abundance on Muskeget. In the early times of gunning, many made their own decoys. Few were
