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 7  Early Texans found a vast, unbroken coastal marsh that extended from the Sabine River on the Louisiana border to the Lavaca River, punctuated by the rich estuaries of Sabine Lake and Galveston, Matagorda, and Lavaca Bays. To the south, where fewer rivers provided freshwater input than on the upper coast, the middle and lower coastal waters of San Antonio, Copano, Aransas, and Corpus Christi Bays were more brackish to saline. More saline still were Baffin Bay and Laguna Madre, the latter stretching along more than a hundred miles of Texas coast and into Mexico. West of Galveston Bay were Houston and Big Prairies, where copious inland freshwater habitat extended near to the headlands of Lavaca Bay. Miles of pristine river floodplains crossed the state, providing water to a large number of natural freshwater lakes. Some lakes held water year-round, as did Caddo and Green Lakes, while others, such as the uncountable playa potholes of West Texas and the Texas Panhandle, were seasonal. Texas Wintering Waterfowl The diverse habitat of the Gulf Coast was—and remains—the principal wintering area for great flocks of wildfowl that migrate south from summer breeding grounds along the inland corridor of the Central Flyway. Each fall, Texans awaited their arrival, and the volume and diversity of cranes, swans, geese, ducks, and shorebirds they saw were immeasurable. The favored puddle ducks over the decoys and on the table were mallards, which, in their vernacular, Texas sportsman always called greenheads. Northern pintails they called sprigs, and the resident mottled ducks they usually called black or summer mallards. Big  Sport Hunting in Texas chapter 1  8  TEXAS WATERFOWL HUNTING early-fall flights of blue-winged teal, with later green-winged teal and occasional cinnamon teal, also commonly filled hunters’ bags. Gadwalls, northern shovelers or spoonbills, and wigeons—in the early years always called baldpates—were plentiful but not as favored on the table. The colorful wood duck was a staple for hunters in flooded timber. Black-bellied and fulvous whistling-ducks were abundant summer residents of the Rio Grande delta, with the range of the fulvous species extending as far north as Louisiana. Diving ducks, which prefer more open water than do most puddle ducks, were traditionally hunted on bays and large inland lakes. Central Flyway diving ducks included redheads and lesser scaup (the latter usually called bluebills), canvasbacks, ring-necked ducks, ruddy ducks or butterballs, buffleheads, common goldeneyes, and mergansers. Although the Texas Gulf Coast held far more redheads and bluebills, the canvasback was king. It was the way it decoyed—and tasted on the table—that eclipsed all other ducks in popularity. Snow geese in Texas, called white brant or brant, were considered by many as “fishy and worthless.” Before the mid-1900s, grey or even black brant was the common name for lesser white-fronted geese, also known as specklebellies or specks. Gray brant was also used for the dark phase of the snow goose, the blue goose. The Texas coast and interior were winter home to all varieties and sizes of Canada geese. The largest, what sportsmen today call the greater Canada goose, usually weighed eight to twelve pounds. Historically in Texas the big Canadas were nearly always called ringnecks, or sometimes honkers. The smaller varieties, informally known as lesser Canadas, were sometimes called Canada geese, but usually just geese.1 No one was counting geese in Texas before the mid-1900s, but qualitative accounts from naturalists and sportsmen show remarkably consistent trends. Snow geese were certainly the most abundant geese on the coast, but there were also large numbers of greater Canada geese, considered by ornithologists at the turn of the century to be abundant east of Rockport. Biologist Bob Singleton in 1953 confirmed what the hunters knew: the largest Canada goose populations were in coastal Chambers, Matagorda, and Brazoria Counties, St. Charles Bay, and on the Laguna Larga of the King Ranch Laureles Division. Until the 1940s they were the only goose seen on the Lissie and Katy Prairies.2 It was the opposite for the blue-phase snow goose and Ross’s goose. The blue goose was so uncommon in Texas that ornithologist Henry P. Attwater celebrated his good fortune to collect one in 1891. The US Biological Survey and Audubon Society found only three blue geese in Texas in 1910—one at Lake Surprise and two in Matagorda County. A steady increase occurred from the mid-1940s as they shifted laterally from the Mississippi Flyway. Freddie Abshier, growing...

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