Oh my... All Gone!!!

[Deep C]

Well crap! Since I came back I noticed a change in our local deer movements... Way off from usual. Almost none at all... It had me scratching my head. I went on my first walk about in a couple weeks today. It took next to no time to find the problem....

Rumson, New Jersey, is a megabuck enclave. Mercedes and Beemers abound and thats just for the hired help. Here houses have names. 3-7 acre estates with 10,000 square foot monoliths dotting their manicured lawns. About a quarter mile from my home there is a fourteen acre stand of marsh with a pretty thick woodstand. A special place. My place... A place that I thought would be there forever.

Now I'm well aware of property value and how development works. This tract was surrounded by a baroness on the north. Cher had a house on its southeast corner and Heather Locklear had a house with her old beau Ritchey thats now owned by Mariah Carey on the south west. This piece of ground though I considered exempt due to the very nature of what was under the marsh... Muck! Not just any muck but truck swallowing, animal eating, quicksand type muck... This was one of those places you had to know where every step was to be made to avoid being sucked under.

I had seen others start to try and develop. Only to walk away after losing trucks, cars, crews and heavy equipment... They never made more than fifty yards in there... Well today I saw the newest attempt and damn if they didn't get a lot done. These guys mean business and came prepared. Smart buggers i guess. They had enough sense to bridge the worst areas of quickmud with trees. The ones they cut, they just laid down and made a road right in...

Forty-five years I had exclusive hunting rights to the place. My spot. The owner sold but had to take back so many times that I figured this last sale was going to be just another. I guess not... As I walked in the flattened stand so many memories popped in my head. Shooting ducks by the hundreds. Geese, rabbits, quail always guest stars on my trips into there.

Then there were the pheasants... Lots of em. The best eatin birds I ever had came from that stand. One particular bird took me years to kill. It was Elmer and Bugs. That ******* had a blue head instead of the normal green. I had laid boxes of lead at him before finally connecting.

Pheasants died off and deer moved in. Two years ago I even saw my first turkeys in there...

If I got shootin past hours, no problem. The cops would stop at the top of the stand and ask me to stop. They never came in after me. They knew better... The stand ended on a ittle beach. As a kid that was home for the summer. I lived off clams and mussels and crabs and snapper blues.Wild blueberriues for desert... sasafrass for tea.

Well shit..., In a blink its scorched earth. I guess nothing IS forever except herpes and 5200...

[clt_capt]

Well shit..., In a blink its scorched earth. I guess nothing IS forever except herpes and 5200...

5200 comes off...

[Deep C]

Not so sure about that.,.,. My 1985 skiff is half 5200...

[seapower]

Well then try it on the Herpes! Frank

[Jesse Lockowitz]

Well then try it on the Herpes! Frank

HAH! priceless.

[Deep C]

I don't have any of them so I gotta trust what I've heard...


Still doesn't bring back my spot that has been buzz sawed...

I'm just wondering how long til those log bridges sink in. I remember as a kid in the late sixties watching a dump truck just go away in there over a couple days. Then a buddy of mine got off the beaten path damn near got sucked down in the muck. Lost his shotgun even though we knew exactly where it dropped. Couldnt reach it even with a calcutta pole gaff...

I don't wish them ill but that place has beat all those who came before this group. One guy did manage to build a road about a car wide in there also in the late sixties. Took several dumptrucks of coal and traprock brought in from railroads they were changing back in that era... I mean it took dozens of trucks worth to get just one skinny strip done... They lost a back hoe trying for more and they gave up. A couple groups tried in the seventies. In the early eighties they considered condos out near the road but the town shot that down... A few years ago they cut a small path in and got stuck and quit...

Oh well... I havn't hunted that piece in years but it sucks that it has been taken off the table as a place togo especially with the herd of deer that were growin around here...

[seapower]

I know just how you feel. I live here in Eastrn, NC, still very rural. But with all the folk's coming and buying all this"cheap" land to retire on. Our hunting and fishing land's are going away real quick too. It irritates me to no end, but really what can I do, I can't afford to buy it. If they want to come down here and retire in a mosquito swamp it's their right I guess. Problem is 2/3's of the land that was bought and cut down now has "for sale" sign's on them. Yeah, like the local's can afford it. The old song by the Eagle's is true, "call a place paradise and kiss it good bye". Wished they'd learned to keep their mouth's shut a long time ago!!! I guess every bad thing has some good as they say. With the economy going south, it's slowed them way down from coming here. A regular guy in our area can't even think about buying a place here now. As for your hide-away, I'll bet if someone could afford to buy it, they can afford to back fill it. Ounce they can displace enough water to let evaporation start to work it's over. We've got literally 1000's of acre's down here we (stupid local's) thought would or could never be built on. Truth of the matter it should not be built on, but that's where greed comes in. Guess what, if you've got the buck's someone can make it happen. I no doubt understand how you feel, and I'm sorry for ya. Every time it happen's around here, it feel's like I just got a little more breathe knocked out of me. Frank

[Deep C]

The back fill on this piece of ground I'm sure is gonna be surreal. Like I said I think it took maybe sixty dump trucks to build that skinny trail a couple hundred yards long back in the sixties. The lot they built Cher's old house on was always sturdier and is about five acres... had a couple hundred loads of busted asphalt brought in to shore it up.
This chunk of land is 14 acres... I'm not sure but I think it could be split. The top part could be filled pretty easy but that low end is under tidal water and is probably twenty feet or more of muck in places under the water.
THe very end on the river has a strip of what could be called "land" in a "T" shape about a hundred fifty feet by a hundred fifty and perhaps fifty feet wide on each section of that "T". Other than that there is nothing solid...

[Twin Rivers]

I don'twish it on anyone,but the way to stop the developement is to call the local DCR, or the Corps Of Engineers.

[Deep C]

Stopped by and talked with the clearing crew and warned them about the "tar pits" type of scenario they face. Sure enough in the night some of their bridges were swallowed.
Nice enough guys.
Talked about the new land owner. Trust me he's got the green to get the job done and past all those kinds of hurdles. Not interested in "stopping it" was gonna happoen sooner or later and it has been a couple years since I blammed over there. Better spots for duck a quick raft ride away. If you dropped a deer in there, unless it ran on just the right path it would be unretrievable. I have other places with much easier turf to find and drag out of...

Its gonna be interesting to see if this guys dream house ever gets done or if the bottomless pits will win again...