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People often ask at shows about Cow Harbor. Cow Harbor was a space/time relationship of my youth. Cow Harbor, the colonial name for Northport, NY, was the name intil 1837. The area included a bay with five harbors surrounded by two head lands that separated the bay from Long Island Sound. A marsh, a lake and several small ponds and streams were in the immediate environs. It was an ideal environment for migrating waterfowl which wintered over a resident population of some 8,000 broadbill, as well as lesser numbers of black duck, golden eye, old squaw, canvasback and shore birds.

Cow Harbor (Northport Harbor) was very sheltered from all but northeast winds, and was navigable 2/3 of the way to the head, roughly as far as the village of Northport. The head of the harbor was a mudflat at low tide. The action for broadbill, oldsquaw and whistlers was at the entrance to Northport Bay. The broadbill rafted at night in the southern bay, and spent days in Long Island Sound. Scoter, Eider, and Oldsquaw were hunted in Long Island Sound until broadbill season opened in early November. Of all the five harbors, Northport was the only harbor completely open to gunning on the west side.

An article in Field and Stream of 1951 or 1952 called "Big City Broadbill" opened the eyes of a hunting buddy and me to the resources and required rig to take advantage of the broadbill raft in the bay. We set out to obtain such a rig. He worked all summer to get a 17' rowboat, and I set out to carve the required decoys. The target was 150 decoys rigged and we rowed the boat. A lucky meeting (through my father) brought a 75-year-old politician with 200+ decoys, two boats and a motor. All we had to do was rig and paint the decoys in his boathouse and take him with us. The base of operations was his boathouse on the harbor, which would hold his two boats, plus our clam boat and rigging. An abandoned pier became a blind after it's liberation and outfitting with a pot belly stove, a bench and bullrushes. We could hunt, with a total of 10 guys comfortably, which we did! The broadbill flew over a stretch of beach to the sound, and returned in small flocks in bad weather. We had enough decoys to lure them to our rig as it was only 1.5 miles from where they rafted at night. On slow days, the duck boat and a few old squaw decoys would be used to row about the bay to get some action. Extreme bad weather found us using the head of the harbor and the marsh and ponds for gunning black ducks, gadwalls, mallards and teal, etc. We never gunned woodducks or hooded mergansers by gentlemen's agreement. Shore birds were observed while on the beaches during early season. Northport bay and Harbor were ideal for waterfowling and other activities such as eelspearing, flounder fishing, crabbing and bluefishing.

What happened to Cow Harbor was the result of population incursion. The head of the harbor was dredged, removing a marshy sandbar and the spoil was used to form an island (bird sanctuary). The enclosing sandbar of the bay was declared a piping plover sanctuary. The whole western shore was declared a non-hunting town. The entire harbor and bay were closed to gunning. The coot lines in Long Island Sound closed down. The Sound mussel beds were destroyed by hot water from a LIL Co. power plant. The two founders of the gunning rig went away to college. The rig and the boat were sold to others who stayed in Northport. It was truly a space and time that could not be found again, the 1953 gunning season.

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