Across the country, hunting is not drawing a lot of collective interest from the nation’s youth, and North Carolina is one of the few states showing an interest in preserving and promoting the time-treasured pastime of hunting.
Hunter-education programs and special youth hunts allow young hunters a unique opportunity to learn and participate. Passing on a love of the outdoors is the key.
One success story is a father-and-son team from the historic port city of Wilmington.
Clay Whitehurst began taking his son, Layton, hunting at an age when most kids were more interested in playing their portable gaming stations. At an early age, Layton began to show interest in his father’s decoys, duck calls and the mounted ducks throughout the house. An avid duck hunter himself, Clay was excited to have his son expressing similar interests.
“I have duck hunted since I was a young boy; I was always in the company of my father and look back upon those trips to be some of my fondest memories,” Clay Whitehurst said.
As early as five years old, Layton began blasting his .410 shotgun at wood ducks and hooded mergansers in the swamps and ponds around Wilmington. Now 10, Layton has graduated to a 12-gauge Remington 1187 and has completed what many duck hunters fail to ever accomplish, killing the “grand slam” of North Carolina ducks.
Starting with a youth hunt at Lake Mattamuskeet, his father noticed that Layton had taken many of the state’s primary duck species: pintail, shoveler, widgeon, gadwall, green-wing teal, and wood duck. From that day, the two have pursued the duck-hunting dream of killing every species known to occur within North Carolina’s boundaries, but the blue-winged teal eluded him until the final youth day of the 2012 season.
With only a few minutes of legal hunting time left on Feb. 5, Layton had killed five ducks on the Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge and needed one last bird to close out his duck season. After his father had packed up the gear and headed to get the truck, Layton saw one lone duck banking into range. He raised his gun and took the shot that would be the most memorable of his life.
As he walked to retrieve the duck, he noticed the blue-gray coverts characteristic of the one species missing from his grand slam.
While all hunters can’t expect to fulfill such an accomplishment at a young age — or any age, for that matter — the hunting experiences passed on from this father to son bond is what will secure hunting as a tradition in North Carolina.
The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has once again set aside two youth waterfowl days: Feb. 2 and Feb. 9. Youth must be 15 years of age or younger and be accompanied by a properly licensed adult. The adult cannot hunt but may participate in other seasons that are open on the special youth day.
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