Waccamaw Neck waterfowl with Castles Leland
By Ford Walpole
Growing up on his family’s Wadmalaw farm, Castles Leland developed a natural passion for the outdoors and anything involving hunting and fishing. He began dove hunting with his father at age eight and was introduced to duck hunting a few years later. Once he was able to drive, Castles, often alone, would launch his jon boat from the ACE Basin’s public landings in pursuit of the area’s waterfowl.
So, it made sense that Leland enrolled at Clemson to earn his degree wildlife and fisheries biology with an emphasis in waterfowl, working under Dr. Rick Kaminski during school and spending his summers working at Lowcountry rice plantations. During classes, Castles helped his friend Richard Coen, Jr. map all the historic rice fields in the Lowcountry using LIDAR data to create a digital elevation model that allowed them to detect dikes and canals of the fields through tree cover.
As a boy, Leland sought to learn outdoors-related crafts such as reloading ammunition, carving decoys and making knives. Ultimately, the craft of knifemaking helped him land his first job shortly after graduation. Kaminski asked Castles to build a knife for a plantation owner, who instructed Leland to bring his resume along with the knife. This connection led to an interview to become manager of Weymouth Plantation on the Waccamaw Neck just outside of Georgetown, a position he has held for the past five years. And since his family’s ancestral roots run deep in nearby McClellanville, this move indeed marked a return home for Leland.
When the current owner purchased Weymouth, the rice fields were in need of attention. Castles explains their subsequent conservation efforts: “We revitalized the fields and re-topped the dikes. We also installed new water control structures and switched some fields to a deepwater management plan.”
The deepwater management plan includes several benefits — first, it helps minimize the risk of damaging dikes in increasingly high tides during hurricanes. “If you can raise the water in the field prior to the storm, you actually can prevent damage from flood waters. By raising the water levels inside the fields before a storm you can mitigate the waterfall effect that washes out the dike when the impoundment is dry,” Leland explains.
Historically, rice fields were drained to plant crops or manage for moist soil plants such as smartweed or tearthumb. The new approach required a planting adjustment to accommodate perennials such as water shield, banana water lily and hydrilla, which will survive in fields that remain flooded year-round.
The deepwater plan includes further benefits: “At first we thought pad plants would attract mostly diving ducks, but now we are shooting a lot of puddle ducks too. Also, leaving the fields flooded allows the invertebrate populations of freshwater shrimp, snails and worm larvae to build up,” Leland explains.
At Weymouth, the conservation efforts have yielded positive results. Castles guides duck hunts for the owner and guests and describes a typical outing: “On the plantation, a typical morning hunt begins at 5:30 a.m. In the hunt room next to the big house, we meet for a safety talk, and I distribute waders and shells. Sometimes I put out decoys the night before so that everybody only has to wait 10 minutes until legal shooting time. We get in the jon boat, and I take them to the blinds or smaller sneak boats,” depending on where prior scouting has indicated that the birds will come in.
Murphy, Leland’s black lab (named for nearby Murphy Island) faithfully retrieves the ducks. After Castles hosts a hearty Lowcountry breakfast, Murphy, a Renaissance canine, sets to work in upland fields, where he points, flushes and retrieves quail on the property.
Last season yielded what Leland declares is “one of the better hunts I ever had!” There were no guests on one particular Monday morning, so he and the owner went hunting. “Before 8:00 a.m., we got the two-man limit and killed nine different species of birds: pintail, wigeon, gadwall, green-winged teal, blue-winged teal, wood ducks, bufflehead, hooded merganser and ringneck,” he says.
“One unique thing about S.C. is the variety of species we get,” notes Castles, who also travels to western states annually to duck hunt in addition hunting the public lands and waters along our state’s coast. “In most of North America, you usually only have the opportunity for one to three species on a typical hunt.”
Leland is confident that waterfowl conservation on private lands across the state has improved the sport. “Duck hunting at Weymouth is definitely getting better,” he says. “A lot of current focus is a movement towards building upland impoundments. One of the main problems with historic rice fields is they are getting so cost-prohibitive to maintain. For instance, a 30-acre rice field could require about $100,000 in maintenance every three to five years and one hurricane could wipe away everything you have done. However, you can create an upland impoundment anywhere with suitable soils — and with no tide concerns,” Castles says.
“The Army Corps of Engineers and Ducks Unlimited are all about creating more habitat,” he continues. “In these upland impoundments, you plant agricultural crops, which in the Lowcountry is more attractive than native plant species and ducks can find almost anywhere. Corn has more appeal because it’s less prevalent. And it’s a hot food — ducks can eat less for the same amount of energy.”
Leland’s stewardship of wildlife habitat is not limited to Weymouth Plantation. He also serves as the vice president of the S.C. Plantation Managers Association (SCPMA). “Everybody deals with many of the same issues, but owners and managers have a tendency to stay within their own boundaries,” Castles says. “This association opens up a roundtable discussion. There has always been a culture of competition among plantations, but everybody has come to realize that the more they work together, the better the chance of attracting ducks to an area.
Ducks are such a landscape dependent species, that is, they are so dependent on large landscapes. For instance, I shot a green winged teal last year that had been banded in Labrador, Canada. That duck traveled across 11 states to get here and had to depend on good habitat all the way down. Ducks are very different from a deer that you might be able to keep in your own backyard,” he continues, pointing out that the SCPMA benefits from groundwork laid by the S.C. ACE Basin Task Force, which convinced property owners to reach across border lines in order to foster a sense of community and develop a shared vision.
The natural diversity of plantations presents a good problem for SCPMA: that landowners do not exclusively manage their property for waterfowl (quail, doves, deer and turkeys likewise receive attention). For this reason, the association does its best to rotate a variety of guest speakers, including biologists who specialize in a specific species.
A somewhat recent problem affecting rice fields with more fresh water is giant cutgrass, or “white marsh.” Although native to moist soil areas, “something seemed to occur after the 2015 flood that caused it to grow more prolifically and really take over in a detrimental wa,” Leland says of the emergence of the sawgrass species. “Rice fields are so important to so many species of wading birds, invertebrates and reptiles, but ducks drive the conservation efforts. If not for duck hunting, none of this important work would exist and from a purely business perspective, it doesn’t make sense to spend so much money just to hunt ducks,” he observes. “You could save that money and spend it to travel to some of the best duck hunting destinations in the world.”
Fortunately, the sportsman never permits reason to interfere with his passion for hunting and conservation. As Leland puts it, “Getting to hunt ducks in S.C. is the reward, and that’s the easy part — the hard part is the 10 months of work that goes into getting ready!” So, we are grateful that he is part of a younger generation of wildlife biologists helping to nurture and protect our state’s precious waterfowl habitat so that future generations may experience the true rewards of duck hunting in the Lowcountry.
Ford Walpole lives and writes on John’s Island and is the author of many articles on the outdoors. He teaches English at James Island Charter High School and the College of Charleston and may be reached at fordwalpole@gmail.com.
