By G. PATRICK PAWLING
Special to the Press
When it comes to protecting the endangered species of New Jersey, officials are doing an impressive job. But they may be overlooking one little-seen but important creature: the waterman.
Shy by nature, watermen mostly stay in and near less-populated bays, marshes and rivers. They live by tide and water temperature. Give them a pickup truck and a Carolina Skiff and theyll find your bait minnows and net your fish and catch the eels so you can catch your stripers and raise your soft shell crabs and rake you some clams and dredge up your oysters.
In the winter theyd like to burrow, but they cant. They have to continue eating, and usually they have a family to feed. In the summer they serve as an important food source for greenheads and strawberry flies. In turn, people who work in offices and factories and casinos depend on them for food and bait. They are an important link in the ecological chain.
So how come there arent any rules to protect the waterman the true waterman, the kind who works for nobody but himself, who lives off the water and the land and who knows how to get a 60-pound snapping turtle out of a trap without losing a finger? You want to talk endangered? The bald eagle has a bigger political constituency. And though some may note that the bald eagle cant speak for itself, watermen will tell you they have spoken for themselves, well and often, and it doesnt seem to do any good. Maybe they need to hire the bald eagles PR firm.
Not far from the bridge into Mauricetown in Cumberland County there is an old Indian trail, now paved, called Buckshutem Road. On this road is a cinder-block house. In this house, sometimes, is a man named William Bradford. When he is home, you will not find him on a computer. I aint much for gizmos, hell say. Where you will usually find him is on the water, doing what he can to live a life that he says is becoming increasingly difficult because of state and federal rules.
They tell you how many fish you can catch, how big they can be and when you can catch them. And then they shuffle it all up. The size of your nets, the power of the bullets you can put in your .22 rifle for coon hunting, the dimensions of the traps you use all that and more. The way you can harvest turtles, the method of taking horseshoe crabs it all comes down from above. Aint none of it good news, far as Bradford can see.
He isnt bitter. Hes tired. Hes tired of the forms, the licenses and the meetings where watermen complain and then watch as what theyre complaining about turns around, speeds up and runs them over. To Bradford, the people in Trenton are basically caged up in offices, and he thinks people from offices ought to get out more. Once people see whats happening they develop a feel for the situation. In fact Bradford has a theory that the people in the field ought to be making the decisions.
He can list all the ways he used to make money can we agree that theres nothing wrong with making a few bucks, even if it happens to be off the land? and then he can tell you how theyve been made more difficult, or impossible, by laws and regulations. Nobody, including Bradford, is saying people ought to be able to kill everything. All hes saying is that things are out of whack, and a lot of the watermen are being forced to migrate to regular work.
He had a regular job once. Welding. Inside work. Made him feel like he was smoking five packs a day. It didnt last long. Which isnt surprising. Bradford, born in 1956 and raised in the same house where hes living now, grew up free as a fawn and tending traps with his dad, who still carves decoys for fun.
It was hard, but I wouldnt trade it for nothin, he said.
He remembers taking two weeks off during eighth grade to work on the oyster boats with the men. He remembers less traffic, fewer people, more animals and a way of life that is getting, in his words, pushed on.
A lot of people dont realize the restrictions were under, he said. Heck, a lot of people dont even know people like Bradford exist. New Jersey, the most densely populated state, isnt exactly the frontier. But there are still people here who make a living off the land. More or less.
Just to show you Bradford isnt alone, listen to Scott Albertson, who runs Scotts Bait & Tackle in Tuckerton. Hes a guy who hears it all.
Everywhere you turn there is another fee and another tax and another permit and another change in the regulations, said Albertson.
Whether its the life Bradford chose or whether the life chose him, it doesnt sound like hed have it any other way. When he goes places and sees the people and the cars and the houses all stacked up, the SUV life, the frantic vacationers from Philly, the people wriggling like bloodworms in a bait box, he wants to shudder. His office is the Maurice River! His house is in the woods! When I go over that bridge its like, How can people live like that? I couldnt take it. It would be like putting me in prison.
Hes a guy who, when he wants to relax, he doesnt plop in a Jacuzzi. He goes out and does a little old-fashioned hook and line fishing. He doesnt need a health club. There are days when he lifts 200 15-pound traps out of the river.
Ive had places where you have to wear rain gear to try to keep the flies off, he said. You get in there, and its 95 degrees and you have to put the rain gear on and you get out and your ears are still red from being bitten so much. You cant drink enough water.
When it comes to land and critter management, Bradfords theory is simple. If a man has some land, let him do what he wants with it as long as hes within the law. No permits, no licenses, just common sense and hands off. But he knows hes dreaming.
Around here thats done, he said. Truthfully I think theyre doing it because they want it a recreational state. Dont get me wrong. The commercial guy wants the sportsman there because we sell him bait, but weve got to be able to get the bait and make money or some day we aint gonna be there, and theyre not gonna have their bait.
Maybe they should just put aside a little land for people like Bradford. A preserve. Or, better yet, create a kind of theme park where tourists can come and watch him do things the Old Way, way back when people lived off the land.
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