HARD WICK:e ' S S CIENCE - G SSI P. 



17 



DUCKING : A LINCOLNSHIRE SKETCH. 

 By Gregory O. Benoni. 



THE season for wild-fowling has come round 

 again with the fall of the leaf, and the chilly 

 nights and frosty mornings of early winter ; and, if 

 the weather should continue favourable, thousands of 

 birds will be killed or taken by the decoy-men and 

 long-shore gunners ; to say nothing of those shot by 

 sportsmen on the brooks and ponds of the midlands. 

 So a word about " ducking," or the taking of water- 

 fowl by strategy, may not be out of place ; especially 

 as it is one of the oldest English sports. 



Why should we not say " ducking " when speaking 

 or writing of the pastime we are about to describe, 

 as the men engaged in the business do ? We use 

 "shooting" and "hunting" with confidence, and 

 ducking is as well-born an English word as either, 

 and quite as old apparently. In the Manor-Rolls of 

 Scotter, a village in Lincolnshire — formerly the 

 centre of a district productive of many wild-fowl — 

 we find the following entry : " No man of the 

 inhabitantes of Scoter or Scawthorpe shall fishe nor 

 goe a ducking within the Lordes severall watters — 

 1578." Scotter was evidently innocent, very 

 innocent, of a school board in the palmy days of the 

 Manor Courts, whatever it may be now. But 

 leaving the interesting relics of a bygone England 

 to entrust the defence of their quaint spelling to 

 antiquarian pens, we will take a stroll some miles to 

 the north-east of the " severall watters " of Scaw- 

 thorpe, and "goe a ducking" with any lover of 

 country life who cares to accompany us. 



It was a mild bright January morning, with a 

 gentle north-west wind and rising barometer, when a 

 party of us set out to visit the decoy — where the best- 

 flavoured teal in England are lured to their doom — ■ 

 rejoicing on our way over the cessation of the black 

 north-easter, which had alternately pelted us with 

 rain and blinded us with snow for a fortnight past. 

 All cold we numbered only four, "the squire," two 

 naturalists, and a Londoner, who had deserted 

 civilised existence in Babylon for a time, for the 

 purpose of studying the untamed agriculturist in his 

 native wilds. The state of the weather of late had 

 been most detrimental to all our attempts at field or 

 cover sport, but had signally favoured the decoy-man 

 by driving flocks of hungry fowl to take refuge in his 

 pond. A severe and prolonged frost would not have 

 brought him so lucky a windfall ; the birds would 

 have been more hungry and eager if possible, but 

 there would have been fewer of them inland, and 

 the work of capturing them would have been in- 

 finitely more tedious. So long as the cold keeps 

 away the decoy man can " sleep like a Christian " ; 

 but let " Frosty Jack " only nip his sheltered low- 

 lying waters, and night becomes turned into day at 

 once, with more than the day's toil. For at any 

 cost of money and labour large open spaces must be 



preserved in the pond, and "the pipes" kept free 

 from ice. The birds need open water to rest and 

 sport on, and if they cannot find it in the decoy 

 would soon fly away to the still unfrozen brooks and 

 rivers, or to the seashore. So, when the "decoy 

 rises " on a frosty evening, and the last bird has 

 departed to the feeding grounds, the master ducker 

 and an assistant begin the work of clearing the ice 

 away by moon or lamplight, as the case may be, 

 and toil on till the grey of dawn warns them to be 

 gone ere the return of the feathered multitude. 



Fortified with a substantial breakfast we set off on 

 foot for the decoy-farm, whiling away the time as we 

 went by combating the squire's assertion that the 

 barometer was the true divinity of his family, and 

 that the adoration of the rain-god was as common in 

 England as in Africa, with the single difference that 

 he is regarded as a beneficent being in the sunny 

 south, and as a mischievous marplot in our more 

 northern regions. Our way led us along a dirty 

 footpath, by the side of a muddy road, where ash 

 and chestnut-leaves still lay in sheltered spots, 

 bright and fresh as if they had only been shorn by 

 the frost of the night before. The moss-grown 

 trunks of the hedgerow trees glistened with 

 moisture, and looked uninviting enough, yet their 

 dank branches formed the happy hunting-ground of 

 numbers of blue-tits, and their long-tailed cousins, 

 who called merrily to one another as they searched 

 the branches for insects. Presently we reached a 

 little hamlet standing on the brow of the slope which 

 forms the eastern boundary of the Trent valley, and 

 turning off to the right, we tramped across turnip and 

 stubble fields abounding in birds, which had collected 

 on the drier sand and loam during the stormy 

 weather, in preference to the heavy clay of the 

 higher lands. Skirting the side of a plantation ot 

 Scotch fir and spruce, where the sunshine had brought 

 out the squirrels to busy themselves with the fir- 

 cones, we walked down a straight road, bounded on 

 each side by a wide ditch, or " dyke," as the natives 

 call it, till we reached our destination on the wide- 

 spreading river flat. 



The decoy-house was formerly the dwelling of the 

 family who owned the surrounding farms ; but the 

 place came under the hammer when the race died 

 out in the male line, and fell into the hands of a 

 land-jobber, who cut down the miniature forest 

 planted to protect the decoy from disturbance, 

 leaving only a fringe of trees of old growth to shield 

 the pond until a fresh cover of fast-growing young 

 ones should spring up to surround it. Finally the 

 home-farm passed into the hands of the head game- 

 keeper and master ducker of the late proprietor, now 

 I am sorry to say — for the sake of the duck-lore he 

 possessed— gathered to his fathers at a very ripe old 

 age indeed. On knocking at the door and inquiring 

 whether the master was in, we learned that he was 

 away from the house ; but, before disappointment 



