SOME HARMLESS HUNTING 145 



the same number of good enlargements of the 

 wild things photographed while alive? 



My first experience at duck-stalking with a 

 kodak was at a slough in the Assiniboine valley. 

 It was one of those long, horse-shoe shallow 

 ponds, an overflow channel, nestling below the 

 hills in an out of the way spot, and I judged 

 that it would be a good place to try the new 

 speed shutter. Fortune was with me that time. 

 The birds were there, the sun was bright, the 

 wind was blowing hard enough to rustle the 

 sedgy grasses along the water'c edge and hide 

 my creeping movements; also, the grass had 

 been mowed close up to the fringe of rushes. 

 Most though not all of my exposures that day 

 were presentable negatives; and as if to verify 

 the saying that the tyro always scores, I secured 

 then one of my best pictures. Conditions were 

 so favorable that once I actually got too close 

 to my subjects, for when I rose in the rushes 

 with the dead drop on a family of teal, they 

 burst out of there far too quickly to be stopped 

 by a mere thousandth part of a second. On the 

 negative, they were almost wingless. 



Ducks or other birds getting up and away in 

 a dreadful hurry always show something lu- 



