INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 7 



Both on l)eing alarmed, and especially in flying off, quack ; but the 

 quack of the female is much louder. When feeding they are silent, but 

 when satiated they often amuse themselves with various jabberings, 

 swim about, approach each other, move their heads backward and 

 forward, ' duck ' in the water, throwing it up over their backs, shoot 

 along its surfoce, half flying half running, and in short are quite playful 

 when in good humour. On being surprised or alarmed when on shore 

 or on water, they spring up at once with a bound, rise obliquely to a 

 considerable height and fly off with speed, their hard-quilled wings 

 whistling against the air. When in full flight their velocity is very 

 great, being probably a hundred miles in an hour. Like other ducks 

 they impel themselves by quickly repeated flaps without sailings or 

 undulations." 



Probably some of us will not agree with what Hume says regarding 

 the comparative merits of a punt gun and a shoulder gun when he 

 declares that " There is more skill, knowledge, and endurance brought 

 into play, and therefore more sport, in one day's big shooting than in a 

 week of even such shooting as Captain Butler describes." I have had a 

 little experience of both, and must most emphatically dissent. Of 

 course a punt gun, especially one of the latest swivel-action, breech 

 loading, non-recoil guns, will enable a sportsman to bring birds to bao- 

 that he could not otherwise get ; but it is not that he uses more skill 

 in approaching, but that there is not the need to get so close. He does 

 not require a more careful aim, for he takes his shot into the brown 

 nearly always as they lie on the water. Nor does he require more 

 endurance. To this most people will agree who have stood behind some 

 200 shots fired from a 12-bore carrying 3^ drs. of powder. Certainly 

 getting some one to push you along on a punt cannot be said to 

 require more work than does the tramping after your birds on foot. 



Mallard especially are strong fliers, and I would personally always 

 feel more satisfaction on hearing the thud thud of a brace of birds on 

 the gTound in answer to the two barrels of my 12-bore than I should 

 in seeing five, or even ten times that number, left on the water as the 

 result of a lucky shot from a punt gun. 



In shooting wild duck as they rise before one, it is as well to loose 

 off one's piece as soon as possible, for, as Macgillivray says, they rise 

 straight up in the air, whether flushed from land or water, and, whilst 



