LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL. 45 



are used to imitate tlieir notes, which arc quite effective when skill- 

 fully operated: line decoys, as they are called, are fastened to long 

 lines run through fixed pulley blocks, so that they can be made to 

 swim in towards the blind or out agahi, by pulling on the lines, to 

 attract the attention of passing flocks. Large numbers of mallards 

 are still killed in this way all through their main routes of migration, 

 but they have decreased greatly in numbers owing to persistent 

 shooting in both spring and fall and ()\\'ing to the settlement and cul- 

 tivation of their main breeding grounds in the northern prairie re- 

 gions. The mallard is a splendid game bird and has always held the 

 leading place among our wild fowl on account of its abundance, its 

 wide distribution, and its excellent qualities as a table bird; in my 

 estimation there is no duck quite equal to a fat., grain-fed mallard, 

 not even the far-famed canvasback; unquestionably the mallard has 

 ahvays been our most important market duck and certainly more 

 mallards have come into our markets than any other one species. 



Winter. — The mallard is a hardy bird and its winter range is a wide 

 one, reaching as far north as it can find open water. Hagerup (1891) 

 found it " common the whole year round, but most numerous in win- 

 ter, when they keep in small Hocks along the shore, " in southern 

 Greenland. In Alaska the mallard winters at several places at the 

 outlets of lakes, in open streams near the seacoast and about the 

 Aleutian Islands. Although essentially a fresh-water duck through- 

 out its general range, the mallard is forced by circumstances in Green- 

 land. Alaska, the northern Pacific Coast, New England, and other 

 northern portions of its scattering winter range to resort to the mouths 

 of rivers and bays where it can find open water. The main winter 

 range, however, is in the lower half of the Mississippi Valley, south 

 of the line of frozen ponds, and in the ( Julf States from Texas to Flor- 

 ida. Here it Hacs a,nd flourishes, mainh" in fresh-water ponds, 

 swamps, streams, e^ erghides, and rice fields, fattening on the abun- 

 dance of good food ])ut still harassed by gunners and killed by market 

 hunters and sportsmen in enormous numbers. " Big Lake, Arkansas, 

 was and still is one of the favorite resorts, and diu'ing the winter of 

 1S93-94 a single gunner sold 8,000 mallards, while the total number 

 sent to market from this one place amounted to 120,000," writes Doc- 

 tor Cooke 906). 



Mr. E. JL Forbush (1909) says: 



In 1900 I visited a gunninu; preserve Lu Floriila wht^re nortlxern sportsnieii were 

 sliootiii'jr (lucks by the hundred and giving them away to their friends and to settlers. 



One of these gentlemen armed with repeating guns and supplied with a man to 

 U)ad and others to drive the birds to his decoys is said to have killed on a wager ovei 

 100 ducks in less than two hours. Even within the last two years reports of reliable 

 observers on the Gulf coast aver that market hunters there have been killing 100 bird.s 

 each per da>'. 



