OLD WILD DUCK DECOYS. 93 
of decoying, and to this family we owe the designing and 
establishing of all our most famous decoys. The last Skelton 
who lived at and worked the old Friskney decoy was the 
grandson of the noted ‘‘ Old George Skelton,” who achieved a 
higher reputation for his skill in working decoys and for his 
great knowledge of wild fowl and their ways than any other 
man before his time or since. John Skelton worked this decoy 
till 1860, when he left to take a farm in Warwickshire. It 
was then taken over by Mr. Thomas Crowe, and managed by 
him till 1878. Up to 1855 Skelton worked this decoy with 
six pipes, but, owing to the land being cultivated to a greater 
extent, the catches declined, and three of the pipes were 
discontinued. Skelton’s best catches averaged from 300 to 
400 fowl in a day, and he sold as many as seven hundred 
pounds’ worth in one season, at a price of about 5d. per head.* 
On the other hand Mr.Crowe’s best season was in 1866, when 
he secured r100 birds, and his best day’s catch was 85. It is 
worth while noting that the date of his best catch was the 
season when the fens were last flooded. This shows that a 
return to the original surroundings would still make decoying 
profitable. 
Up to the end of the last century these fens were usually 
flooded during the winter months, and it was not till 1857 
that the land was efficiently drained, although the great 
drainage works had been carried out early in the present 
century, in which 200,000 acres came under cultivation. [| 
have seen the east fen in the winter of 1866 inundated to such 
an extent that during frost anyone could have skated from 
Friskney to Lincoln, a distance of 30 miles, without leaving 
the ice, except to cross the railway embankment. The decoy 
boat, the only one procurable, was then requisitioned for the 
purpose of getting in the turnips, which were about two feet 
below the water. The drainage improvements the year 
following, and the higher cultivation of the surrounding land, 
brought bad times to the decoyman. The catches so 
diminished that they would not pay the working expenses of 
the decoy; its doom was consequently sealed. 
The memories of John Skelton and Thomas Crowe will 
ever be fresh, as also of the charming little bit of primeval 
fen, about 26 acres in extent, with its luxurious and great 
variety of ferns, its beautiful trees, its old ‘‘ hassocks,” breast 
high; its great beards of lichen covering the tree branches 
* In one season no less than 31,200 wild fowl were taken in ten decoys 
Situated near Wainfleet. Oldfield’s ‘* History of Wainfleet,” page 180. 
