[Chap. 1, 



PABA.. 1.] 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I 



Methods of Duck Shooting. 



1. There are many ways of shooting Duck, and those Various 

 who at all specialise in each will say that their own '^«t'>?ds of 

 Single one is right. The beginner may favour walking Duck- 

 them up, when he is more or less safe of one gratifying " ^^'^Iking 

 '' sitter." Far be it from the writer to decry the fj'v^ling^'-^'^' 

 sportsman who stalks birds in this way. Often it is and 

 the only thing to be done, and the mere fact of having "Pri^'i'ig" 

 approached wary or well-educated fowl sufficiently near 

 for a shot is often in itself an achievement. The 

 shooter's opportunities of doing anything on a bigger 

 scale may moreover be limited. He may be the kind 

 of man also, the more credit to him, who likes watching 

 the ways of birds before he fires at them. Nor is it 

 always so easy as it seems to hit your bird at near range 

 as he tumbles up out of cover. Then there is the 

 occasional individual, rare enough doubtless in India 

 now, who uses the punt-gun. One of the finest natural- 

 ists that India has produced, however, Hume, was an 

 enthusiast with the <' swivel," which he compares 

 contemptuously with the mere "shoulder-gun," and 

 it was on this account and because he loved flight- 

 shooting at night and even, strange as it may seem, 

 netting, that we owe him so much close and accu- 

 rate obser\ation of the habits of the Duck tribe. 

 "There is more skill, knowledge and endurance brought 

 into play " he wrote in the Game Birds of British India, 

 Burma or Ceylon in 1879 and 1881, "and therefore 

 more eporl in one day's big gun shooting than in a week 

 of even exceptional twelve-bore shooting, but punts and 

 swivels, here and at home, have utterly gone out of 

 fashion and no gentleman now-a-days knows how to 



use them , and it is useless playing the part of a 



laudator temporis acti or saying more of a form of sport 

 which, however glorious, is as much extinct, where my 

 readers are concerned, as falconry and hawking." 



A good account, from his own pen, of one of Hume's 

 holocausts is given under the Grarganey Teal in the Indi- 

 vidual Notes to Chapter XI. One maybe tliankful if the 

 punt-gunner has practically disappeared. If he had not 

 there would probably be fewer Duck, despite the protec- 

 tion afforded by migration, in India than there are now. 



