34 DUCKING DAYS 



hunt down there — but we were after redheads. Ducks, 

 by the way, are mostly shot with seven and a halves. 

 In three years, they have not had a good rain on that 

 coast. The fresh water is consequently scarce, and the 

 few ponds remaining were all used by geese, pintail and 

 mallards. 



The Texas hunters, so far as I could hear, are in favor 

 of the federal law on migratory birds. The Texas sea- 

 son has been made to conform to the federal season. 

 There, where birds are always present in season, they 

 want to keep up the supply. It was a new experienoe 

 to me to be in country where the hunters felt that way 

 about it. Alas ! if we could all feel that way about it. 

 We like to say here that the South has the better of it 

 — that in the ninety days it has for shooting it has the 

 birds etvery day, which far exceeds the sport we get in 

 105 days. That is true, too; but is it a condition that 

 we can ever hope to equalize between a watered country 

 like that, in which the birds winter, and a dry country 

 like this, through which the birds merely pass and in 

 which shooting is both spasmodio and fortuitous? 



The Texas coast is a duckshooter's paradise in Winter. 

 I saw what I thought was a world of ducks, but nothing 

 like the number one usually sees, so I was told. 



Our best shoot, I thought, occurred on the last day, 

 when we sailed all morning and located a shoal of ducks 



