SHOOTING MALLARDS FROM A SCULL BOAT. 49 
CHAPTER V. 
SHOOTING MALLARDS FROM A SCULL BOAT. 
(ON THE MISSISSIPPI. ) 
If thou would’st enjoy sport, such as thou hast never 
Seen or dreaint of, then be my guest, if but for aday. 
OnE of the most successful ways of shooting wild 
fowl on the Mississippi River is from a scullboat. It is 
rare sport, and enjoyed by comparatively few, espe- 
cially when one takes into consideration the number who 
hunt these birds, and the various means they employ to 
hunt with any degree of success. It has always been 
to me a matter of great surprise, that more sportsmen 
have not hunted in this manner. Experienced duck 
hunters—men who have passed their entire lives among 
the aquatic tribe, who are versed in, and filled to com- 
pletion with duck lore, who know their instincts, habits, 
breeding places, and resorts, and who can almost read 
them in mid-air, forming instantaneously a correct opin- 
ion as to where they are flying and what may be their 
intentions ; men who know how to hunt them morning, 
midday and evening, spring ard fall; amid the willows, 
among the tall oaks, hidden in the marsh securely from 
view, by the tall waving and nodding wild rice, shooting 
them from out-jutting points, under their line of light, 
seductively coaxing them from their high flight, with 
plaintive call and deceitful decoys, knocking them right 
and left, as they circle over the yellow and golden fields 
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