70 WILD FOWL SIOOTING. 
shelter and shivers all the more. What a dismal morn- 
ing it is, just as the day is breaking. The flurrying 
snow whirls and darts and bounds over the frozen 
ground; the leaden gray in the east grows gradually 
darker, as the eye follows it westward, until it dissolves 
into a seal brown, and finally into an indistinct black. 
As the hunter ponders over the situation, he thinks 
how hard it would be for one to endure such exposure, 
if necessity compelled it,—but then he instantly shakes 
himself together, whacks his freezing hands against his 
benumbed limbs, stamps his cold feet on the frozen 
ground, and thinks how pleasant the anticipation is, 
when one is sitting before a grate fire, to hunt ducks 
on a wintry morning in a corn-field; how unpleasant 
it is to experience the reality. 
In coming into a corn-field the ducks are very wild, 
and the utmost caution must be exercised to get good 
shooting. The hunter should not secrete himself behind 
a fence ; because of all places, a fence fills them with the 
most dread, and they may fly low before approaching 
it; but when they get to it, will ascend to a height when 
it is simply nonsense to shoot atthem. The hunter should 
build a blind right in the place where he knows they 
have been accustomed to light. That blind must be 
built of corn-stalks, and to disturb as little as possible 
the shape, formation and condition of the field before 
the blind was built. Ducks have very sharp eyes, and 
are great observers of the condition of a field where they 
have been accustomed to feed. It will not do for the 
hunter, merely because he is ina field of corn, to gather 
up an armful and build a shock to hide himself. If 
there are shocks in the field, this does away with the 
necessity of it. Let him conceal himself in one. If 
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