224 WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 
they usually swim with heads high up, or will tire 
themselves out by making one or two long dives. It is 
best to shoot them as soon as you see they are crippled. 
Try at all times to drop them into the water,—it is the 
surest way to get them, forif dropped in the wild rice or 
high rushes you cannot find them without a good dog, 
and it will test a dog’s endurance and strength unneces- 
sarily,—hence if you can shoot them so that they will 
fall into the open water it is decidedly the better way. 
Always be on the alert, watching for them, for there 
is no telling when they may drop down, as if from the 
clouds, or what direction they will come from. If your 
blind is in the timber, your view will be obstructed for 
low-flying birds, so whistle their call occasionally, 
whether or not birds are in sight. You will find them 
quite erratic at times. Some willapproach your decoys, 
circle and sail around, then when perhaps seventy five 
yards away, Jump back in mid air twenty to thirty feet. 
as if thrown by aspring, fly away, come back again, and 
finally light outside your decoys, just out of range: 
when they do this rout them out, for swimming around 
as they will be, they will call other ducks away from 
your stationary decoys. At other times, they will 
decoy so nicely that they just won’t keep away,—down 
they will come from extreme heights, with a waving, 
rocking motion, first the tip of one wing pointing ver- 
tically, then the other, as the duck reverses its position. 
This motion is nearly similar to a boy’s pointing his 
right hand and arm wp, lus left to the ground, then re- 
versing his position backward and forward, giving a 
peculiar swinging motion to his head and body, all the 
time pumping one arm up, while the other must at the 
same time go down. 
