WITH BOGARDUS AND KLEINMAN 7 
easy cross shot; I did exactly as Bogardus said, and as 
the gun cracked, down came the duck. I felt a hundred 
per cent. better. 
The birds, mostly incomers and side shots, were fairly 
close, much more so than they are nowadays. I 
missed a couple of incomers, and Bogardus said, ‘‘An 
overhead incomer is an easy shot, but if you shoot 
directly at the duck, he flies ahead and the shot passes 
behind him. You must aim at the duck, then raise the 
barrels upward a little until the duck is hidden and then 
shoot quick.’’ After a try or two I got the idea and had 
no more trouble with ‘‘incomers”’ afterwards. 
Bogardus was a wonder in marking down ducks that 
fell in the tall reeds and almost invariably found them. 
This added greatly to my bag as I never would have 
retrieved half of them. All reeds looked alike to me. 
My score during the morning flight was twenty-one; 
Bogardus could easily have killed twice as many. 
‘‘Pushing”’ for ducks is great fun for the shooter, but 
perhaps not so much for the pusher. When the morn- 
ing flight was over, Bogardus said he thought I would 
enjoy ‘“‘pushing’’ and I did. I sat in the bow of the 
skiff, gun in hand, while Bogardus poled and pushed 
through the most likely places to find feeding or resting 
ducks. It was very pretty shooting. The mallards or 
teal would rise, splashing from the water, springing a 
dozen feet in the air, and then start off in astraight but 
rapidly rising flight. It was not unlike the inanimate 
target shooting of to-day. The front and left hand shots 
were the easiest. The right handers that turned and 
flew back behind the boat were more difficult. 
I remember one cock mallard that rose badly fright- 
ened twenty yards away and after scattering the spray 
in every direction started off like a cannon ball. I gave 
