12 “COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
teal jumped a dozen feet into the air and made sail 
in different directions. I thought surely I would get 
several but only one fell. 
Four mallards a hundred yards out, seeing the decoys, 
veered in on a dip to perhaps forty-five yards, just to see 
what was the attraction in the pond for those eighteen 
decoys. Five feet ahead of the leader was surely far 
enough. Bang! went my gun and down came the 
duck behind the leader. My lead should have been 
eight feet ahead instead of five. Looking southerly I 
saw a flock of teal coming. I counted twenty teal in 
the bunch as they came on, but when they swung round 
and headed for the decoys, the air seemed chock full of 
teal and I knew I ought to get at least four or five. I 
tried to remember all the rules laid down in the books for 
just such cases. Then I fired, aiming at the middle of 
the bunch. Again a single teal fell. As the rest of the 
flock jumped into the air I aimed two feet over the 
nearest and down he came. It was my first double of 
the day. 
I fired seventy-five shells that morning and had 
thirty-one ducks piled up in a heap back of the stand. 
A wounded bird had to be retrieved quickly or it got 
into the tall reeds and was lost. I found a dozen with- 
out mishap. Perhaps this made me careless, for sud- 
denly I stepped in a hole, lost my balance, and fell flat 
on my face in the mud and water. Both were soft. 
The wind lulled about ten and the ducks quieted down, 
affording only an occasional shot. Along about noon 
I heard steps splashing in the water. It was Kleinman. 
During lunch he told me about his gun, another ten- 
pound, ten-gauge fieldpiece. ‘‘ Bogardus,”’ he said, “‘shot 
a gun with a three and a quarter inch drop. I had been 
shooting a muzzle loader and stuck to it as long as I 
