GREEN FROGS AND A BOTTLE OF BEER 33 
Jimmy called it half a mile, but it seemed all of two 
miles before we landed in the reeds at the end of Single 
Point. There was a trampled-down place and a few 
willow sticks stuck in the mud, but most of the blind 
had blown away. It was not really necessary to make 
a blind. We were well hidden sitting down in the tall 
reeds. Jimmy set out half of our twenty wooden decoys 
in separate pairs, on each side of the point, fifteen feet 
out from the reeds. Then taking his shovel he walked 
out in the shallow water and turned up forty lumps of 
mud, each the size of a duck, twenty yards out from the 
end of the point. Flying ducks would be attracted by 
the forty and when coming nearer would see the pairs of 
ducks feeding close in to the reeds. It was quite a 
scheme and worked all right. 
After everything was arranged Jimmy paddled off 
with the boat and stowed it away in a little creek, first 
cutting enough reeds to cover it over. Suddenly I 
heard a warning whistle from Jimmy. A pintail was 
coming fairly high in the air, from the south. I could 
see him give a start of surprise, much like an old gossip 
who has just heard a racy piece of unexpected scandal, 
when he came around the point, a couple of gunshots 
out, and saw the decoys. 
The pintail couldn’t believe his eyes. He actually 
goggled looking at the decoys, then turning he flew down 
well out of shot on the north side of the point. There 
were more ducks in sight there. Something was going 
on that he did not know about. Right here the pintail 
made his fatal mistake: instead of going around the 
way he came he decided to make a short cut across the 
point. He was just the right distance away, forty-five 
yards, when I fired. Jimmy hunted several minutes 
in the tall grass before he found him. 
3 
