76 “COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
few years ago, was now a bit jarring. The prescription 
offered by the gun store man was “‘get an automatic or 
shoot a twenty gauge.’ I decided for the automatic. 
Every duck that came around at first passed high 
over the blind and joined the raft of ducks towards the 
western shore. The first duck that noticed the decoys 
was a baldpate widgeon. He came bustling up like a 
policeman, all ready to run my bunch of ducks over to 
the big raft. He was full of importance, but I cut him 
down with the automatic at forty yards. The machin- 
ery of the automatic made quite a rattle and the empty 
shell whizzed out into the water, but there was no recoil. 
Three small bunches of ducks passed up my decoys 
in favor of the big raft. My few decoys looked insig- 
nificant compared with the huge black bunch of moving 
and talking ducks beyond, but perhaps that could be 
remedied. There were twenty wooden decoys, mostly 
mallards. To make matters more attractive, I waded 
out in the three inches of water and shovel in hand 
turned up a hundred lumps of mud, the size of ducks. 
These with the twenty made a great showing to flying 
fowl. A bunch of seven blue-bills that were scouting 
around noticed my increased flock and came in to look 
things over. The automatic worked nicely. Three 
stayed behind. 
Another waiting spell. It’s always well to have lunch 
while it is quiet. Lunch was in a tightly covered tin 
pail. A quarter of apple pie, a piece of cake, and two 
roast beef sandwiches. Then a smoke. That cigar 
had a most unfortunate career. Every time I lighted it 
ducks came to the decoys. I felt very grateful to that 
cigar and cherished it carefully. But thrown hurriedly 
down so often it became battle scarred and ended its 
career wrapped in wet paper to hold it together. 
