118 ‘COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
on watch, while the other three seemed asleep with their 
heads under their wings. 
The geese were shy. None came near us for an hour. 
We kept still and well hidden in our stand among the 
tules. Suddenly Jimmy jumped to his feet and fired. 
A single goose was crossing behind us. It was a long 
shot but the goose came down finally and was stone dead 
when Jimmy picked it up. When we set up the goose 
decoys I noticed a one-legged avocet snipe, a veteran 
of former wars, feeding within a dozen yards of us. It 
took no notice of our shooting, but calmly went on feed- 
ing and laboriously hopping about on its one leg. It 
would feed for twenty minutes and then would fly to 
the sandbar to lie down. It was evidently a great 
effort for the bird to hop about on its one leg in the 
water. After resting twenty minutes it would fly 
again to the shallow water and begin feeding. 
The geese by this time were a mile away, circling the 
north end of the marsh, seemingly desirous of alighting 
again. We were watching them when a single teal 
whizzed past and almost immediately came another. 
‘‘Where we are is Teal Pass,’’ said Jimmy, “‘and it 
looks as if we might get a shoot on teal after all. How 
many teal shells have you?’’ A careful examination of 
my left-hand shell pocket showed eleven number seven 
shells. 
‘‘VYou better go back to the boat and get four boxes 
of number seven shells,’’ I said to Jimmy, ‘‘and we will 
try out this teal flight.”’ 
It was well named ‘‘teal pass’’ for most of the teal 
‘“‘pnassed”’ all right. They came down before the wind 
like bullets. There were no bunches or flocks but all 
single birds. They came from the west low down over 
the tules; you could see them coming, and get all ready, 
