140 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 
follow the game for sport do not, as a rule, set out for a shot 
in a fog, unless circumstances are different to the ordinary 
run of things. Amongst amateur wildfowlers it is not con- 
sidered sport to go punting in a fog. 
We now refer to the most dangerous position a float 
shooter can be placed in. This is to be afloat amongst 
crunching floes of ice at the tide mark. If there is an 
accumulation of ice of any size, and he get well amongst it on 
a rising tide, then heaven help him, for his punt is sure to 
suffer if he alone escapes. Such a predicament is not one 
that even the most inexperienced punter often gets into, yet 
such has been known. To hear ice-packs during a hard 
winter crackle and thunder as they press on before the in- 
coming tide on the flats of a mighty estuary is a sound never 
to be forgotten. We have seen ice packed up at high-water 
mark in British estuaries three to five feet high, and, with the 
force of a spring tide behind it, shear clean off a thorn fence 
at the roots. The thorn fence had been put down as a protec- 
tion for a sea-wall. 
To take life-belts and such-like in a gunning-punt may be a 
wise precaution, but such articles are much in the way, for 
there is little enough room to start with. Why not charter a 
lifeboat and feel safe? There is nothing to beat carrying a 
matter to extremes. 
