4 THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS. 



Full particulars of this Decoy will be found under its name, including the 

 cost of the nets, reeds, poles, etc. used in its construction, and which, by 

 the way, closely resemble the requirements of a Decoy of the present 

 day. 



I consider this the most valuable historical allusion to a Decoy extant. 

 It is spoken of as a small Decoy in an island, and it is evident that it was 

 a Decoy for catching ducks by alluring them into pipes or cages, and that 

 reed screens were used as now. All published descriptions of Decoys 

 previous to this date, except the somewhat vague allusions by Spelman, 

 speak of Decoys into which ducks were driven and not enticed. 



In former times vast hosts of wildfowl bred in England, especially 

 in the fens that covered so much of our eastern counties, and which, 

 though flooded in winter, partially dried during the summer. The guns 

 of those days were powerless to thin their numbers, or to supply the 

 markets. It is only natural that the peasantry should have set to work as 

 best they could to obtain the birds for food and sale. We have, however, 

 no reliable evidence that Decoys, as now known, were, even in a primitive 

 form, in use before the middle of the seventeenth century. Doubtless 

 Decoys were generally established in the East of England soon after the 

 first drainage of the Fens by the Bedford Level scheme in 1653. Before 

 that date the annual winter floods would by necessity have destroyed any 

 chance of constructing Decoys in the Fen lands, though the said floods 

 would favour the driving of Ducks as after described. This is quite borne 

 out by Ray, who, writing in 1678, speaks of a Decoy at that date as a 

 " new artifice " lately introduced by the Dutch, and he then proceeds to 

 describe a Decoy for enticing wildfowl (much the same as now used). He 

 also alludes to the great number of fowl caught in a Decoy in the winter. 



It is true Decoys (so named) were said to have existed in the time 

 of King John ; mention is also made of them as having given rise to 

 litigation as early as 1280, and again in 14 15 and 1432. At the last-named 

 date a mob armed with swords and sticks took 600 wildfowl out of the 

 Abbot's Decoy at Crowland monastery, infringing the rights of private 

 property. Daniel, in his " Rural Sports," speaks of near 3,000 mallards 

 being taken at one drive at Spalding. Willughby writes that sometimes 

 as many as 400 boats were used in this driving of the ducks, and that he 



