18 WILD DUCKS FOR SPORT AND PROFIT 



it has not extended long ago far and wide over every 

 sporting estate in the kingdom. There are many spots 

 which by nature are only indifferent situations for pheas- 

 ant and partridge cultivation, that are yet admirably 

 suited for the production of 'high flying wild fowl.' 



"As a matter of fact, I have never been resident in a 

 country village where there was a fair supply of water — 

 even when only a small beck, or brook — without finding 

 the wild duck breeding. In my earliest days, too, when 

 from association my attention was especially drawn to 

 them in the Trent Valley, I do not remember a farm yard 

 collection of ducks which was not visited by 'wild flying' 

 drakes from the decoy.* The domestic and wild forms 

 were so frequently crossed in the neighborhood of my 

 home that 'tame fliers' — namely, halfbred wild ducks, 

 which fly away with their cousins — were a frequent 

 source of annoyance and loss at Ashby Decoy. It is with 

 some confidence, then, that I can speak of the wild duck 



•A decoy is simply a piece of water of a certain size, from which radi- 

 ate shallow, curving channels spanned by crescent shaped supports. 

 The supports sustain net, forming a tunnel, known as a pipe. The num- 

 ber of pipes may be from one to a dozen or so, according to the size of 

 the water. The Wrentham decoy, in Norfolk, has ten pipes, a larger 

 number than that possessed by any other active decoy in the Eastern 

 Counties, if not in our islands. Iron supports, their ends firmly em- 

 bedded in the soil on either side of the channel, are used at the mouth 

 of the pipe and for some distance down, and saplings as the channel 

 narrows. The supports are placed at intervals of about five feet. These 

 arches are usually about twelve feet high and twenty feet wide at the 

 mouth of the pipe. They become smaller and smaller, till at the end of 

 the pipe they are found to be only two feet high; thus when the whole 

 structure is covered with net we have a gradually narrowing and curv- 

 ing pipe, the course of which cannot be seen by the duck till their re- 

 treat is cut off. At the end of the pipe is a detachable bag shaped net, 

 known as a tunnel net. The length of a pipe is usually about seventy 

 yards. On the bank of the decoy, and for some way down the convex 

 side of the pipe, are screens, six feet high, and covered with rushes, so 

 arranged In echelon that the decoyman can pursue his tactics without 

 being seen by the birds on the water, and yet can show himself, or 



