WILD DUCKS. 277 



day, wben the clucks have ceased trading, whereas the 

 hitter must remain idle during that time or be content 

 with pot-shots at a vagrant goose or canard. 



The principal wild-fowling stations on the Atlantic 

 Coast are Brigantine, Barnegat, Currituck, and Havre de 

 Grace, the latter being the head(|uarters of those profes- 

 sional wild-fowlers who use sink-boxes on the Chesapeake 

 Bay, which is by far the best duck ground on the eastern 

 part of the Continent. About forty of these men at 

 Havre de Grace pay a license of twenty dollars a year for 

 the privilege of using sink-boxes on the river during legal- 

 ized days, which are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 

 after the first of November until the season closes in 

 March. The outfit of these men generally consists of a 

 small sailing sloop, ranging from thirty to fifty feet in 

 length, a flat-bottomed rowboat, a sink-box, and from 

 three hundred to five hundred decoys. It requires at 

 least three men to handle one of these outfits properly; 

 hence, each vessel is a little hunting colony in itself. 

 Some of the wild-fowlers live aboard their boats through- 

 out the season, but others do not go aboard until the 

 night before the shooting is permitted, and then they 

 cannot go to the grounds before three A. M., nor can 

 they commence work until an hour before sunrise. They 

 are allowed to fire away, however, until half an hour after 

 sunset, provided their sink -boxes are half a mile from 

 the shore; if they are not, the owners are liable to be 

 arrested and fined or imprisoned. Several craft anchor 

 within half a mile of the shore during the night, and 

 when the clock strikes three, the crews make preparations 

 for the labors of the day by "planting" the decoys as 

 soon as it is light enough to do so, and sinking their 

 boxes. It takes three men about an hour to complete 

 this preliminary work, and when that is done it is about 

 time to commence shooting. 



The boxes are mostly single, that is, only one man can 



