28o DUCK SHOOTING. 



bunch none of them will come back, and he yet fears 

 that he may not get another shot so good. 



The other method of shooting them is to rig out 

 the battery on the off-shore fiats, near the deep-water 

 channels. To such places the birds resort to sit and 

 rest, when the tide is rising and they can no longer 

 feed. At such times the gunner's tender with the sail- 

 boat will work back and forth to leeward of the birds, 

 approaching just near enough to disturb them, but not 

 to frighten them, and trying to make them take wing 

 and fly on a little way, so as to go down with the next 

 bunch of birds. In this way a skillful boatman will 

 drive the different flocks two or three hundred yards, 

 not further, pushing them along by easy stages until 

 some of them go down to the decoys about the battery. 

 The work is difficult and slow, and requires great 

 judgment and experience, and it is by no means always 

 possible to handle the birds as one wishes to. 



Usually the southern brant begin to work up north 

 in February, and reach the coast of Virginia, north of 

 the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, late in February. 

 The birds that have wintered on the Virginia coast 

 are by this time moving north, and reach the Great 

 South Bay in small numbers early in March, though 

 they do not become abundant until about the 20th. 

 By the 15th of April most of the brant have left the 

 Great South Bay, and by the 20th or 25th of April they 

 take their final* departure from the Massachusetts coast, 

 where they are not seen again until October. Their 

 movements depend greatly on the wind. Sometimes 



