3l8 DUCK SHOOTING. 



a day's shooting, in 1897, in North Dakota, as fol- 

 lows: 



At the head of the Dead Buffalo Lake there is a nar- 

 row strip of water separating it from a smaller lake 

 above, and between this little sheltered basin and the 

 wide, deep water, where the wild celery grows, there is 

 a more or less constant flight of ducks. We put out our 

 team and hastened quietly as we could down to this 

 fly-way, seeking not to alarm the birds till we had 

 taken our stand on the ridge between the lakes, where 

 the rushes grow much higher than a man's head and 

 run out almost entirely across the narrow channel. 

 One of the dogs ran on ahead of us, and even before we 

 could run over to the pass, there arose an enormous 

 black cloud of ducks, which began to stream over the 

 pass and to spread out over the big lake below. 



Each of us had his pockets full of shells, and before 

 we had deployed as skirmishers across the pass the 

 pockets began to empty. The ducks came in a constant 

 stream, without intermission for many minutes, nearly 

 all of them low and almost in our faces, and with that 

 velocity of flight seen nowhere except on a duck pass. 

 The four of us, with shouts and calls and eager vocifer- 

 ations of "Mark ! mark ! mark !" poured in such fire as 

 we could. Mr. Bowers cut down his first two birds 

 after his regular style, and Gokey, wading out into the 

 middle of the channel, began to fold up birds with the 

 smoothness of the old-time shot. I came near stopping 

 my own gun to watch the sport of duck shooting on the 



