354 I^UCK SHOOTING. 



ply the hunter with birds enough for several days; 

 then, no one thought of shooting ducks or geese, ex- 

 cept to eat, and, indeed, ammunition was often far too 

 valuable to be wasted on birds. Indians have told me 

 that, when camped on the borders of the wild rice lakes 

 of Minnesota and Manitoba, it was their common prac- 

 tice to enter the water, and, fixing a chaplet of grass or 

 rushes about the head, to wade very slowly close to the 

 flocks of unsuspecting fowl, and, seizing them by the 

 feet, to draw them, one by one, beneath the water, until 

 enough birds had been obtained to satisfy their wants. 



To such lakes and sloughs, where the birds regularly 

 came to feed on their migration, the gunners of years 

 ago used to resort, and, taking their station on some 

 point of land, or on a muskrat house, or in a boat con- 

 cealed in reeds, to have, without the use of decoys, such 

 shooting as to-day is hardly dreamt of. 



Much further to the west, in the arid region, now 

 and then a marsh is found, where reeds and tall tas- 

 seled grass, somewhat resembling the wild rice, grow, 

 and, during the migration, unusually good shooting 

 may be had in just this way. Much of this is almost 

 precisely like pass shooting, and, unless the gunner has 

 had considerable practice, he is likely to make bad work 

 of it. Shooting such as this taxes the skill to the ut- 

 most. It is as different as possible from shooting over 

 decoys, where, commonly, the birds, preparing to 

 alight, check their flight, and give opportunity for de- 

 liberate work. But these birds darting into the wild 

 rice fields are, almost all of them, going as fast as they 



