374 ^UCK SHOOTINC. 



is severe. For this shooting, decoys are seldom used, 

 except that occasionally the dead brant are set up with 

 the weed stalks, as is done with the ducks. 



In this cornfield shooting, as practiced in the middle 

 West — that is to say, in Illinois and Indiana, it is not 

 common to dig pits in the fields. Sometimes, however, 

 on the sand bars or sand points in the river, gunners 

 dig holes to lie in, but this is usually for shooting the 

 Canada goose, a bird esteemed much more wary and 

 harder to deceive than the brant. The birds called 

 brant in that country are chiefly the white-fronted or 

 laughing geese, with some snow geese and blue geese. 

 They have a peculiar cackling cry, very different from 

 the sonorous note of the Canada goose. 



The shooting here described used to be practiced in 

 the neighborhood of Green River and Rock River, in 

 Illinois. Near the Green River was an immense marsh 

 — known as St. Peter's Marsh — greatly frequented by 

 ducks and affording good shooting in the season. It 

 was a large tract, so wet and boggy that it was impos- 

 sible for a man to walk on it. It was very soft, and 

 would not support any weight. Here the birds bred 

 in great quantities. In the neighboring valleys a favor- 

 ite mode of shooting is to "jump" ducks. The gunner 

 walks along one of the small sloughs, where the mal- 

 lards breed, and from time to time flocks of eight, ten 

 or a dozen spring from the water and fly off to another 

 slough or pond. From each bunch that jumps up one 

 or two birds may be killed, but no attention is paid to 

 those that go off ; they are never followed up. 



