CHESAPEAKE BAY DUCKING. 485 



The terms charged by gunners in those days for com- 

 plete outfit services of the men and meals were usually 

 from $35 to $40 per day. 



Beside the ordinary battery or sink-boat shooting, 

 practiced here with a great number of decoys, ordinary 

 batteaux or gunning skiffs are used. These are called 

 sneak-boats. They are painted white, and have a cur- 

 tain or shield of canvas running from bow to mid- 

 ships. The decoys are thrown out and the boat moves 

 off to a sufficient distance, so that it does not alarm the 

 birds flying about. They are thus likely to alight 

 among the decoys, and when they do so, the sneak-boat 

 is slowly and carefully sculled forward until close to the 

 decoys. The gunner then rises to his knees, and shoot- 

 ing over the canvas curtain, kills his ducks. Usually 

 in such a sneak-boat two double-barreled guns are used. 



In the old times on the eastern shore of Chesapeake 

 Bay, the Sassafras River probably marked the begin- 

 ning of the shooting, while Chester River, in almost its 

 entire length, Kent Island Narrows, Eastern Bay and 

 Miles River, Poplar Island, the large body of water in- 

 cluded in the Choptank River and its tributaries, the 

 Little Choptank, Tar Bay, Hooper Straits, Fishing 

 Bay, Holland Strait, all of the large body of water in- 

 cluded in Tangier and Pocomoke Sound, and so on 

 down the bay, were all teeming with wildfowl and af- 

 forded fine shooting. On the western side of the bay 

 it was the same from the localities named above, near 

 Baltimore clear to the James River. In Eastern and 



