BLINDS, BATTERIES AND BOATS. 



iHOW BLINDS ARE MADE. 



In duck shooting a blind is anything that conceals 

 the gunner from the birds. It may be a pit, or a sunk- 

 en barrel, or a fringe of leaves or bushes, or a pile of 

 ice cakes, or a stone wall ; but whatever it is, it must be 

 something to which the birds are so far accustomed 

 that they will not notice it as markedly different from 

 the rest of the landscape and so be suspicious of it. 



Of late years various artificial blinds have been de- 

 vised. One is a screen made of burlap, behind which 

 the gunner hides. Burlap is of precisely the proper 

 color for a blind in autumn or spring, but an obvious 

 objection to putting up a more or less tight screen of 

 this sort is that when the wind blows, as one always 

 hopes it will when he is duck shooting, the blind is likely 

 to be carried away, or at least to be flattened to the 

 ground. 



Another artificial blind is a coat and hood made of 

 grass. This turns the gunner into what looks like a 

 Robinson Crusoe, but we can imagine that under some 

 conditions it may be a useful disguise. 



Along the South Atlantic coast, the commoner forms 



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