WILD-FOWL SHOOTING. 67 



duck shooting. Notwithstanding the vast numbers that 

 are shot every year, the wild fowl manage to hold their 

 own. Numbers hatch their young in the marshes, islands, 

 swamps, and woods of Upper Canada ; but much greater 

 numbers hatch in the inaccessible northern regions, from 

 whence they come in renewed multitudes every " fall," to 

 rest on the lakes and marshes of Upper Canada, and feed 

 on the wild rice that grows round the edges of the lakes 

 and in the creeks. The St. Clair flats and Long Point, 

 Lake Erie, are two of the most famous places for wild- 

 fowl shooting ; but in the whole province, from the 

 Georgian Bay and Lake Nepissing down to the Thousand 

 Islands, there is an abundance of wild fowl. I have had 

 good sport along the shores of Lake Ontario, both in the 

 Thousand Islands and in the Bay of Quinte ; and there 

 are also many smaller lakes, such as Rice Lake, Simcoe, 

 Holland Marsh, &c., where the duck shooting is very 

 good. 



Duck shooting is much the same all the world over, 

 but one great charm of this sport in Canada is that there 

 are so many different varieties of birds. At the head of 

 them, both as regards sport and the pot, I place the black 

 duck (A. obscura). Great numbers of these hatch in 

 Canada, but many more come from the north, and I 

 have noticed that these latter are finer and heavier birds 

 than the home-bred ones. 



As regards their nesting and habits, they are almost, it 

 not exactly, identical with those of the mallard duck. 

 They are shot in spring and fall, either by the system of 

 flight shooting in the evenings and mornings, or in the 

 beginning of autumn, by paddling a canoe silently along 



