HUNTING GROUNDS OF FLORIDA. 85 



tvventy-tive or thirty ducks in a couple of hours and stopped shooting 

 when I could easily have killed many more than one hundred had I 

 desired to do so. Early in the season, when the ducks lirst arrive, 

 immense numbers are killed by the "pot hunters," who use heavy 

 guns and shoot into the flocks when bunched together in the water. 

 Of course such continual slaughter must necessarily reduce the 



DUCK SHOOTING WITH DECOYS. 



number of ducks which annualW visit Florida, and already it is evi- 

 dent that their numbers are materially lessened, although they still 

 return, each year, in vast numbers. At some of the small Indian 

 River towns it was by no means unusual to see large flocks of ducks 

 " bedded" within a short distance of a wharf, where shooting was 

 prohibited. They soon learned that they were safe there and paid 

 no attention whatever to the people who stood and watched them 



