SOME HARMLESS HUNTING 147 



ing-lodges at the lake reported empty bags as 

 there were no daylight flights, and so Green- 

 head's cunning plan of things became apparent. 

 I decided that the birds were stubble feeding to 

 the northward and spending the day in the 

 sloughs in the river-valley. In detail their plan 

 of living was to leave the lake in the darkness 

 preceding the first peep of day, flight out high 

 to their feeding-grounds on the wheat-lands 

 across the river, fifteen miles distant, re- 

 turn a few miles to the valley, and spend the 

 day in seclusion, then in the evening, after an- 

 other gorge of plump wheat, slip off through the 

 dusk for the lake. All this, of course, was but 

 a theory with me till I got an opportunity to go 

 down and prove it. 



There were but a dozen mallards in the horse- 

 shoe slough in the meadow, when about 2 P. M. 

 I peeped into it, but from the manner in which 

 these dropped down into the old river-bed in 

 the timber, after I had incautiously routed them, 

 I felt confident that there were others there de- 

 coying hem. This " bogan " was right in the 

 woods, and a few minutes later I stole through 

 the strip of leafless elms and peeped down into 

 the water. .What a sight! Packed in the shal- 



