FOWL SHOOTING. 



125 



as they will frequently let a boat run almost into the midst of 

 them, before they will attempt to rise, and when they do so, as 

 they usually face the wind in taking wing, they are compelled 

 first to breast you, and then to present fine side shots, 



1 do not doubt that Mr. Giraud is perfectly right when he 

 states, that this practice, if persisted in, has a tendency to 

 fiig iten the Geese from their feeding grounds ; and therelbre 

 for the sake of preserving these, it may be advisable for those 

 who have an interest in protecting them, to discountenance the 

 method. I cannot for my life, however, see in what respect it 

 is unsportsmanlike ; nor by any exertion of my wits, can I dis- 

 cover what there is sportsmanlike at all, in any portion of our 

 system of fowl shooting. Indeed, though it be well enough as 

 a mode of killing game, it is to me wofully dull work, however 

 rapidly the shots may come in, to lie cramped up on your belly 

 in a boat, or still worse, on your back in a battery, in cold au- 

 tumn weather, with the salt water freezing wherever the spray 

 falls on your pea-jacket, or sou'- wester, or in warm spring-time, 

 with the sun blazing down in your face, and reflected upward 

 from the intense mirror of the liquid surface. 



There is no accounting for tastes, however, and certainly no 

 true sportsman will take much heed of the fatigue, or roughing 

 of any kind, to which he must submit, in the pursuit of his favo- 

 rite game. If less discomfort, there is more toil by half in Up- 

 land shooting, whether it be winter or summer, than in decoy 

 fowl shooting ; to me the lack of excitement, and the sameness 

 of position, is the great drawback to the sport; I have learned, 

 however, to respect the tastes of all men, and to depreciate no 

 kind of sport, especially one which has so many ardent and en- 

 thusiastic followers, as this of Long Island fowl shooting. 



I should, indeed, be but a degenerate sportsman, and a poor 

 disciple, had I listened so often as I have done to the quaint 

 converse, and revelled so rarely in the eloquent descriptions ol" 

 my poor friend, J. Cypress, junr., rejoicing to narrate how he 

 and Ned Locus "could each cut down a Leather-head, flying 

 by a point of marsh before a strong north-wester, sixty yard^ 



