CHAPTER I 

 SHOOTING THE DUCK AT SEA 



A WHOLE host of people excellent in their way, no 

 doubt who have heard or read with more or less 

 understanding of what takes place when a punt- 

 gunner has succeeded in making his way within ideal 

 range of a large company of widgeon, look upon wild- 

 fowling as wanton butchery, and, according to their 

 way of thinking, even more unsportsmanlike than 

 covert beating and partridge driving. Just as they 

 imagine, and sometimes rush into print about, hordes 

 of helpless always helpless pheasants as tame as 

 -barndoor fowls massacred in cold blood by a body 

 of men calling themselves sportsmen, who slay their 

 victims simply to gratify a debased, and quite incom- 

 prehensible, lust for slaughter; so do they imagine 

 flocks always flocks of duck peacefully and inno- 

 cently resting on the placid sea, while the wicked 

 wild-fowler calmly paddles up in his punt, trains his 



