n6 THE DUCK IN THE DECOY 



in nine English counties has a decoy never been 

 constructed. Three Welsh counties have decoys. 

 Ireland possesses twenty-four. There appears to be 

 no record of this means of fowling ever having been 

 adopted in Scotland. According to an extract from 

 Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's book on the subject, there 

 are altogether 216 decoys in the British Islands. Of 

 these some fifty or sixty only are being worked at the 

 present time ; in the majority of cases the decrease 

 in the numbers of duck visiting the localities has 

 rendered the working of decoys no longer profitable. 

 In the Eastern Counties, as might be assumed, a 

 far larger proportion of decoys was erected than 

 elsewhere. The counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, 

 Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire possess between them 

 121 out of the 192 which are recorded as existing 

 in England and Wales. Norfolk has twenty-six, of 

 which five are still in operation ; Suffolk has, or had 

 until a very short time ago, six of her total of thirteen 

 regularly worked ; of the twenty-nine in Essex, three 

 are used ; while two of Yorkshire's fourteen are, I 

 believe, still kept working. Only one of the thirty- 

 nine in Lincolnshire is now active. 



A decoy is simply a piece of water of a certain 

 size, from which radiate shallow, curving channels 

 spanned by crescent-shaped supports. The supports 



