66 AMERICAN GAME. 



it is not liable to tlie objections brought against the for- 

 mer mode, while it affords sport sufficient to glut the 

 greediest sportsman, who shoots for sport, not fo? pot or 

 market. 



Niches are cut in the mud-banks, or points, across 

 which the fowl fly from the beach to the feeding-grounds, 

 and vice versa ; into these niches the Egg Harbor skiffs, 

 which the gunners use, are backed up, and in these, 

 their decks plentifully strewed with sedges, clad him- 

 self in dingy sedge-colored raiment, the fowler lies, with 

 his heavy guns expectant. His decoys are moored in 

 the water around him, and as they bob up and down 

 with the bobbing of the tide, they closely resemble a 

 real flock of fowl riding at anchor in the shallows. 



Here, so soon as the saffron tints of morning begin to 

 steal upon the gray of the eastern sky, the hoarse honk ! 

 of the -gander reaches the latent gunner's ear his quick 

 eye glances to the windward, and faint and far on the 

 bright dawning back-ground he discerns, dimly pen 

 ciled, the form of the anxiously desired wedge. 



" Aw-unk ! aw-unk !" he sets up aloud the well-sim- 

 ulated cry, crouching down closer in his sedge-covered 

 egg-shell, and cocks his two ponderous single-barrelled 

 duck guns. " Aw-unk ! aw-unk !" the leading gander 

 answers " Aw-unk ! E-e awnk !" 



Near by they come and nearer ; now he can mark the 

 circular sweep of their vast oary pinions, and now they 

 spy the stools, and now they stoop toward them then 



