My First Pair of Mallards. 



come home from the river with empty creel, and the proverbial 

 fisherman's luck ; but rarely did I spend a day on Honey Creek, 

 Coffin's Creek or the Maquoketa without getting a fine string 

 of fish ; and many's the time I have come home at night with a 

 willow stringer thrown over my shoulder and the tails of the 

 bottom fish dragging the ground behind me. 



Returning from one of those Saturday fishing trips, as I 

 was passing near the end of Goose Pond, my ears caught the 

 sound of splashing water, and, thinking it might be made by 

 a family of muskrats, I determined to investigate. Crawling 

 cautiously to the edge of the thicket, what was my surprise to 

 see a mother mallard and her brood. She was giving her little 

 family their supper, and the way those little balls of down went 

 after the tender celery roots that the duck mother brought up 

 from the bottom for them was a caution. How I did enjoy 

 watching this most wary of our game birds and her young 

 brood at supper out there on the still waters of the old pond ! 

 Then came a low but resonant "Quack! quack!" from the 

 rushes near the far shore, and the mother duck, answering, 

 swam off to meet her mate. I had been coaxing father for a 

 gun ever since Christmas, and had been told that I was not 

 yet old enough to handle one. But the sight I had just wit- 

 nessed aroused me to the verge of desperation. This being 

 the breeding ground of the brood, I knew they would make the 

 place their home, until the migratory flocks began to arrive 

 from the north in the fall. The place was seldom visited by 

 any one but myself, and it was more than likely I would get 

 the first chance at them when they would be large enough to 

 shoot. On arriving home, I told father of my discovery, and 

 pleaded again for a gun. "Well, Will," said he, "a boy is not 

 large enough to have a gun until he is large enough to earn it. 

 But if you can earn one during vacation, I am willing you 

 should hunt this fall." 



I now had an object to work for, and I bent all my energies 

 to the task. I kept an eye open for opportunities to earn money 

 and saved every cent I earned. Like everything else in life that 



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