70 



WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 



shelter and shivers all the more. What a dismal morn- 

 ing it is, just as the day is breaking. The flurrying 

 snow whirls and darts and bounds over the frozen 

 ground ; the leaden gray in the east grows gradually 

 darker, as the eye follows it westward, until it dissolves 

 into a seal brown, and finally into an indistinct black. 

 As the hunter ponders over the situation, he thinks 

 how hard it would be for one to endure such exposure, 

 if necessity compelled it, but then he instantly shakes 

 himself together, whacks his freezing hands against his 

 benumbed limbs, stamps his cold feet on the frozen 

 ground, and thinks how pleasant the anticipation is, 

 when one is sitting before a grate fire, to hunt ducks 

 on a wintry morning in a corn-field ; how unpleasant 

 it is to experience the reality. 



In coming into a corn-field the ducks are very wild, 

 and the utmost caution must be exercised to get good 

 shooting. The hunter should not secrete himself behind 

 a fence ; because of all places, a fence fills them with the 

 most dread, and they may fly low before approaching 

 it ; but when they get to it, will ascend to a height where 

 it is simply nonsense to shoot at them. The hunter should 

 build a blind right in the place where he knows they 

 have been accustomed to light. That blind must be 

 built of corn-stalks, and to disturb as little as possible 

 the shape, formation and condition of the field before 

 the blind was built. Ducks have very sharp eyes, and 

 are great observers of the condition of a field where they 

 have been accustomed to feed. It will not do for the 

 hunter, merely because he is in a field of corn, to gather 

 up an armful and build a shock to hide himself. If 

 there are shocks in the field, this does away with the 

 necessity of it. Let him conceal himself in one. If 



