58 SHOOTING WILD FOWL. 



shore until they were close enough for him to snatch one by the 

 head and make off to the woods with it. 



The most successful way of shooting ducks and geese is from a 

 battery or rig, as the contrivance is termed. To prepare a battery 

 take thirty or more yards of light muslin or canvas, and with 

 oil color paint it to look like water. Tliis is stretched on a light 

 frame, and fixed firmly on the windward side of a broad platform 

 twelve feet long by eight feet wide. In the center of the platform, 

 sunk below its surface and level with it at the top, is a water tight 

 box, only big enough for the shooter to lie down in on his back, 

 with his gun in his hands. Along the platform are rows of short 

 pins, from which depend a series of weights that sink the platform 

 until it does not show more than an inch or an inch and a half above 

 the surface of the water. The painted canvas to windward keeps 

 the water from swashing over and sinking the concern. Then 

 around the platform for thirty yards are i:)laced over a hundred de- 

 coy ducks, and the battery is complete. The keenest eye of either 

 man or bird would fail to descry its existence at a little distance^ 

 The shooter lies down in the coffin-like box, his feet leeward, witii 

 another, his tender, in a small boat hidden in the sedge four or five 

 hundred feet away. The shooter is absolutely helpless should any- 

 thing happen to him. His communication with the tender must be 

 by noiseless signs, and there he must lie and wait until a flock of 

 ducks, attracted by the decoys, come within range Then he sits 

 up, blazes away at them with both barrels, and sinks back to reload 

 and wait for more. The dead ducks float off to be gathered in by 

 the tender, who has chosen a position with reference to the direction 

 of the wind. 



There are quite a number of varieties of duck to be met with in 

 this section of country. Coots, the smallest of all the species, are 

 rather numerous and easily taken. Sportsmen have killed hundreds 

 of them in a few hours. They are a dumb sort of duck, and may be 

 shot within a few yards. The sheldrake duck is a little larger than 

 the coot, but is fishy, hardly eatable, and not valuable. The broad- 

 bill is a good duck, medium -sized and very numerous, yet old 

 sportsmen say twenty used to be killed for one that is killed now. It 

 is only a moderate day's sport to kill a hundred or so from one rig, 

 but reliable hunters tell of killing as many as 350 a day. Occasion- 

 ally a man will drift into a flock of them and kill fifty to a hun- 

 dred in an hour or so. 



