142 WILD-FOWL, OR SWIMMERS 



much reduced the ranks of those which travel over the 

 Eastern course, but the birds still move from Dakota 

 to the Gulf in immense numbers. There is a record 

 of three guns killing one thousand three hundred and 

 seventy-two ducks in forty-eight hours at Lake Bisti- 

 neau, Louisania (March 9, 1902), and only the birds 

 actually bagged were counted. 



I know of a bag of over one hundred ducks made one 

 morning by a gun in Ohio, in the fall of the preceding 

 year. These records indicate that the ducks still come 

 in goodly numbers. 



Such killings as those referred to by men who shoot 

 for sport, added to the tremendous execution of the 

 market gunners, will, if continued, soon make the duck 

 a rare bird on our Western waters. I recently saw a 

 gun at one of the Ohio clubs, which, in the hands of a 

 market gunner of Sandusky, killed one hundred and 

 eighteen ducks at one shot. Not satisfied with shoot- 

 ing from the shore, the market gunners and sportsmen 

 stationed themselves in floating batteries on the feed- 

 ing grounds, thus preventing the ducks from feeding. 

 A few years ago, before there were game laws or pre- 

 serves, the booming of the guns in the marshes 

 sounded like the skirmish fire of an army. The shoot- 

 ing begins in the Northern States with the arrival 

 of the first ducks and is kept up until the freezing of 

 the waters ends the slaughter. As the ducks pro- 

 ceed southward, new guns are ready for them, and in 

 Southern waters, their winter quarters, they are perse- 

 cuted until their departure in the spring. Not satis- 

 fied with the results obtained with the cannon used 

 by market gunners, the Mexicans have a method of 



