WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 337 



meet, as it were, on the neutral ground of the Jersey bays 

 arid the Long Island shore. 



The method of shooting wild fowl on Chesapeake Bay, 

 is to wait for them as they fly up and down, in proportion 

 as the flats on which they feed are submerged too deeply 

 for their use by the rise of the spring tides, behind screens 

 erected for the purpose on the points and islands over 

 which they must necessarily pass, and thence shoot them 

 on the wing. 



The sport often had by parties at these points, which 

 are for the most part rented by clubs of sportsmen or by 

 individuals, and very jealously preserved, is magnificent. 

 The shooting, however, is peculiar, and exceedingly diffi- 

 cult to those unused to it, who are apt to miss all sorts of 

 fair shots, though good marksmen on the upland at other 

 game. This is owing to the fact, that many of the shots 

 have to be fired almost perpendicularly in the air at flocks 

 passing directly over the sportsman's head a diflicult shot 

 at the best to kill, and one in which it is doubly diflicult 

 to make a large allowance for the distance and the speed 

 at which the fowl are flying. This is, moreover, very 

 deceptive. Duck of all kinds, although their flight appears 

 slow and lumbering with a vast expenditure of flapping, 

 fly infinitely faster than is commonly supposed, as is evi- 

 dent from their having been minuted by telegraph while 

 passing points and promontories on the sea-coast, and 

 found to travel, when on their ordinary comings and goings, 

 at the rate of ninety miles an hour. Of all the missed 

 shots at ducks flying past or over the gun, nineteen- twen- 

 tieths fall far behind the object. 

 15 



