DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 15 



and when they had gotten together a fair amount of stuff they 

 would sail with it or ship it to market. This business had no 

 appreciable effect upon the abundance of ducks so long as the 

 Baymen were few in number, but there soon came to be a con- 

 siderable permanent population on the island beaches as the 

 resorts increased, who catered to the summer visitors for three 

 or four months but had no regular occupation during the rest 

 of the year. With such opportunities of sport and profit spread 

 before them as the region offered they naturally took to the 

 bays by the hundreds, with the result that oysters and clams 

 became scarce and game was shot or frightened away until there 

 was not a living left for anybody. Where in the eighties two 

 men could get six to ten ducks on a morning's shoot, by 1890 

 one or two was the limit, while on many a day the gunners did 

 not get a single shot. 



Naturally the Baymen scattered and sought other occupa- 

 tions which, while less exciting, gave a more regular return for 

 their labor. Then came more stringent game laws. In the old 

 days they began to shoot wood-duck and teal in September and 

 kept up the fusilade until the last shelldrake went north in 

 May. Now shooting was limited to the period from November 

 1st to March 15th. Night shooting was stopped and also ship- 

 ment of game out of the state, and all gunners were licensed. 

 The oyster grounds, moreover, were leased and clammers had 

 to have licenses. There are still oystermen, clammers and 

 fishermen, but conditions are changed, and each one follows ex- 

 clusively his own occupation, workirsg on contracts with em- 

 ployers to take up so many bushels of oysters or deliver so 

 many thousand clams in a certain time. They have no longer 

 time to shoot ducks even though they are to be found close at 

 hand. Nor do the. fishermen shoot to any extent; they now 

 outfit for the purpose of taking out gunners who come down 

 from the cities, and they well know that one duck killed by 

 these visitors brings them better returns than did many for- 

 merly sent to market. So to-day one live duck on the bay is 

 more highly prized by the natives than a pile of dead ones. 

 The result has been that for some years past the ducks have 

 been coming back in gradually increasing numbers, until at the 



