SHOOTING MALLARDS FROM A SCULL BOAT. 49 



CHAPTER V. 



SHOOTING MALLARDS FHOM A SCULL BOAT. 

 (on the MISSISSIPPI.) 



If tliou would'st enjoy sport, such as thou hast never 

 Seen or dreamt of, then be my guest, if but for a day. 



One of the most successful, ways of shooting wild • 

 fowl on the Mississippi River is from a scull boat. It is 

 rare sport, and enjoyed by comparatively few, espe- 

 cially when one takes into consideration the number who 

 hunt these birds, and the various means they employ to 

 hunt with any degree of success. It has always been 

 to me a matter of great surprise, that more sportsmen 

 have not hunted in this manner. Experienced duck 

 hunters — ^men who have passed their entire lives among 

 the aquatic tribe, who are versed in, and filled to com- 

 pletion with duck lore, who know their instincts, habits, 

 breeding places, and resorts, and who can almost read 

 them in mid-air, forming instantaneously a correct opin- 

 ion as to where they are flying and what may be their 

 intentions ; men who know how to hunt them morning, 

 midday and evening, spring and fall ; amid the willows, 

 among the tall oaks, hidden in the marsh securely from 

 view, by the tall waving and nodding wild rice, shooting 

 them from out-jutting points, under their line of light, 

 seductively coaxing them from their high flight, with 

 plaintive call and deceitful decoys, knocking them right 

 and left, as they circle over the yellow and golden fields 



