274 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 
pulled, and the decoy dives almost as naturally as a live 
bird. When the ducks see it diving, as if for food, they 
approach it without hesitation, only to learn what a de- 
ceptive world this is. It is especially effective on a calm 
day, as it agitates the water, and its movements can be 
seen quite a long distance. 
Toling and calling are other methods employed for 
bringing ducks within range. The former can be done 
in two ways, but the simplest is to wave a gaudy hand- 
kerchief slowly over a blind or from the midst of a clump 
of shrubbery. Inquisitiveness being the leading charac- 
teristic of the canards, they begin to move shoreward in 
dense masses to see what the strange object can be, but 
when they come to within a short distance of the 
land, the majority depart in a hurry without having 
satisfied their curiosity, while others remain to in- 
crease the sportsman’s larder. The second method 
of toling is to get a dog trained to keep silent, to 
run after chips or pieces of bread thrown along the 
shore, and to gambol about in as sportive a manner as 
possible. ‘The ducks, on seeing his antics, advance and 
wheel, and rise on their wings in the water, then halt and 
stare with an expression of the liveliest curiosity and the 
most intense excitement. The leaders seem to communi- 
cate their fatuous enthusiasm to those behind, and this 
increases as they press shoreward, until the dense col- 
umns seem, at length, to become maniacal in their 
demonstrations of feeling, for they deploy in every direc- 
tion, advance and retreat, cross and re-cross each other 
in heavy masses, and wheel to the right or left according 
as the dog moves. The concealed gunner watches their 
movements with the keenest interest until he finds them 
grouped in serried columns a few yards from the shore, 
then, rising slowly, he pours the contents of his guns 
into them, and cuts a swath through their ranks as clean 
as a mower would lay the grass. The spectacle they pre- 
