198 ANATID^. 



Sometimes the shooter, lying at his length in a small 

 canoe, is carefully covered over and concealed by sapins, or 

 green branches. Having his loaded guns ready pointed over 

 the bows, he either gently paddles himself, or is borne 

 along the stream, unheeded or unobserved, to within the 

 closest requisite range of his unsuspecting victims. In 

 early winter the stratagem is occasionally varied by the 

 substitution of a white-painted scow — which is a flat- 

 bottomed boat, square at both ends — the shooter 

 therein being either covered over with a sheet or dressed 

 in flannel. This plan, when the water is studded with 

 floating masses of ice, answers most admirably. 



A good shot may often be got at birds circling over- 

 head, as they generally do, after the report of a gun, if 

 ignorant of the point whence the alarm proceeds. On 

 many open waters wild-fowl may be got at under cover 

 of the tall grass or reeds growing on the edge, but in 

 places where this is not practicable and they are equally 

 unapproachable in other ways, it is a good plan to send 

 a person round in an opposite direction to drive them 

 towards the shooter, who carefully conceals himself 

 beforehand. 



I remember on one occasion stalking a pond which 

 every evening in autumn was known to be covered with 

 ducks, but lay too low to i-econnoitre with the glass, and 

 in the centre of a bare op^in plain, with no cover but 



