WILD FOWL SHOOTING. 837 
meet, as it were, on the neutral ground of the Jersey bays 
and 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 difficult shot 
at the best to kill, and one in which it is doubly difficult 
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. 
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