60 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
DUCK HUNTING. 
By GerorcE FitcH. 
Harly in the spring the wild duck leaves the south for the summer 
resorts on Hudson’s Bay and as he wings his way north, life is one 
long Fourth of July for him. What with dodging chilled shot and 
yawning gun muzzles, he rarely has a chance to enjoy the scenery for 
so much as a minute at a time. 
Duck hunting is a favorite athletic sport in America. The game 
of golf is supposed to have a firm grip on its victims, but a golfer is 
fickle and uenthusiastic beside a duck hunter. When the weather gets 
nasty and the cold wind roars wickedly, a duck hunter will leave a 
cozy club corner, an evening with his financee, a winning hand at 
poker, a wheat squeeze in which he is the squeezer or a bulletin 
board of the world’s championship series in order to be present at 
sunrise in a rice swamp waiting to be attacked by a wild duck. 
To enjoy duck hunting in its prime, the hunter must first select 
a day on which the Humane Society wouldn’t allow a dog to be kept 
out of doors. He should then dress himself in canvas clothes, put 
on twenty-pound hip boots, put forty pounds of ammunition and a 
sandwich in his pockets, rent a leaky boat and row five miles in a 
gale, bailing out with his cap. Having done this, he should build a 
blind of weeds and lie in the mud until evening, smoking a pipe for 
warmth and occasionally breaking the ice around his legs. Many 
men can only afford one day of such bliss each year, but they look © 
eagerly forward to it and will not accept any substitute, although they 
could soak themselves all night in a tub of ice-water in the back 
yard at far less expense. 
Because wild ducks are of a retiring disposition, and do not warm 
up to humans, it is often necessary, when assassinating them, to 
attract them by means of decoy ducks. Decoy ducks are made of 
rubber and are used to attract the real birds in the same way that 
prominent directors are used to attract investors in a stock company. 
When the wild duck has stopped to share the meal that the decoy 
duck has found, the hunter, who corresponds to the promoter, gets in 
his deadly work. 
The wild duck when roasted is so delicious that it pays to remove 
his feathers one by one after a long day’s hunting. Duck hunters 
pay an average of $5 for every duck they shoot and usually give 
most of them to their friends. This makes a duck hunter second only 
to a theater treasurer in popularity and it is no trick at all for a 
good shot to get elected to the legislature. 
STATE BOARD OF FISHERIES AND GAME. 
New Haven, Conn., Dec. 2, 1915. 
State Fish and Game Commission, 
Portland, Oregon. 
Gentlemen: 
I have been on the point of writing you for some little time and 
the receipt of the “Oregon Sportsman” this morning prompted me to 
act. I am very much pleased with the little publication, and I think 
it is very complete indeed, and if it is not too much trouble I would 
like to have you mail me another copy. 
Very sincerely yours, 
JOHN M. CRAMPTON, 
Commissioner. 
