MALLARD-SHOOTING IN THE TIMBER 
nor too heavy. Depend somewhat on the 
color of your clothing to blend with the 
surroundings, and somewhat on being 
quiet. If you build it around a boat, 
make it so that you can slip the boat out 
for the purpose of gathering the birds if 
the water is too deep for waders. Build 
a good blind and don’t try to do the job 
in a few seconds so that you can get to 
shooting right away. Make the sitting as 
comfortable as possible, for duck-shooting 
requires plenty of patience, and to wait 
four or five hours without a shot is com- 
paratively every duck-shooter’s experience 
some time during every season. 
Chilled ‘‘sixes” and any good powder 
is good enough ammunition for mallard- 
shooting. Gun gauges are changing with 
times. There was a day when a 12-gauge 
was a rarity, all the old shooters using Io- 
gauges. Now the 1o-gauge is the curiosity. 
Is the time coming when the 16-gauge will 
supersede the 12-gauge? Time alone will 
solve this problem, but one thing is certain, 
and that is, the 16-gauge is here to stay 
as a gun for duck-shooters. From actual 
experience I know it will kill as far and as 
clean as either the 1o-gauge or the 12- 
gauge. The killing circle is not as big, but 
in penetration it takes its hat off to no 
gun. 
Of course, the rarest of all timber shoot- 
ing is that which is had with live decoys. 
Here is where the wild mallard’s social 
instincts really shine. What could you 
expect? He sees five or six bona fide wild 
fowl of his species playing, paddling, 
quacking in a pond-hole in the timber, and 
one of them even raises its head and salutes 
him as he swings over the space. He drops 
his wings and hurries in to greet his 
comrades. A spurt of fire leaps out and the 
shot meets himinmidair. He collapsesstone- 
dead, and a figure in rubber waders comes 
out and picks him up. The figure disap- 
pears in the edge of the pond-hole, and 
other unsuspicious mallards swing, drop 
in, are fired at, rise, and leave their toll 
on the water, 
317 
One pair even of live decoys will toll 
in the game, and sometimes, when the 
visitors are close up to their alluring and 
faithless brethren, the hunters will stand 
up in the blind and ‘‘shoo”’ them up, to be 
shot at on the wing. Sometimes they will 
hesitate, even then, looking at their tame 
betrayers as much as to say, “‘ Well, what 
do you think of this ?” before rising on drip- 
ping wings to seek safety. With live decoys 
the mallards have no hesitancy, but will 
plump down within ten feet of the hunters 
when the blind is in deep timber. 
Sometimes an old ‘“‘wild”’ female decoy 
will be stalked out, and the rest of the 
tame mallards will swim around near her, 
and when she is taken up at night the rest 
of the flock of live decoys will come and 
allow themselves to be taken into the boat. 
They seem to enjoy the hunting, and will 
call down the flocks all day for the hunters. 
Mallard-shooting in the timber is royal 
sport. Only canvasback shooting from 
a shore blind beats it. A man must go 
warmly clad, be able to stand hardship, 
and be a hunter, to get results. To be a 
good shot is one requisite, but the main 
thing is to know the birds, whether the red- 
leg mallards, the first-flight birds, or the 
ice-mallards as they are called, the ones 
with the yellow legs, that come in almost 
till Christmas. To know their habits, to 
watch where they are feeding, to get in 
where they feed and play, even at the ex- 
pense of herculean effort—this is what 
counts in mallard-shooting. 
Some hunters take tents, and camp out in 
the timber. Others shoot from the clubhouses 
scattered along the river. Some men come 
in to lunch; others stay out all day. Some 
men are “pushed” to the timber, and 
others do their own pushing. Some men 
load a boat down with a morning’s shoot; 
others quit with half of the limit killed. 
It’s take your choice, but under all condi- 
tions it is worth half a man’s lifetime to be 
in a good pond-hole with some live decoys 
out, and the mallards coming in from the 
North, 
