SOME DUCKS OF THE DRYLANDS 
BY EDWYN SANDYS 
Author of ‘‘ Upland Game Birds,”’ “Sporting Sketches,” etc. 
HIS yarn does not per- 
tain to either the heavy- 
-sterned white ducks of 
the Staten Island breed- 
ers, who produce as- 
tonishingly large fowl for 
the Gotham market, nor 
BRE yet to those numerous 
and, as a rule, very light-sterned white 
ducks of certain youths who pretend to go 
to sea, but really cruise on foot or via 
street-car. The ducks I shall write about 
are those which are shot during what is 
termed ‘flight’? and perhaps miles away 
from any water. 
Of course, every shooting man knows 
that all duck-shooting is not over or even 
near water. It is true that for canvas- 
backs, redheads, bluebills, ruddy-ducks, 
butterballs, and those other species usually 
termed “‘fish-ducks,” 7. e., the goosander, 
the mergansers, and so on, the gunner needs 
must seek creek, river or broad open 
water; yet thousands of fowl are shot each 
season in places which a man might 
traverse dry footed in such footgear as he 
would wear on a city street. 
I have shot ducks many a time and oft 
in places where anything like waders 
would have been a worse than useless 
encumbrance, in fact, in spots where a 
man would have had to go a long distance 
for a drink of water, and I’m no stickler 
for agua pura. The slimiest of moss and 
weeds, a floating, turn-bellied dead carp 
or two, or even a very much defunct 
domestic critter, had no terrors, providing 
I could get well upstream of the horror. 
In the East the would-be dry-footed 
duck-shooter, of course excepting those 
who go forth in some sort of boat, most 
probably would be the man who devoted 
himself to the wood-duck. This loveliest 
of all American ducks, except the Harle- 
quin, is in many of its habits more like a 



pigeon than a duck. It is a tree duck, that 
is, it rests in hollow trees and will perch 
upon a branch as unconcernedly as any 
perching species, such as a robin or other 
thrush. On the old inland grounds, such 
as the country contiguous to lakes St. Clair 
and Erie, we used to fare forth for wood- 
ducks afoot. This form of sport meant dry- 
foot walking of the river bank and speaking 
earnestly and rapidly to such fowl as 
flushed from under the tangled growth, 
which marked the banks of the waterway. 
It was good, snappy shooting, too, for when 
one is atop of a twenty-foot bank and 4 
wood-duck ‘“‘O-eeks” out from below, one 
needs must act swiftly and hold straight to 
score. The old dog did the rest. I had a 
varmint of a pointer that imagined he 
was a spaniel half his time, and he would 
gravely steam out and grab ducks in a fash- 
ion which left nothing to be desired. 
While prowling the bank of the stream - 
during the day, I might get from four 
to ten ducks. But there was another 
and far more delightful phase of the 
shooting. 
There was a chain of ponds in that 
country, to which, as the shadows length- 
ened and the twilight fell, the wood-ducks 
would come speeding down with singing 
wings and musical calls, and I would be 
there, old dog and all, at the point where 
the swift-winged beauties crossed. Some 
evenings I might get five fowl, again seven 
or eight, but every one was fairly earned, 
for, be it known, the man who can lift a 
wood-duck six feet out of his chosen track 
has to shoot a trifle better than ordinary. 
This long twilight work was to me the 
perfection of dry-land duck-shooting. The 
fowl, hustling in to their night resort, 
traveled like bullets; they were either 
missed clean or killed clean, and one of the 
most gratifying sounds was the coughing of 
the old dog through the darkness as he 
