SOME DUCKS OF THE DRYLANDS 
nobly toiled to retrieve the dead and the 
ever-troublesome wounded. 
All of that made a most pleasant expe- 
rience, but while I blithely bagged my half- 
dozen of gorgeously plumaged victims of 
an evening, I had no idea of the sport 
proper—of the shooting of the far West, and 
all that it meant. 
“Come you West!” said the voice; 
“Get you West!” urged the haunting 
spirit, and I went. I had but vague ideas 
of what it would be like, but I was full of 
the insatiable curiosity of an elephant’s 
child, so I traveled fifteen hundred miles 
to the nor’rard, and thence with the good 
people to Lake Manitoba. 
Now be it understood that there was 
decoy shooting aplenty—in fact, there was 
all sorts of shooting—chicken-shooting, 
snipe-shooting, duck-shooting and plover- 
shooting, but of it all I liked the sport with 
the ducks of the drylands the best. To me 
it was the cream of the Northern sport, and 
evening after evening I’d be at the old 
stand ready to do business with whatever 
came along. 
And it came along. Never had I seen 
such a flight. That prince of good fellows, 
“Tom” Johnson, loaned me a gun that 
could eat anything in sight, and truly we 
had fun together, that gun and I. It is likely 
that the celebrated ‘‘Tom’s” handling 
of that gun had taught it wisdom, for I 
didn’t seem to know how to ask it any- 
thing which it could not do. If I pulled 
on a gadwall at impossible range, that 
gadwall folded his longish neck and came 
down like a package from a department 
store, making a whop one could hear for 
fifty yards. 
Our temporary headquarters was between 
two lakes, and of an evening there was 
nothing better to do than to take position 
on the dry prairie about half way between 
the two waters and converse with such 
ducks as passed. And not all of them 
passed. It was the cleanest, driest duck- 
shooting ever I saw; for so far as wet was 
concerned, a man might have gone out into 
the prairie grass in dancing pumps. It was 
hard shooting, too, in a way. Ducks | 
headed for a known resort, and going at top 
speed, while usually flying rather high, are 
not such easy propositions. Then, if ever, 
323 
is the time for the man who holds well 
ahead, and I found that my usual rather 
liberal allowance was none too much. 
We killed many. We were shooting 
well; the guns were good, while the fowl 
just boomed in and took chances. That 
sort of shooting, once one has caught the 
hang of it, is not nearly so difficult as the 
Eastern across open water work. It is 
mainly straight overhead, and when fowl 
chiefly of one kind are flying, an average 
shot soon gets the proper idea of swing and 
allowance. I, dyed-in-the-wool upland 
shooter as I am, had little difficulty in 
making close connections with about half 
of the intended victims. The other mem- 
bers of the party did much better, but con- 
cerning this little point I worried not at all, 
for no Eastern tenderfoot has a license to go 
North and teach those gentlemanly brigands 
how to shoot. Thanks to my friend’s 
courtesy in the matter of firearm, I was 
perhaps the best gunned man in the party, 
yet that advantage was not quite enough 
for a province like Manitoba. To be 
candid, I think they could have put it all 
over me, but at the same time that trifling 
matter had nothing to do with my sincere 
enjoyment both of royal entertainment and 
my introduction to some ducks of the dry- 
lands. 
The typical sport was as lively, clean and 
interesting as could be imagined. Far 
west of our camp lay the feeding grounds 
of half a dozen species of desirable water- 
fowl, while a few hundred yards to the east- 
ward spread the broad lake, the chosen 
rendezvous of everything webfooted— 
swan, goose and duck—for miles around. 
It certainly was very pretty shooting. 
About midafternoon I would stroll over 
to a slight elevation some half-mile from 
camp, and there prepare for war. I 
builded no ‘“‘hide.”” Garbed from crown 
to heels in the dead grass shade of which 
every wild-fowler knows the value, all I 
had to do was to lie in the short, faded 
grass and bide the coming of the feathered 
hosts.. And they came, in flocks, in pairs, 
_and in the devil’s own hurry—racing to 
reach the swinging, white-waved waters of 
the sweet, all-gathering lake. Then, if 
ever, was the time of the right-and-left- 
shoulder man who could spring to his knees 
