324 
and send in the rapid right-and-left and 
hear the quick ‘‘prut-prut” as the chilled 
shot went home and the loud ‘‘prop-flop’’ 
as fat fowl plunged two hundred feet and 
hit the dry sod with a force which not seldom 
meant a fat young duck split wide open from 
stem to stern. ‘‘Stem to stern’? may sound 
a bit too aquatic for ducks of the drylands, 
yet they are more aquatic than yachts. 
The sole secrets of the successful shooting 
of the ducks of the drylands simply are: 
to correctly garb yourself, which means to 
wear Clothes which closely correspond with 
the faded tint of the autumn grasses; to 
get down and stay down from the instant 
a flock is sighted till that flock is well within 
range, and then to shoot swiftly and 
accurately at certain individual birds, and 
not at the flock as a whole. Far too many 
men hide well and wait until the proper 
moment, only to spring to their knees and 
blaze away at the whole flock, instead of 
carefully selecting a single bird. 
As a veteran in this sport of the uplands, 
who has killed, and missed, hundreds of 

By Geo. W. Fiske 
RECREATION 
ducks, I would say: Carefully select 
your bird, and never let go slam-bang at a 
flock merely because it looms large and 
looks easy. ‘To clean miss a large flock of 
ducks is much easier than some folks imag- 
ine, and only the man who marks and shoots 
at an individual flier can hope for anything 
approaching uniform success. ‘Therefore, 
pick your bird, and make it a leader, for 
shot takes time to travel fifty or sixty yards, 
and ducks are remarkably swift of wing. 
Make plenty of allowance for the leading 
bird, and if the rest choose to fly into it, 
why, well and good.’ I have picked the 
leader of a flock, have allowed him perhaps 
a foot of swing, kept the gun going till the 
second barrel had its say, then gathered— 
and that’s what talks in duck-shooting on 
the drylands. As the flocks come, pick your 
bird, and a leading bird, and maybe after 
the sport is over, you may have the pleasant 
task of picking several birds as the result 
of one shot, after the camp-fire has red- 
dened the dusk and unseen wings rip the 
blackness overhead. 
LAYING FOR THE FLIGHT 
