THE ADMIRABLE ISHMAELITES 



A Day with a Californian and His Dog, Hunting Shore 

 Birds with a Twenty-Gauge Gun 



BY HARRY H. DUNN 



HE coast line of the 

 southwestern portion of 

 the United States, from 

 Monterey on the north 

 ] to the lower California 

 line on the south, is for 

 the main part a smooth 

 stretch of sandy beach; 

 There are few bays, few river mouths, 

 practically no inshore islands, such as dot 

 the South Atlantic coast, and only here and 

 there a black mud flat, turning its tide- 

 stripped inkiness to the sun or to the moon 

 of such nights as round out only Southern 

 California days. 



For this reason, if for no other, one might 

 well consider this the poorest of ranges for 

 shore-birds and ducks. On the contrary, 

 especially with the coming of many wealthy 

 sportsmen to spend their winters here, far 

 from the rigorous East, many artificial 

 ponds have been made by the numerous 

 clubs that have sprung up in a single season, 

 as it were. To these the constant shooting 

 of the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic 

 Coast clubs has driven an unprecedented 

 flight of water-fowl both during the winter 

 and spring migrations. 



But it is not of the ducks and the geese 

 and the occasional swan that I would write, 

 but rather of that horde of long-legged, 

 slender-billed birds that, drifting down on 

 the wings of the north wind, make of all our 

 barren stretches of sea beach scenes of life 

 and beauty to the sportsmen from October 

 first to March and April. All pictures of 

 golden sandbars sloping slowly to the sea, 

 all mist-embowered, spray-bound rocks, 

 'gainst whose changeless sides the surf 

 forever roars, are to me incomplete unless 

 over their flat floor wanders some members 

 of the stilt or the curlew or the sandpiper 

 tribe; incomplete unless on the scarred 



crowns of the rocks a sleeping gannet or a 

 cormorant or a surf duck rests. 



But to me and to my dog, who knows a 

 great deal more about shore-bird vagaries 

 than I can ever hope to know, there is no 

 sport like some that we have had with the 

 little twenty-gauge along the shore at old 

 Ballona and Alamitos and on the " island" 

 at Newport. Those of you who have shot 

 over Southern California will know all these 

 places; to some of you they will be very 

 dear; to me and to my dog they are more 

 than dear, for they spell the word home. 

 No low-lying meadow was ever too damp 

 for me, if over it sounded the shrill "scaip, 

 scaip" of the jacksnipe; no wind-swept 

 stretch of sandhills too cold if over it blew 

 on the wings of the winter's breath flock 

 after flock of long-legs and curlew and sand- 

 pipers. And as for my aforesaid dog, he 

 would far rather shiver and whine from 

 very cold up and down the beach than lie 

 at ease on the hearthrug — provided he can 

 pick up an occasional sandpiper. On such 

 winter days, when the little twenty speaks 

 and no bird falls, he looks reproachfully at 

 me as much as to say, " What did you bring 

 me out here for?" 



One afternoon we slipped out of the city 

 on the electric and left the car a couple of 

 miles above the King's Beach — Playa del 

 Rey. Most of the beach lines object to 

 carrying dogs, but this fellow sits on my lap 

 so quietly and looks so well at the conductor 

 that he usually goes through without com- 

 ment. The place where we got off was a bit 

 of narrow roadbed, close bordered on either 

 side of the right of way with the wire fences 

 of two duck clubs. Now, my dog and I do 

 not belong to any duck club, nor to any other 

 hunting organizations; we have always 

 considered ourselves Ishmaelites, both be- 

 cause we don't have the price and because 



