Feb. 7, 1884.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



27 



lag mjd 



ONLY A BRACE. 



ONLY a brace, but as I strayed homeward in the late 

 afternoon of that glorious October day, with the mottled 

 beauties sleeping side by side in the net' work of my game 

 bag, I was happy, supremely happy. I had been out since 

 morning, tramping across the crisp stubble and along the 

 edges of the likeliest, grouse covers. My dog, a small field 

 spaniel, was now content to trot soberly at my heels, tired 

 with bis long day's work. He had done splendidly, _ and 1 

 could not forbear every now and then stoopingto pat his head 

 and speak a word of "well-earned praise. We had found the 

 i ce— very scarce— anrfyet a jolly day we had had, 

 Cruso and I. We felt as though we had made the best of 

 our opportunities, and if the bag had been ten times as heavy 

 it couldn't have given us more pleasure than we had in se- 

 minii; that handsome brace, that filled the netting so nicely. 



We had seen— let me see— five birds; seen, mind you, not 

 i wo of them were quite out of range. The first was 

 in a little nanow swale, that lay in half-moon shape, in the 

 center of a field between two larger pieces of cover. The 

 swale was thickly grown with young poplars and blackberry 

 bushes, and 1 knew in my bones, as I drew near, that there 

 must be a grouse lurking there. Steady, Cruso ! There, now 

 you may go. Hide cock! I raised the hammers of my gun, 

 and stood near the inner curve of the swale, alert, with 

 nerves a-linglc, while my spaniel worked the cover. I could 

 hear his feet pattering in the leaves. He pissed me, then 

 suddenly caught scent. Through a little opening I could 

 see him 'nosing the cool ground, his tail vibrating at a furious 

 -ate. Now— now be ready! Quit, quit, quit— whirr \ The 

 .loble grouse rose within six rods of where 1 stood, and 

 lashed out of the cover at whirlwind speed, bound for the 

 patch of woods to the east. Bang! a miss, by all that's exe- 

 irable! Bang! She swerved a little, but it was too far away 

 :or that second shot to take effect, I guess. Wonder if I hit 

 lcr at all? Steady, Cruso— down! It was too bad. old fel- 

 ow, wasn't it? But you must ramember I haven't got my 

 "»mnd in yet. It's been more than six months since I drew 

 rigger on the hurtling grouse. There, now; we'll cross 

 jver and see if we can't put up that bird again. Steady! 



I dropped a couple of shells into my gun, and Cruso and 

 [ hastened across the field to the opposite cover. Now, old 

 Lioy, be sure you work around her and drive her this way. 

 Cruso's eye sparkled with a gleam of intelligence and away 

 he went. 1 have never seen but one dog who knew how to 

 literally circumvent a grouse, and that dog is Cruso. He 

 will do it three times out. of four, and drive it out just where 

 you want it, This time he ran for about twenty rods down 

 the edge of the cover and then plunged in. I knew he 

 would work back my way and stood in readiness. He had 

 not been in the cover a minute when I heard the palpitating 

 whirr of wings — coming, sure, as you live — coming right 

 toward me. See! a gray gleam among the leaves, and in 

 another instant the bird breaks cover close to me. I can see 

 the frightened and yet saucy gleam of its eye, and the ruff 

 of feathers angrily raised around the neck. Oh, my pretty 

 lady, you are vexed at our persistent attentions, aren't 

 you? Now to retrieve our fortune. Steady, nerves! steady, 

 eye! The brown barrels spring to a level with the shoulder; 

 a quick glance along the rib, with both eyes fastened on the 

 pert head of the rapidly flying bird. Now is the auspicious 

 moment. Intuition flashes along the nerves and gives the 

 electric signal. Bang! The bird turns in air, hurtles down 

 upon the stubble and bounds twice from the ground with 

 the strong momentum of its flight. A little cloud of feathers 

 floats behind to mark where the fatal shot took effect. Cruso 

 comes leaping out of the cover, his long ears flying about 

 his head and his eyes shining with excitement. Yes, old 

 fellow, you shall taste feathers. Dead bnxU-fetch. Isn't 

 that, a pretty picture, now? The little brown spaniel, with 

 his head raised in air, stepping so daintily and proudly with 

 the glorious grouse dangling from his mouth. 1 would give 

 something to have a magic frame about that picture which 

 would keep it so forever. Drop, Cruso ! that was nicely 

 done. There, now, steady! The bird is bagged and we 

 will turn our attention to the pleasure in store.- 



Nor more buds in the larger cover. It's a fine place, but 

 they have been scattered by boys, and wc will have to keep 

 on to fresh fields and pastures new. 



We crossed the old abandoned railroad track, and skirted 

 a thick pine and hemlock cover for some distance; but, 

 although the spaniel worked every rod of ground, we did not 

 find a bud. It was too early for them to have sought the 

 thick woods. Further on lay a sort of tamarack and alder 

 swamp— a capital place in times past — and calling the dog to 

 heel, I made my way to it across the fields. It was now 

 approaching high noon, and as I knew of a nice cool brook 

 near the other edge of the swamp, I determined to work 

 arouud first on the lower side of the cover, and then stop for 

 lunch when I reached the brook. When out with my 

 spaniel I make it a point never to enter a cover unless I am 

 obliged to, as the dog is trained to work the brush for me 

 and bring the birds within shot. This I believe to be the 

 only proper and legitimate way of using spaniels for grouse, 

 They should be used as flushers, never as treers. 



I had hardly reached the edge of the cover when Cruso 

 scented game. I stood in readiness to shoot, expecting every 

 moment to see a grouse swiftly dashing over the alders, and 

 so intent was 1 listening for the whirr of the rapid wings, 

 that I suffered a fine plump woodcock to get up and twitter- 

 out of sight in the deep thicket without pulling on him. 

 Just as he disappeared I recovered from my surprise suffi- 

 ciently to fire, but as Cruso did not make game where I saw 

 him last, I concluded that I had missed, and called the dog 

 to heel. A few rods further on I sent him into the cover 

 again and waited. Whirr — whirr — whirr-r-r. I declare! a 

 "whole flock of young birds — four of them. Not a very large 

 flock, to be sure, but fully as large as are the majority of" 

 them, a month after the opening of the season, in this vicin- 

 ity. Two of them were within easy range; the other two 

 flew deeper into the swamp. Why didn't I shoot? inquired 

 Cruso, as plainly as eyes could speak, as he 'came dashing 

 out in the wake of the two birds he had driven toward me, 

 and mounted the low fence to see where they had gone to. 

 Yes, why didn't I shoot, old boy? — that's the question. 

 Guess it was because you surprised me so by driving tw T o 

 birds at once out of that cover, a thing that doesn't happen 

 very often in this part of the country. However, we'll look 

 them up; come along. 



But it was more of a job to find those birds than I had 

 expected. I saw them dive back into the swamp, and sent 

 the dog in near the place where I thought they must be 



lying, but no grouse could be found. Then I ventured in 

 myself and looked the ground over carefully, but they were 

 still missing. Finally I came to the conclusion that they 

 must have joined their companions in the deeper part of the 

 swamp, where there was a thick clump of young evergreens, 

 and in some of these young trees I was confident they must 

 be hiding. I resolved to keep on to the brook, eat my 

 luncheon,' take a little rest, and then look for them again. 

 Perhaps they would be back on the ground by that time. 



After lunch I went into the heart of the swamp and looked 

 around for a long while— nearly two hours— but not a bird 

 could I find. This was discouraging, besides being a kind 

 of work to which I was not used, and did not like. So 1 

 called Cruso out, and we took another rest by the brook. 

 The sun was beginning to slide down the last curving slope 

 of blue sky, and my watch informed me that it was high 

 time to start for home. Still, I was unwilling to go without 

 at least one more sight at those modest and retiring birds. 



I went back to the edge of the swamp where Ihad first 

 started them, and sent the dog in. Ha! he has one of the 

 recreants up! See! It dips down in that little clump of pines 

 in the very neck of the swamp, just out of range, I called 

 the dog to heel, and slowly crept into the swamp. There 

 was a little open space between me and the clump of pines, 

 and when I reached this I stood still, i.nd gave the word to 

 Cruso. He understoood me, and, making a wide detour, 

 entered the cover from the opposite side. There was a sup- 

 pressed bark of excitement, a- whirring of wings, and the 

 grouse came sailing out into the open space. When she saw 

 me she made a quick turn to the right, but I caught her 

 flight in a moment, and holding well on, pulled trigger. 

 The smoke hid the bird from mo, but immediately afterward 

 I heard a thump in the grass, and then the rapid throbbing 

 of wings which announces a fatal shot. Cruso comes bound- 

 ing through the grass, and claims his usual privilege of re- 

 trieving the warm bird. Thanks, old fellow! I should never 

 have got her if it hadn't been for your help. Now we will 

 consider our day's sport finished , and start for home. The 

 bag is not heavy, but it is worth its weight in gold. We 

 have earned* what we have fairly, and that, after all, is the 

 sum of a true sportsman's delight. Paul Past no k. 



WITH THE DUCKS ON DELTA BAR. 



H^xiKING the ducking season through, it is doubtful if there 

 ! is a place anywhere that the sportsman is more uni- 

 formly and generously rewarded than right here iu the 

 harbor of Vicksburg. Since 1876, when the river cut through 

 the tongue of Louisiana that projected, a narrow peninsula . 

 in front of the city and away to the north of it, the lake left 

 by this action has been gradually filling up with mud till, 

 immediately in front of the former landing, in the dry sea- 

 son, there is no water whatever, and pedestrians can cross 

 the original bed of the river on foot dry shod. Just at the 

 foot of the little island left by this cut off the willows, iu 

 some places, have already grown to the height of twenty 

 feet, and it will be but a short time before the entire old 

 channel, next to the city, will be simply an almost impene- 

 trable, willow thicket. During the past summer quite a sum 

 of money was expended by authority of the Government m 

 dredging with a view to opening up a canal from the city 

 front to a point where the main river now strikes the shore, 

 a distance of about a mile. : It was fouud some time after 

 the work had been in progress that the sediment which had 

 been deposited to the depth of over eighty feet in less than 

 seven years, was not much thicker, if any,, than molasses in 

 winter time, and that it ran in and assumed a level as fast as 

 the dredging machine took it out. So this experiment was 

 discontinued. 



In the upper mouth of the lake the deposit has not been 

 so great, so that even when the lower mouth is dry the 

 larger boats can still enter the lake and steam around to the 

 old city landing. In the fall, however, the river is gener- 

 ally so low that no boats come in at all, the wharf boat hav- 

 ing been moored at the new landing below. Within the 

 last four years the point on the Louisiana shore has been 

 sheathed with mattrasses, which have stopped the caving, 

 and thus prevented the current on the Mississippi side strik- 

 ing the shore further from the city. All around the lake are 

 bars and mud flats and coves running up into the willows, 

 and during the season of low 7 water, in summer, these be- 

 come covered with a rank grass, prolific in seed, which seems 

 to tickle the palate of the ducks, and especially the gamy 

 little teal. Ordinarily about the time the ducks begin to 

 come down from the North the river begins to rise and the 

 water to cover these grass plats and to float the seeds that, 

 in some places, nearly cover the ground. The ducks at once 

 flock to those localities in great numbers and furnish excel- 

 lent sport to the hunter. My brother and I, who have been 

 shooting here in the harbor for the last five years, have made 

 it a rule to keep an accurate record of the stages of water 

 when it reaches the various places mentioned, and by that 

 means, by keeping our eyes on the gauge, we can always 

 know when to pull out for any particular point, with our de- 

 coys and other paraphernalia. The ducks seem to learn 

 when and where to go for food by intuition, for almost the 

 very moment the water pushes upon a new territory covered 

 by grass seeds, they put in an appearance at that point, 

 although but a short while before not a single one could be 

 seen in that vicinity. It is a knowTedge of these facts, and 

 by acting upon it, that have brought to my brother and my- 

 self what our friends here are pleased to term good luck. 

 Our scores this winter have been exceptionally fine. 



During the holidays and for the first ten days in January, 

 the ducks were unusually abundant just iu front of the city 

 and within rifle shot of the elevator at the landing. They 

 were mostly teal, with an occasional sprigtail and, at rare 

 intervals, a mallard. One day my nephew and I picked up 

 a pair of canvas-backs. It was a common thing for a couple 

 of fair shots to bag from 40 to 50 ducks in half a day. On 

 the day after Christmas this nephew and I bagged 75 by 11 

 o'clock. The next afternoon Mr. E. H. Raworth and 1 

 picked up 65 from the same blind. Other parties did nearly 

 as well. This constant, hammering did not seem to drive the 

 ducks away. When a volley was fired at them they would 

 whisk briskly away to dab clown among or sail in the vicin- 

 ity of another batch of decoys. But finally the river rose, 

 pushed out into the fields and the swamps, covering new and 

 prolific territory, and the disturbed fowls hied themselves 

 thither and for a time at least were comparatively secure. 

 But then came the severe cold wave early in the month, and 

 freezing up the ponds and lakes and all still water inland, 

 drove the ducks to open water, and sent millions further 

 south. This state of affairs lasted so long that the larger 

 ducks especially found it a difficult matter to secure their 

 accustomed food. They evidently became demoralized, for 

 they alighted in the oddest of places, in open and barren 



fields, on the public highways, along the most insignificant 

 branches and on the ground in the woods. Of course, dur- 

 ing this period, they became an easy prey to the most clumsy 

 darky with Iris old muazlcloader, and the market was glutted 

 with them and the price of them nearly reached zero. When, 

 however, the weather moderated, the thaw came and the ice 

 disappeared, the river having kept on rising, the ducks 

 sought the heart of the swamps to quack and quack and 

 stuff themselves with acorns to their heart's content without 

 much danger of molestation. 



On the 8th day of January, one of the coldest of the sea- 

 son, when a stiff wind blew'from the north and the earth 

 was hard frozen, and the, trees were groaning from their 

 solid coating of ice resulting from the big sleet of the day 

 before, my brother "boned" me to go a-duckiug with him 

 down on' Delta Bar. This bar is the point of Louisiana 

 southwest of the city, and to reach it one has to row out of 

 the lake and then across the broad, swift current of the 

 river. Then to reach the ducking ground at the stage of 

 the river then existing it was necessary to row down around 

 the bar to the old main shore and pulfup through the switch 

 willows b.ack toward the city, where open water could be 

 found near taller willows in which to run the skiff as a par- 

 tial blind. The entire, distance is something over five miles. 

 When the proposition was made to me to take a hunt under- 

 such circumstances, I declined it in a very peremptory man- 

 ner, whereupon I was twitted with being a "parlor hunter," 

 and had fun poked at me because, being a Nebraska man, I 

 could not. brave a Mississippi day. My brother, after hunt- 

 ing among our sportsmen for some one to accompany him, 

 and finding all of them of my way of thinking, declared he 

 would go alone. I had never let him do this and would not 

 let him do it on this occasion. 



So we came out home and put on our hunting gear. As 

 we walked down the street on our way to the fish dock, 

 where we keep our skiff, the decoys and other things, the 

 few people whom we met stared at us as though we were a 

 pair of escaped lunatics. The idea that two sane men would 

 venture out in such cold and stormy weather for sport 

 seemed to stagger them. But for all that we got to the. dock, 

 cleaned the ice out the skiff, thawed out the row-locks with 

 hot water, loaded up and strtck out about noon, the only 

 difficulty wc had being at the start in keeping our hands 

 warm. Later we did not even experience thrs trouble. 



As w T e passed down around the edge of the bar, where the 

 water had reached the little willows, we frightened tip great 

 flocks of ducks, and we could see them in the air all over 

 the territory just being submerged. When we came to the 

 lower end of the bar and started up toward the upper part 

 of it w'e discovered that it was entirely covered by mush ice, 

 through which it was very difficult to propel our skiff. So 

 stiff and unyielding was this ice that as the willow's were 

 bent aside by the passing boat they remained in that position 

 to plainly mark our path. About half a mile from the open 

 river we came upon an open spot, a sort of nook surrounded 

 by larger willows. Here we put out our four dozen mallard 

 and teal decoys, by setting them in the slush ice. It was a, 

 very tedious and laborious task to turu or move the skiff 

 about, and we avoided doing this as much as possible by set- 

 ting a decoy on the blade of a loug oar and then placing it 

 as far from us as we could reach. In this way we were en- 

 abled to make a pretty fair display without much moving of 

 the skiff. 



After the decoys were all placed wc worked the skiff a few 

 yards into a point of willows near by, which was a hard and 

 disagreeable job. The ice had to be broken wherever we 

 moved, and the willows being coated thickly with sleet from 

 bottom to top were not a pleasant thing to tackle. We were 

 poorly concealed if, indeed, it could be said we were con- 

 cealed at all, and the willows, standing between us and the 

 decoys, made lire shooting quite difficult and uncertaiu. But 

 for all that the ducks decoyed reasonably w T ell; for we soon 

 had some twenty or thirty lying about on the ice. Then they 

 began to flare up out of range as they came in. On viewing 

 the field we came to the conclusion that the dead ducks lying 

 on their backs and the many bloody pools where their car- 

 casses lay, frightened the others and" kept tkcin- from coming 

 within range. So we determined to go out and retrieve 

 those we had already killed. This proved hard work, and 

 we broke one oar working our way through the ice. While 

 we were out some hunters got up clouds of ducks around 

 the outside of the bar, all of w r hich were lost to us, of course, 

 as our exposed position prevented their comiDg near us. 

 There were some of our ducks that had fallen on ice too 

 thick for us to work through, and others so far away that 

 we did not think it would pay to go after them. So after 

 picking up between twenty and thirty, we went back into 

 the willows, having been out about an hour. 



This time we shot till the stars came out. It had been 

 very cold all the afternoon, and we became a ware that as the 

 day advanced it was growing colder still, and at the eleventh 

 hour w T e began to fear we might be frozen in so tightly as 

 not to be able to get out to open water at all. We found on 

 leaving our position and going out that the ice had become 

 much more compact and that even where the skiff had made 

 its way when we first retrieved it had frozen tight again and 

 had to be brokeu as before. We succeeded in picking up all 

 the decoys and the larger number of dead ducks, after work- 

 iug till the perspiration ran down our faces, when we started 

 to work our way to the river. My brother sat at the oars 

 while I kneeled on the bow of the boat and broke a road, in 

 front of us. 



At the end of an hour, just as we were nearing the end of 

 our labors in the ice, I broke another oar smack rn two, and 

 my brother split nearly half the blade off one of his, thus 

 leaving us with but one oar and a piece with which to make 

 our Jong journey home. But after getting through the 

 willows and into the open river we did not find the breaking 

 of these oars as great a calamity as we at first imagined. I 

 used the sound oar on one side at the forward rowlock, and 

 my brother, who is much the stronger man, used the crippled 

 one on the other side aft, In this way we worked our w r ay 

 around the bar, then up the bar toward the Delta light, so 

 as to be well up the river before attempting a crossing, then 

 across the main channel and finally up the lake to the ele- 

 vator, where our fish dock was moored. 



It was after 9 o'clock and we were nearly exhausted. My 

 coat, upon which I had kneeled while breaking ice, and 

 which had gotten very wet from the splashing, was frozen 

 so stiff it had to be thawed out before I could put it on. 

 Everything else was coated with ice, though we were as 

 warm as a day in midsummer. Our ducks counted out 

 sixty-four, all teal, except a few old shovelers and one or 

 two sprigs. These were left at the dock to be sent for next 

 morning, and we trudged out homo in as light gear as pos- 

 sible, reaching there a few moments before 10 o'clock to find 

 the folks had begun to grow very uneasy about us. On look- 



