him down to skulk helplessly amid the cattails until a mink found Mm fi- 

 nally. We're not oruel, out -we are most damnably thoughtless. The people 

 who write the advertisements do the wildfowl and the sport of wildfowling 

 a great ill service by suggesting that anyone can kill ducks at 65 or 70 

 yards if he has a pocket full of long range cartridges. It can "be don© 

 with a good gun and a good man to point it, but the skill required doesn't 

 come in the box with the cartridges. It can only be attained with much 

 practice. I don't believe anyone should be allowed or encouraged to prac- 

 tice on live wild creatures when it means that for eaoh one killed and b'a'g- 

 ged and counted in the legal limit others will be left to die in misery and 

 terror* 



"To my mind the expert wildfowler and exemplary sportsman is he who 

 waits until his birds are well in range, so that if one is crippled a quick 

 second barrel will wipe out the worst consequences of the blunder* • • • 



"It happens occasionally in upland shooting that a bird is hit too 

 hard and messed up and mangled so as to be unfit for the table. It is a 

 rare occurrence in wildfowling, however, and the circumstance surely in- 

 dicates that whatever the improvements are in arms and ammunition for 

 goose and duck shooting they may be more sensibly and humanely used to 

 kill birds that are well in range than in ways that only serve to extend 

 the crippling distance. 



"It is argued that the regulations forbidding the use of bait and live 

 deooys makes it necessary for the gunner to shoot at long-range birds, be- 

 cause without those attractions to draw them the ducks will not come into 

 the blind. Undoubtedly there is much truth in the claim that the birds do 

 not decoy as well to a baitless stand and wooden blocks as they do to a 

 heap of corn and live decoys, but the issue should not be confused. One 

 concerns a shooting regulation intended to reduce the total number of birds 

 killed so that the annual production will be in excess of the number taken* 

 The other concerns a question of individual conduct and the responsibility 

 eaoh one of us has to decide whether, in the pursuit of sport, he is justi- 

 fied in shooting down many birds that will be lost and wasted for the sake 

 of getting a few. After all, there is no law compelling a man to shoot 

 ducks* 



"Only a few days ago I heard a professional guide urging his paying 

 guest to try the high birds that were coming 70 yards over the blind. 

 The blind itself was built into the edge of an impenetrable tangle of 

 rushes, water brush, and cattails which made the recovery of a crippled 

 bird practically impossible. 



"•Might as well shoot at 'em,* said the guide. 'The season will be 

 over in a couple of days, so it won't make no difference any way, and 

 you've got plenty of long— range cartridges.' 



"A good part of the guide's annual income depended upon his duck 

 blinds j the duck blinds would be useless unless maximum numbers of wild- 

 fowl came to that area year after years yet the man saw only that with 



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