Oct. 22, 1891,1 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



^69 



lost a bird. Well, here we go! I have impi-ovisecl a peat 

 out of a cracker box, which I find very comfortable. 

 Push, push, push, and we move along.' Suddenly the 

 pusher cries, "There goes one!" and ttp goes the gun and 

 down goes the bird; "there goes another!" and down he 

 goes; ''there go two more!" Missed them clean. Then 

 we stop and gather in the dead birds. 



In the meantime Captain Proctor's gun is banging 

 away at a lively rate about half a mile away, and the 

 other two guns bang away too. It is fun and no mis- 

 take, especially when the tide is high and birds are plen- 

 tiful. 



The rail bird (or sora) is a queer little creature, and all 

 sorts of stories are told about him. It is said that it is 

 not known where he nests or where he comes from. In 

 fact the superstitious negroes insist that they are noth- 

 ing more than frogs, and point to the fact that before 

 the birds arrive the marshes are alive with frogs, which 

 disappear as soon as the sora arrives. We scarely saw a 

 frog in the whole seven days' shooting; and we certainly 

 succeeded in clearing out the sora, and there did not 

 seem to be any new arrivals from day to day. Captain 

 Proctor disputes this belief, and says that as soon as they 

 get a good storm there will be new arrivals. 



Well, after having our lunchon, we pushed on up the 

 marsh, till the receding waters warned us it was time to 

 ' 'get out," and turned our faces homeward. Upon count- 



a bushel or so in case he needed them to keep ahead of us. 

 He seemed to have a favorite place to find the birds, and 

 that was in the woods on the edge of the swamp. We 

 would see him, way off in the distance, standing up in his 

 boat, with a great cloud of smoke in the air, banging 

 away into the bushes, and we found sometimes that he 

 would bag 15 or 20 birds right out of the bushes in the 

 woods. As near as we coufd find out, when the shooting 

 be^an the birds began to fly to the woods, and, of course, 

 being rather green hands at sora shooting, it did not 

 occur to us to look for them anywhere excepting on the 

 marshes. 



We shot over the Bermuda Marsh three different tides, 

 and at the end of our seven days' hunt found we had 

 bagged a little under 1.200 birds. This is not considered 

 extra sport down in that section. 



There is a marsh located about two miles from the 

 mouth of the Appomatox Eiver which cannot be shot 

 over excepting on an equinoctial tide. It is covered with 

 quite a growth of an aquatic plant which bears a yellow 

 flower. It is not a grass, but a regular flowering plant, 

 and at ordinary tides stands too high above the water to 

 push a boat ovtr it. The sora bird lives under this thick 

 growth, and only the highest tides suffice to drive them 

 out of it. We succeeded in having our pushers get us a 

 short distance into this marsh, but no birds were to be 

 seen or flushed. The pusher would take his pushing pole 



doubled up with rheumatism, who walks or crawls about 

 with the assistance of two canes, and is known as Uncle 

 Joe. One day the old fellow was sloAvly making his way 

 through the village street, when along came a white 

 man, a very well-known character in that tewn, "half- 

 seas over." He was pretty nearly "as full as a goat," and 

 he happened to have his rifle with him, and a crack shot 

 he is, whether drunk or sober. As soon as he saw Uncle 

 Joe seated on the stump he siing out, "I say. Uncle Joe, 

 let me put a potato on top of your head and shoot it off. 

 I will give you 50 cents if I bust the potato or a dollar if 

 I kill ye." 



The old negro looked up and replied, "Do you say, boss, 

 you will give me 50 cents if you bust the potato or a dol- 

 lar if yer kill me?" 



"Yes," was the reply. 



"Well, den, go ahead, boss," said the old man. 



The potato was placed on the top of the old negro's 

 head, and the white man staggered off about thirty paces 

 and drew a bead. The smoke and fire shot from the rifle 

 and the potato spun high in the air. 



"Well, I'll be shoved!" said Jim, "I did do it, or I'm a 

 sojer!" 



He staggered up to Uncle Joe, fumbled around in two 

 or three of his pockets, fished out a half dollar and handed 

 it to him. 



The old man seemed very much surprised. It was a 



AMONG- THE WILDFOWL.— VII. 



RAFTiNtt Fowl — A Fkequest anp Tantalizing Experience. 



ing up, we found we had bagged altogether 208 birds. 



The next day we tried it again, but were not so success- 

 ful, until we struck a new piece of the marsh and there 

 the birds seemed unusually plentiful. In fact, we shot 

 until our guns were too hot to handle, and when we came 

 home we had about 260 head to the four guns. The next 

 <lay we concluded it would be a good thing to try the 

 Bermuda marsh, if the tide was high enough to permit us 

 to push over to the marsh. G. and M. tried their luck. 

 Capt. Proctor and Bob said it was too hot and they were 

 too lazy, so they stayed at home. 



In the evening, upon the return of G. and M., they re- 



Eorted the birds plentiful and had each bagged about 50 

 ead. 



As the tide served at 5 o'clock the next morning, Capt. 

 Proctor routed us out of bed at 3 A. M., and we started up 

 the river in a thick fog and not a breath of air. We had 

 nothing to shape our course by excepting the moon, 

 which shone brightly. 



After pulling for about an hour, a dark object appeared 

 before us, which proved to be a lot of lily pads which 

 were on the edge of the Bermuda marsh, and we then 

 found ourselves just where we wanted to be. As soon as 

 it was daylight, it seemed as if the marsh was alive with 

 birds^ they were coming up singly and in twos and threes 

 from every direction, and it certainly was the keenest 

 Tiind of sport. Captain Proctor is an old hand at sora 

 shooting and he seemed to understand the art of getting 

 where the birds were, and thus beat his Northern friends' 

 score completely. It really did us good to see how much 

 he enjoyed "beating the score of those fellows and their 

 $350 guns with his old plug of a flO shooter," as he ex- 

 pressed it. 



He seemed to laugh and enjoy it so much that we 

 really did not want to overstep his score, and we there- 

 fore let burds go by for fear we would beat him. He 

 killed 60 many birds that we asserted that he had un- 

 doubtedly stored away in a safe plaQe in the swamp half 



and bang it into the marsh, and you could hear dozens of 

 birds squawking from every direction. When the equi- 

 noctial tides occur the sport on this marsh is superb. 

 Last year Capt. Proctor bagged 176 at one tide, and could 

 have killed twice as many had not his ammunition given 

 out. 



All of these marshes are posted and protected and it 

 was only through the kindness of our good friend Cap- 

 tain Proctor that permission was secured to enable us to 

 shoot over them. We were informed that there were 

 quite a number of gunners from Petersburg who had re- 

 cently poached there and that four of them had been 

 arrested. 



A' the end of the seventh day, there having been no 

 equinoctial storm and no tides good for anything, the 

 terrible heat still continuing, we decided to break camp 

 and start for home. Bob took with him a box containing 

 138 sora, packed in ice, which by repacking en route he 

 succeeded in getting home in good condition. We all 

 voted that our hunt was a success and that we would try 

 it again providing we could succeed in getting permission 

 to shoot on the marshes. 



There is very good duck shooting on the James River 

 during the winter months, canvasback and broadbills in 

 the winter and mallard and teal in early autumn. The 

 laws of Virginia are so very strict against non-residents 

 that unless one has friends who own the marshes, there 

 is prettv sure to be trouble if one attempts to hunt on the 

 James River. Pot-hunters are especially abhorred by all 

 of the gentlemen owning plantations along the river, and 

 they are very summarily dealt with if they attempt to 

 hunt the ducks. 



Before I end this yarn I think I will tell a story. We 

 always used to tell stories, and sometimes a good many of 

 them, every night after we got home from our day's 

 shooting. There is a negro man at City Point so old that 

 nobody knows how old he is — one of those old knock- 

 kneed negroes about lOO years old, all twisted up and 



long time since he had seen so much money. He looked 

 at it lovingly, bit it, turned it over, looked up to Jim, and 

 said, "Well, boss, I'se sorry I did not git de dollar." 



ROBT. C. LOWKY. 



St. Louis Notes.— The Sunday exodus of hoodlum 

 hunters from this city into St. Louis county has become 

 such a nuisance to the farmers that the latter have organ- 

 ized, and with the assistance of the sherifiF and his depu- 

 ties, propose to put a stop to the disgraceful acts of these 

 so-called sportsmen. Seventy-five special deputies have 

 been appointed who have been ordered to arrest all per- 

 sons found shooting on Sundays. Last Sunday, at the 

 stations on the Missouri Pacific and Frisco roads, the 

 shooters were met by the ofi&cers and warned not to shoot 

 nor commit any trespass. These hoodlum hunters have 

 been in the habit of shooting everything they came 

 across even to the poultry of the farmers. Cattle, 

 horses and hogs have been shot by these Sunday hun- 

 ters, but now they will have to stop. In showing the 

 need of a later date for the opening of the quail season it 

 is only necessary to visit Union Market and see the large 

 number of baby quail exposed for sale. Commission men 

 have had to send out notices warning shippers not to send 

 in these small birds, as they could not be profitably 

 handled. The extremely low water in the Mississippi 

 River has left thousands of game fish to die in the dried 

 up pools and sloughs where the fish went when the water 

 was higher. — Aberdeen. 



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