314 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[April 14, 1894. 



IN DIXIE LAND.-VI. 



[From a Staff Correspondent.] 

 After Canvasback. 

 In the account of a Southern trip near Galveston last win- 

 ter I spoke of the excellent snipe shooting we had. Dick 

 Merrill and I hoped to find the jack snipe iD plenty about 

 Rockport, and usually one can do so. The present season 

 was so extremely dry, however, that the coast marsh was 

 quite dried up. *So extreme was this drouth in the south- 

 western part of the State that crops were failures. In 

 Starr county much of the range stock perished and the 

 people were in want. At Paisano, Texas, the summer 

 drouth and the cold northers of the winter combined 

 caused the people to issue a public call for aid, to which 

 Corpus Christi responded nobly. The water courses and 

 lagoons of a large section of the country were utterly 

 dried up. It is to be supposed, therefore, that the pres- 

 ent was hardly a fair season to judge of the snipe shoot- 

 ing, the marsh duck shooting or even the quail shooting 

 of that part of the State. Under the circumstances Dick 

 and I concluded not to try for quail or snipe, but to stick 

 to the deep-water duck shooting. Moreover, we wanted 

 something even better than the fine redhead shooting. 

 Nothing but canvasback would do us. So one day we 

 went aboard the Novice and started for Puerto Bay, some 

 twenty miles or more distant from Rockport, where our 

 guides told us there were a great many canvasback, and 

 where they had been less disturbed than at Hines Bay, 

 still further east along the coast, at which latter bay most 

 of the heavy market-shooting had been done, until the 

 drop in the market made it profitless to kill the ducks for 

 shipment. 



"There is celery in the Hines Bay," said Johnnie, "and 

 there isn't any in the Puerto Bay. Hines Bay is very 

 shallow, and it is hard to get in there with a sailing boat. 

 We can get part way into the Puerto Bay with our boat. 

 There is no place to stop at Hines Bay nor at the Puerto 

 Bay either, unless Mr. Kemp will take you in." (We had 

 letters to Mr. Kemp, who lives on the shore of Puerto 

 Bay, but never found opportunity to present them.) 



It was noon when we got out of Rockport, and the air 

 was so light and baffling that it was sundown when we 

 got around the horn of the long and beautiful Live Oak 

 peninsula around which we had to double. We crawled 

 on in the dark, the boys following the tortuous channel 

 among the shoals and keys by instinct. Once we went 

 hard and fast aground on a reef in the dark, and it took 

 us an hour to kedge off, but finally we made our way into 

 the wide waters of the Puerto Bay, dropped anchor, 

 cooked a rattling good supper on the gasoline range in the 

 cabin, and slept soundly till early dawn. 



Plenty of Birds. 



In the night a stiff wind came up and it was much 

 colder than on the day before. The face of the bay was 

 covered with white-tipped waves, enough to make a man 

 look twice at a sink box. Johnnie and Jimmie said it 

 was all right, though. After breakfast our two parties took 

 a skiff and a sinkbox apiece and pulled out for the head 

 of the bay with the wind directly astern. The boxes 

 towed all right, and the wind helped us so kindly that we 

 made two or three miles over the rough water almost be- 

 fore we knew it. 



Johnnie and I were ahead, and as we went we could see 

 great bodies of ducks on all sides of us, floating out in the 

 open. Most of these were redheads, with some bluebills 

 (dos-gres). We saw a few canvas flying about. Atlengtth, 

 as we passed the mouth of a shallow side bay, we saw a 

 great body of birds whose white backs were so apparent, 

 that we looked twice at them. Once in a while one would 

 sit up on his tail in the water and shake himself; also, we 

 could see how high and straight they held up their heads. 

 There was no doubt of it, it was a raft of those rare and 

 much prized birds, the canvasback ducks. There were 

 acres and acres of them, bobbing around and feeding in 

 a great long line. We thought there were probably 2,000 

 at least in that one body, and more were continually 

 dropping in. 



Dick and Jimmie were about half a mile back of us, and 

 at length we saw that they had located the same body of 

 birds. We decided to pass on and let Dick have that lot, 

 as he had had poor shooting on the Shellbanks trip. 

 Presently we saw them put up the birds, put out their de- 

 coys and get in position. "Yes, and he'll kill 50 canvas 

 in there before noon," said Johnnie, "if the birds begin to 

 work at all." 



Johnnie and I kept on further toward the head of the 

 bay, passing innumerable brush blinds which had been 

 made by the market-shooters out in the open water. The 

 great bulk of the birds put up by Dick had left the bay 

 and gone out inshore. 



"There's a big dam and a tank of fresh water up at the 

 head of this bay, on the Fulton Ranch," said Johnnie, 

 "that's what they call the 'port,' or 'puerta' of this bay. 

 Some call this 'Purdy Bay,' meaning Puerta Bay. The 

 ducks go over to that fresh water once a day, and if a 

 fellow had decoys and cover there, he might get shooting, 

 though they come in high, and mostly at night when 

 they are disturbed a good deal. A canvasback duck is 

 going to have fresh water once a day, somewhere or 

 other. Those birds '11 come back from there pretty soon, 

 and they'll come in here high If they go back to the bay 

 where we put them out, your friend will have good shoot- 

 ing. We may get a few down in here. Anyhow, we'll 

 put out and try it." 



So we did put out, and Johnnie left me tied to a stake, 

 out in the middle of the ocean, with the. wind getting 

 higher, and the waves growing whiter, and the pitch of 

 the rolling sinkbox so sharp that I wouldn't have sworn 

 I could have hit my decoys with a rest. 



Decided a Question. 

 I was square in the course of the incoming flight, but 

 the birds would not decoy. Canvas and redheads crossed 

 over me, but said only "ha-ha!" chucklingly as they 

 passed. It was a perfect duck day, but the ducks 

 wouldn't do their share. They went on by and massed 

 up in great bodies on the other side of the bay. Dick's 

 gun spoke back of me only rarely. Johnnie's blind showed 

 only an occasional puff of smoke. In despair I began to 

 shoot bluebills, and every time I unhitched and went out 

 after a dead bird I had ten minutes of fight trying to get 

 back against the wind to the vague spot where my wooden 

 anchor was awash. Only one canvasback came into me. 

 a solitary, desolate old hen which conceived an affection 

 for my decoys. Flickering up and down the water with 



uneven wing along the water, she evidently meant busi- 

 ness. I lay low, and she lit among the decoys. With a 

 slow, careful motion, I got a bead on her long, snaky neck, 

 which she raised to its full limit as I sat up. Then I joy- 

 fully swatted her as she sat, and taking no chances, 

 swatted her again, for I thought maybe she moved a leg 

 after the first time. Then once more I rode the sidling 

 sea-horse of a sneakbox out, and picked up a very dead 

 canvasback. I was in no mood for foolishness. The 

 question whether it is even right to shoot a duck on the 

 water may now be considered as settled. It is right, when 

 it's a canvasback, and they're working as badly as they 

 were that morning. 



November the Best Month. 



Johnnie and I now laboriously pulled baok against the 

 wind to where Dick and Jimmie were located. We found 

 them complaining bitterly and with only half a dozen 

 canvasbacks in their boats. They said the birds had all 

 gone across the bay and banked up in great rafts, not 

 working at all. 



"That's the trouble," said Johnnie, "it's too late in the 

 season for good canvas shooting now, unless you hit a 

 very hard norther. The birds have been shot at so much 

 by this time that they are educated. This whole bay is 

 full of feed, and if you put them up out of one cove they 

 just go over and light in another one as good. 



"You may think it odd," he continued, "but the best 

 time to get canvas shooting here is from Nov. 16 on for 

 thirty days, just about when you are having your shoot- 

 ing in the North. It doesn't take the birds long to cross 

 the country clear down to this place. When they first 

 come in they are not wild and will work to the decoys 

 nicely. Very heavy bags are then made here and at 

 Hines Bay on canvasback. I have known of one gun 

 killing 167. Jimmie and I have between us killed some 

 pretty good bags in this bay, 60 to 100 a day. 



"The total number of canvas shipped out of Rockport 

 every winter is very large. Over 50,000 were shipped 

 last winter in less than two months. I suppose there 

 were 30 or 40 market-shooters shipping then. This season 

 there was no price at all for birds, and the shooters all 

 quit shooting. One man told me he shipped 430 canvas- 

 backs to New York at one time this winter, and he only 

 netted $5 above the ice and express. Of course he quit 

 shooting. Nelson, of Galveston, one of the best market- 

 shooters there, came over here to shoot, because their best 

 water was closed up there, but he's gone back home now. 

 I think Nelson is the best duck shot that ever shot here. 

 He made the big bag I have told you about, 167 in one 

 day." 



While we sat in the boats and talked, Jimmie, quiet, 

 faithful Jimmie, had pulled clear back to the Novice and 

 cooked a fine fat canvasback for lunch. In about an hour 

 and a half he came skating down over the white-topped 

 water with a basketful of good things to eat. Then we 

 concluded we would all go back to the Novice, as there 

 was no flight at all. This we accomplished at the cost 

 of a good deal of labor, for the wind was dead against us 

 and increasing. In the middle of the bay I broke an oar- 

 lock on the sinkbox I was rowing, and was helpless till 

 Johnnie picked me up, after which we found it all we 

 could both do to row the skiff and tow the box. Dick 

 was still worse off, for he was taken suddenly indisposed 

 and had it not been for Jimmie's tough young muscle he 

 would have had a sorry time in getting his iron ship home 

 against the wind and sea. 



We rode out a rough ish night, all snug and warm 

 below. In the morning Dick did not feel well enough to 

 go out agniu, so we left him to keep ship, Johnnie going 

 toward the head of the hay, while Jimmie went back 

 toward the foot, into a cove where we put out fully 5,0U0 

 birds. On all sides we could see great rafts of birds, over 

 1,000 in a bank, apparently, and among them many rafts 

 of canvas, but though the weather was good and rough, 

 we got no work out of them and only killed a few 

 stragglers. The best fun I had was in running the little 

 sinkbox, in which I had now gained the greatest confi- 

 dence as a sea boat. It always kept right side up, and 

 even the heaviest seas broke harmlessly around the coam- 

 ing and did not come inboard. With a proper apron, one 

 of these boats would be practically unsinkable. Ii sits so 

 low in the water that at a distance it looks as though the 

 occupant were sitting flat on the water, and rowing him- 

 self wdthout any boat at all. 



It now seeming to us that we could have more certain 

 and satisfactory shooting at the Shellbanks than in the 

 Puerto Bay, we weighed anchor and made for town, 

 going under reef, and tearing along at a great gait, which 

 landed us home early in the evening. 



Sailing: and Shooting. 



In one of the two following articles of this series I wish 

 to describe the sporting situation at Rockport fully, as I 

 believe it is a point to which the attention of Northern 

 shooters may well be turned. It will be well to make 

 brief the personal experience of my friend and myself 

 there, the which could be indefinitely expanded. 



It did not take us long to learn that we could easily 

 have all the duck shooting we wanted if we cared to go 

 after it. One day we heard of a bag of 61 redheads 

 made off the peninsula point, only three miles from town. 

 Another day we learned of one gun killing 88 redheads 

 on the channel below the quarantine station. One even- 

 ing we and the two Blud worth boys picked up 52 fine red- 

 heads in about an hour down at the Shellbank, most of 

 them on a pass, not over 300y Js. from J ohnnie's house. 

 Sometimes we would take the sneakboxes and drag them 

 around on some of the shallow flats of that locality, and 

 get some rapid fun of a morning or an evening," while 

 maybe in the middle of the day there would be no 

 birds moving at all. Then there would be whole days 

 when everything was quiet, and when the birds kept 

 bunched up on the flats, not stirring a wing. One squally 

 day Jimmie and Dick and I took the Novice and sailed 20 

 miles down the coast to the Shamrock Cove, at the edge 

 of Corpus Christi Bay, hoping to get heavy shooting 

 there. We got very little shooting, though we passed 

 flats where thousands of pintails and redheads were feed- 

 ing. We sailed down in half a gale of wind, making the 

 20 miles in less than two hours, the Novice apparently 

 needing every ounce of her 6,0001bs. of ballast, but trav- 

 eling like a witch, with her rail under. We had a wildish 

 night that night at anchor, and the next day had to reef 

 down four points. How Jimmie ever kept her in the 

 narrow, crooked, dredged channel I can't say, but Dick 

 and I exulted in the way Novice ran and handled. We 



only put out the decoys once for the ducks that day, and 

 again they were disinclined to come to us. That day I 

 again had the misfortune to break an oarlock on my 

 sneakbox, though fortunately to windward of the Novice. 

 Dick and Jimmie couldn't for a long time make out why 

 I didn't row, but at length Dick put out with a skiff and 

 saved my life. If I had missed the Novice in my drift, I 

 should have had six miles of wild water to cross before 

 striking land, and hungry as I was, should have starved 

 to death before I got there. You can't paddle one of 

 those sneakboxes when it is loaded down with decoys, 

 because it would only turn around, and there was no way 

 to scull it. All a fellow could do was to hold her straight 

 with the one oar, and let the waves do as they liked about 

 it. Dick sat off in the skiff and laughed at me, and since 

 I couldn't get to him, I had to stand it. The next day we 

 fixed those rowlocks. 



A Lazy Country. 



We found that the experience of going out and killing a 

 whole lot of birds every day was not the only possible 

 pleasure to be had on a winter resting trip. When we 

 found the shooting was so easy and so good we soon lost 

 the edge of our snooting appetite. We ceased to get up 

 at unheard of hours in the morning, or to work all day 

 long in hunting, and confined ourselves more and more 

 closely to the neighborhood of the Shellbanks, where we 

 put in the last five days of our stay. We told Johnnie he 

 would have to keep us, so Johnnie smiled and consented, 

 and there we larked and loafed away the laziest, precious- 

 est week two mortals ever knew, shooting tin cans and 

 bottles when we got too lazy to go out after redheads, but 

 mostly lying in the sun and letting the universe run itself 

 without our aid. If anybody had told me that I would 

 ever lie an hour on a board and watch a hermit crab, I 

 should have thought him much mistaken, but such I 

 found to be a possible thing for me under the warm sun of 

 a Texas "winter" — which isn't really any winter at all. 



We just loafed, and said "to-morrow." We let the 

 great banks of white pelicans alone, and didn't even wish 

 to break the law by murdering the gulls. When the 

 evening flight of redheads began to scurry over the bank 

 we would pull across the channel, just ninety -five meas- 

 ured yards, and knock out a few of them as they crossed. 

 The rest of the day we watched the porpoises and the her- 

 mit crabs, and the gulls, and ate oysters, and wished it 

 was time for the next meal. Dick began to have cheeks 

 like a ground squirrel, and both of us had long since been 

 baked and burned to a red-brown color. 



Good Commissariat and Good Fun. 



We discovered a bed of oysters in a little bayou not a 

 biscuit toss back of the house — Johnnie just happened to 

 mention it, they cared nothing for oysters and could not 

 realize why any one should — and from that time on Dick 

 and I always had a job on our hands when nothing else 

 was urgent. We would go over to the bayou and pull up 

 a double armful of the great oysters, and carry them over i 

 to the edge of the beach, where a shell ridge broke off the i 

 wind, and build a little fire of chips and blocks. Then we J 

 would roast the oysters till they fizzed, take them out and : 

 have a morsel fit for the gods. Sometimes it was toward 

 midnight, and everybody else was in bed, when Dick and i 

 I would be sitting out in the dark, beside our little fire, 

 roasting oysters and telling stories. Sometimes the Dago 

 fishing craft would come to Johnnie's shipyard to haul 

 up, and very often they would have a deckload of oysters t 

 aboard, for all the Aransas Bay country is full of oysters. 

 The custom in such case seems to be to help yourself. One 

 fisherman, who was repainting at the yard, stayed there 

 for three days, and one of her crew, Pietro, the most vil- 

 lainous-looking — and the most obliging — black pirate that 

 ever was, whatever may have been his nationality, used 

 to open oysters for us. One time we caught him we 

 noticed him sort of wiping the oyster knife on his bare 

 foot, and — though maybe it was very foolish of us to mind 

 a little thing like that— we somehow didn't care for any 

 more just then. 



We fell in love with the Novice and made many trips 

 on her, exploring the country about Rockport thoroughly 

 and sailing in all probably between 150 and 200 miles 

 along the shallow waters of the adjacent bays. Mr. 

 Everett and Mr. Fulton made plans to take us on a long 

 voyage up to Hines Bay and over to St. Joseph Island, 

 where we could surely have killed a deer, but the naphtha | 

 launch engaged for this journey proved unfit and the 

 project was abandoned. Lack of time also compelled us j 

 to give up at the last moment our intended visit to the 

 home ranch of the great Fulton property, near Gregory 

 station, where Mr. George Fulton was expecting us, and 

 where we should almost certainly have seen turkey and 

 deer, and have had some good duck shooting. We 

 learned all too thoroughly and to our sorrow that one 

 can not go down there and see that country thoroughly, 

 and go into all the branches of the sport which is offered, 

 in the space of two or three weeks. One should give 

 himself far more time if he expects to do the subject 

 thoroughly in all its diversity. We worked hard to 

 get a fair knowledge of the country, but found it im- 

 possible to engage in all the sorts of sport. For instance, 

 we did not fish at all, yet Mr. Everett, who is an ardent 

 fisher, always got a good catch of trout (weakfish) and 

 other sorts of seafish when he went out with us. Mr. 

 H. B. Smith, of Whitewater, Wis., who was at Rockport 

 while we were there, has the best theory of it. He will 

 stay there until next April. 



Dick and I realized that we couldn't do everything we 

 wanted to do, so we did what we could. When not en- 

 gaged in a half -Nelson hold on some husky oyster we were I 

 trying to open, we were sailing, or shooting, or just 

 thinking. I can't remember what I thought. Of course, 

 we progressed in able semanship, and Dick, whom at first 

 we had to correct for calling the starboard locker "that' 

 right-hand little cupboard downstairs," developed into a 

 great crew, so that he and Jimmy could take Novice any- 

 where in any weather. 



There are several of these sailing craft at Rockport, and 

 they get a good deal to do in the winter taking out hunt- 

 ing and excursion parties. They charter usually at $8 to . 

 $10 a day, sometimes as low as $6 for a mere sailing trip. 

 The passengers furnish their own provisions and the boat 

 company will cook for the party. Some decoys go with 

 the boat, but none of them have sneakboxes but Novice. 

 One of these boats, a schooner-rigged one, is called 

 "JEneid," and the story goes that her owner named her 

 after his daughter, but Fm sure there's a mistake some- 

 where if that's what his daughter is named. _It was this 1 



