20 4 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 11, 1898. 
$25,000 apiece and one could not be purchased for twice 
that amount. The president of the Pamunky is the head 
of a well-known New York railroad, and his three sporting 
associates are all multi-millionairies. During the past 
five years only one of them has visited the club, but the 
establishment is kept in perfect order all the same. 
On a great wide stretch of barren sand near the ocean 
there stands a most interesting ruin. I was formerly a 
large and well-equipped club house. A half a century 
ago it was the finest place for sport on this continent. A 
great lake was near the house and it was the favorite re- 
sort of legions of wildfowl. 
Tradition has handed down the record of some of the 
bags made here, and with the antiquated flint and per- 
cussion lock five hundred ducks a day were often made 
by a single gun. But the great mounds of sand moved 
toward the lake and every wind helped to fill up this 
game reservoir, until nothing but an acre or so of marshy 
ground was left to mark the site. The house, abandoned, 
has yielded to the crumbling touch of time. From its very 
inaccessibility it has not been disturbed. Rafter, brace, 
beam and girder remain just as they have fallen. Inside 
old chairs and bedsteads moulder untouched. I started 
to go up stairs, but the first step gave way and there was 
such an ominous creaking and rumbling that I was glad 
to get out without the whole structure tumbling about 
my ears. 
The largest club house is the Narrow Island. It looks 
like an old-fashioned Virginia tavern. There is an island 
of about an acre which rises out of low, boggy marsh, and 
upon this the building rests. A wide stream runs close to 
the !front door, where the boat house, wharf and craft 
are easy of access. 
The interior is finely furnished. There is a billiard 
room and attached is a large sitting room, with lounges 
around the sides of the walls, where the members can 
slumber without taking the trouble to go to their own 
bedrooms. There are forty-one members in this club and 
all are ardent sportsmen, and the club is well filled from 
the opening to the closing of the season. Mo8t of the 
members are from New York city. Sixty ducks was the 
largest bag made by an individual " member last winter. 
There is a club called Swan Island which is famous for 
the larger species of waterfowl. It has miles of sea 
meadows and the Canada goose and swan use these pre- 
serves as their resting and sleeping places, coming and 
going as regularly as the tame ducks to their home in the 
barnyard or cow-pen. In the night these geese^and swan, 
who are as intimate as owls and prairie dogs, post 
their sentries and it is impossible to get near them. In 
the day they take flight at the sight of a man a half a 
mile away. I have often crawled behind the sand dunes 
and watched the birds by the aid of a powerful glass. On 
a fine sunny day they will sit for hours preening them- 
selves. 
Of all the birdB that fly the Canada goose and the swan 
are the shyest, wariest and scarcest. After a little shoot- 
ing they will not come anywhere near the decoys, and 
the only way to hunt them is with captured live ones, 
and toward the end of the season even these fail, and 
stray swan and geese will not approach anything but 
large flocks of their kind. 
To get the finest wild goose shooting one must go some 
thirty miles south to Roanoke Island. It is among the 
low, flat sand wastes interspersed with ponds that these 
waterfowl frequent, and vast quantities are killed there. 
A club has just been organized, with Mr. H. A. Weeks, of 
New York, as president. A new club house has been 
built, and they have made a decided innovation in club 
life, for the members bring the lady members of their 
families with them, and thus lighten the monotony of 
many days when hunting is out of the question. 
There are many other clubs, good, bad and indifferent, 
and there is the poor man's club. The club house is gen- 
erally built on piles in the marsh which he owns. This 
club always consists of two, one stays in and cooks while 
the other hunts. Like the Irishman's shanty, this club 
house consists of 
"Parlor, bedroom and hall, 
And their locker is three pegs on the wall." 
The establishment is warmed and lighted by a small 
stove and a kerosene lamp. But these men know how to 
handle a gun, and they kill ten ducks to the club man's 
one. There is a wide difference in shooting for sport and 
killing for a living. 
Attached to the ceiling of every club sitting room is a 
metal disk like the face of a clock, only it has marked 
upon its surface the points of the compass. The weather- 
cock at the top of the house is attached to the hand of 
this weather gauge and gives the direction of the wind. 
This is all important, for it means a good day's sport or 
failure. If it is calm and still many club men will not 
take the trouble to rise early, but if there is a brisk nor'- 
wester or southeaster blowing every man is awakened at 3 
0 clock m the morning by a guide who flourishes a lan- 
tern in his face. Downatairs the stoves are red hot and 
the breakfast is eaten in silence. 
- ^u 6 ^des bustle about and soon the club man is sitting 
in the boat shaking with cold despite his many wraps. If 
his post is in the marsh he is soon comfortable; if, on the 
contrary, his station is an open blind in the sound, he sits 
in his boat and shivers the long day through. The sound 
is studded with brush blinds a few hundred yards apart. 
1 counted nineteen from my post, and there was not 
much shooting after the sun rose in that special locality 
Even during good days big bags are the exception, not 
™e r ^e, from thirty to fifty being the average to a crack 
Bhot. Many club men have told me that each duck thev 
killed cost them $5, and that can be readily understood 
when it is known that during fine weather there is prac- 
tically little shooting; besides, Wednesdays, Thursdays 
WMen byfa 3 w re ° ° T ^ da y s '- when shooting is for- 
A long-continued etretch of fine weather sends most of 
the members home. A couple of weeks' enforced inac- 
tion is very tiresome, and the scenery is not very enliven - 
• ng u • uT y ' cal , m 1 days m& y 8uit tQe pot-hunter, who lives 
m his battery while his partner paddles around and stirs 
up the lazy wildfowl, but to the club man it means 
dawdling and loafing, without any of the city accompani- 
ments. The mails are very irregular and the papers sev- 
eral days old when they reach Currituck 
While most of the clubmen are moderate shots, some of 
the gueste they bring with them should, for the sake of 
common humanity, never be allowed to get behind the 
big end of a gun. Every club house guide has his tale to 
tell of wild firing, accidental discharges and narrow 
escapes. One of the visitors, who, like Mr. Winkle, 
wanted to be thought a sportsman, came to a certain club 
in Currituck a few years ago and made the champion 
shot on record. He was sent to the marsh in charge of 
an inexperienced guide, who put him in a blind on the 
side of a stream some 60yds. wide. Having placed a lot 
of wooden decoys and a half dozen live decoys in position, 
the guide thought he would go across to the other side 
and take a nap. When he reached the opposite shore he 
found that the Chesapeake retriever had followed him, 
but he knew the dog would return when he saw the game; 
so he hid his boat in the reeds, and as he was standing on 
the shore he saw a flock of mallards heading toward the 
decoys. He crouched on the bank and watched the 
scene. The dog saw the wildfowl also, and springing into 
the water swam silently toward the blind. In the mean- 
time the foremost of the flock alighted in the midst of the 
decoys, but the rest growing alarmed rose in the air and 
vanished. 
It is a common thing for the marsh wildfowl to mingle 
with the tame decoys, but it is the sporting law to rise 
and make the birds take wing and let them nave it before 
they have gotten headway. But this individual had the 
buck fever — was evidently crazy with excitement — he 
knew enough to point his gun in the right direction and 
pull the trigger. The result was a yell from the man, a 
howl from the dog and the frenzied quacking and splash- 
ing of the decoys. If there was a madder individual in 
Currituck that day than the one who paddled across the 
stream tradition has never handed down his name. A 
pellet of shot had hit him in the ear and brought blood. 
The dog lost an eye and was gunshy for a long time 
afterward. Four tame decoys would never more lure 
their brethren to an untimely death and two more 
were crippled. As for the wild ones, not a feather had 
been touched, and as they started on their journey to the 
North Pole they must 'have quacked in joyous gladness 
over the result of that shot. The guest returned home the 
next day, and as long as he lives he will be asked by his 
sporting friends how he likes duck shooting. 
The shooting grounds of Currituck are very inaccess- 
ible, and it requires several days to reach them. It is this 
unapproachability which serves to keep up the game sup- 
ply. There will soon be a railroad running to that sec- 
tion, opening it to the outside world. When this is done 
the shooting at Currituck will be but a memory. 
There are many other clubs, prominent among which 
are the Palmer Island . Duck Island, Martin Point, Midgett, 
Van Slycks, Marlin Points, the Inlet, Jupiter Point and 
half a hundred others. 
ORIGIN OF THE GRASS SUIT. 
Geneseo, Illinois. — It was just two days before Thanks- 
giving when an excited individual was seen running 
through the streets of Geneseo, coatless and hatless, shout- 
ing "Ducks! ducks! see the ducks!" and the multitude, my- 
self among them, turned their eyes heavenward, and 
there sure enough, through the steely glint of the Novem- 
ber morning, wheeled a flock of perhaps fifty mallards, 
Time was, and not so very long before, when a dozen 
such flocks might have been seen any November morning 
passing over Geneseo; but that was in olden time, before 
the advent of the new sportsman, who does such yeoman 
service in trying to keep the other fellow from killing 
the birds. 
For a time business was at a standstill, and the excited 
populace stood on the street corners in groups watching 
the ducks fade in the distance and listening to reminis- 
cences of similar events. 
The man who kept a record was in his glory, and told 
to listeners how it was three years coming March, since the 
last flock was sighted; and only five years since a flock of 
geese was seen on their way to the sunny South. 
I listened to this unwritten history with as much in- 
terest as any one, until, like an electric shock, it suddenly 
flashed upon me that perhaps those ducks had stopped to 
rest in Flag Pond slough, and were even then disporting 
themselves in its cooling waters. 
No sooner did the thought occur to me than I began to 
fear lest it should occur to others, and as speedily as 
possible I drifted out of the crowd and made my way 
homeward. Once there I was soon arrayed in a hunting 
suit that had been worn but once before, and that only 
down in Smith's pasture to make me look sporty as I wor- 
ried mud pies. The rest of my equipment consisted of a 
Parker 12-gauge and a dozen target shells. 
As I hurry along the country lanes and through fields 
and pastures, crawling under a barbed wire fence and 
climbing over a board one, expecting to hear the familiar 
"Hi there now, get out of that; don't 'low no huntin' 
here" from the farmer, I recall how twenty-five years 
ago I spent an afternoon at this same Flag Pond, and how 
my old muzzieloader became so foul from excessive use 
that in loading the ramrod stuck in the barrel, and I had 
to retire with a disabled battery while the birds were com- 
ing in from every direction and dropping into the water 
under my very nose. The Flag Pond is about three miles 
from Geneseo and across Green River. 
As I crossed the wide bottom approaching the river, I 
was startled to see a man with a gun making toward the 
foot-log that crosses the stream. The cold sweat started 
as I realized that he was at least a quarter of a mile nearer 
the goal than I was, but my distress was soon relieved 
when I discovered his gun to be an axe and himself to be 
a farmer looking after his pasture fences. 
Crossing the river I made my way to the border of the 
timbered lands that line the stream. 
The slough is some SOOyds. from the wood, and as I 
stood beneath the branches of a spreading elm, looking 
toward it, a great marsh hawk came sailing toward me! 
I was concealed from the hawk, but could trace his flight 
through the interlacing branches. As he passed over I 
held just ahead, and drew my gun along till an opening 
presented and pulled the trigger. The hawk comes chat- 
tering down with a broken wing and I turned and looked 
toward the pond just in time to see those fifty mallards 
rise above the grass and sail away to the north. 
Instinctively I sink to the earth, feeling faint and sick 
as I see them fading to a mere speck. But, hold! they 
have changed their course and go east. Bemoaning the 
unlucky shot by which I have lost the chance of a life- 
time, I watch the ducks. Again they change their course 
and for a, time I was unable to tell whether they were 
coming back or going directly away; I was still in doubt 
when they drifted out of sight behind a grove. I watched 
fur their reappearance, and had about given up ever see- 
ing them again when they suddenly came into sight only a 
couple of hundred yards away, headed for the pond and 
with wings set. 
Down they came in a bunch to within a few feet of the 
surface of the pond, dropping their red legs and spreading 
their palmated feet as if to break the force of their con- 
tact with the water. Hovering for an instant they sud- 
denly shot upward again, scattering as they rise, as if 
they had discovered an enemy and were off for good. 
They soon returned, however, and went through the 
same maneuver again and again, each time hovering 
as if about to alight, only to wheel away again. 
About the fourth time they returned a few did alight, 
while the rest circled away as before. At each return a 
few dropped into the water till all were down except one 
old drake, who was still unsatisfied; and then the way 
that old fellow circled, hovered, towered and circled 
again was enough to turn an impatient hunter gray. All 
things have an end though, and so did this old fellow's 
investigations, and after about the four hundredth circle 
he too alighted, satisfied that there was no further danger. 
Now was my time for action. Stooping as low as I 
could, I hurried toward the pond. When within 100yds. 
I was compelled to get down on my hands and knees and 
creep, for here the ground sloped toward the water and 
the grass was not long enough to hide me. Going with 
all the speed possible, with due observance of caution, I 
was soon at the edge of the grass and had a view of the 
entire pond. 
Cautiously looking about, I soon located the birds in the 
extreme east end and some distance to my right. 
There was nothing now to cover my advance but a thick 
growth of Spanish needles that did not exceed 8in. in 
height. Half-way between me and the water's edge was 
a solitary cluster of weeds, just large enough to cover me 
if kept in line between me and the ducks. I must now 
lie perfectly flat and worm myself along inch by inch. 
Before I had made my way 10yds. I was one solid mat of 
Spanish needles. This aided me in my designs; for had 
the ducks discovered me, they must have given me a 
close inspection indeed to have wispicioned danger in any- 
thing so closely resembling a bundle of hay. 
Arrived at the bunch of tall weeds, I take a look at the 
enemy. I am in no danger of being discovered now, and 
am at ease to admire — that is, as near at ease as any one 
could be with that bristling mass of Spanish needles grind- 
ing away at him. 
- There they are massed along the shore, preening them- 
selves in the sun and talking to each other in satisfied 
little quacks. But alas for my hopes, they are still too far 
away for 38grs. of Schultze powder and No. 7 shot. 
I must get still nearer Twenty yards ahead was 
another bunch of weed By lying perfectly fiat, the top 
of my back would just about lino with them and the 
ducks. Down I went, literally sinking myself into the 
ground, and plowed my way along. How enticing that 
wriggling mass of green and white did look, and Thanks- 
giving only two days away. 
Between me and the coveted position was a barbed 
wire fence, the lower wire of which was only about lOin. 
high. But such consummate skill have I acquired in the 
art of flattening that I passed under without even touch- 
ing. At last I gained the point of vantage and took 
another look. Ob, but they were beauties! Lying flat as 
I was upon my stomach, I could not raise the muzzle of 
my gun quite high enough to clear the grass, and made 
up my mind to twist round with my feet toward the 
ducks, riBe suddenly to a sitting posture, empty one 
barrel into their serried columns as they sat in "true 
sportsman style*," and then get what I could with the 
second barrel as they rise. I calculated that a shot well 
placed in the center of the mass would net ten, and say I > 
got two more with the second, that would be twelve. 
What a display I could make when I got back to town. 
Quick as I was the ducks were quicker, and ere I could 
rise and get my gun leveled they were up and off, scat- 
tering as they went, and the best I could do was to pick 
out a fine drake with either barrel; this I did successfully, 
dropping one in the edge of the water and one a couple 
of yards up on the other shore. 
I was greatly chagrined at my failure, and about to 
throw the ducks I had back into the pond, when I dis- 
covered another gunner approaching. This proved to be 
Mr. Frank Lawrence, who then lived in Geneseo. Frank 
had been struck with the same idea that had animated 
me, but having a long distance to go for his gun, had 
come in second best. 
On the way home Frank felt very "blue" and I corre- 
spondingly elated. But the greater benefits of the trip 
accrued to him in the end, for from my array of Spanish 
needles he got the idea of his famous "grass suits " 
E. P. Jaques. 
CAPERCAILZIE AND BLACK GAME. 
Portland, Me., April 3. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
The readers of your interesting paper have been kept well 
informed upon the natural history of the capercailzie and 
black game, as well as upon the various attempts to intro- 
duce these noble birds to the American continent. In- 
deed no newspaper in the United States has given its 
readers so much information upon these birds, or has so 
warmly advocated their acclimatization among us, as the 
Forest and Stream. 
It is still fresh in mind, I am sure, that four capercailzie 
and seven black game were recently imported from 
Sweden, and on Feb. 29 last were set at liberty in the 
woods of Maine at the Swedish settlement of New 
Sweden. 
Very many of your readers, besides myself, have no 
doubt been waiting with interest for some tidings from 
our new feathered guests. Are they still alive? Were 
they not so weakened by their long winter voyage over 
the ocean that they have succumbed to the cold and 
snows of this most blustering month of March? Have 
they not fallen a prey to the unaccustomed dangers of 
their new environment? Such questions have naturally 
suggested themselves. 
It is therefore with feelings of great satisfaction, 
which I know many others will share, that I have to-day 
received information that both species of our new grouse 
are still alive and well. The information comes from 
Mr. Oak, one of the Game Commissioners of Maine, who 
resides only eight miles from New Sweden, who writes : 
" I have been making frequent inquiries about the birds 
to learn their proBpecta, and find that they are alive and 
well and apparently doing as finely as though natives* 
