January, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
9 
THE SHOOTING OF THE RARA AVIS 
YEARS AGO. WHILE AFTER WILD-FOWL ON BARNEGAT BAY, A DUCK WAS SHOT 
WHICH EVEN THE OLDEST AND MOST EXPERIENCED BAYMEN COULD NOT NAME 
BY WIDGEON 
I T was the first week in March in the 
the spring of 1870. There were plenty 
of wild fowl in the bay, but we had 
done but little shooting at Ortley, for 
the weather conditions had been very 
bad. A light easterly storm had been on 
for three days, with fog and drizzle, 
bringing in a good tide, but the birds 
had not been flying. 
As there were prospects of the wind 
shifting, I had left the house very early 
in the morning, and put out my decoys 
at the Stack Bottom on the north shore 
of West Point, as a large body of ducks 
were feeding in Nigger House Cove. I 
was shooting alone, Uncle William hav- 
ing gone to Stooling Point. The tide 
was quite high, so I pulled my sneak 
box back in the marsh elders that fringed 
the shore, fixed my blind, and lying down 
in my box, waited for daylight. 
When it became light enough to see 
well, there was still much fog, and the 
ducks were not moving, so I lay quietly 
back in my boat,»with my head just high 
enough to see over the side, a position 
I always take when shooting alone. Pres- 
ently I heard a faint splashing up the 
shore, which gradually came nearer and 
louder. A cripple paddling down the 
shore, I thought, but I turned my head 
in that direction and waited, when from 
behind a bunch of marsh elders came an 
immense mink. I found afterward, that 
he had a regular beaten path along the 
meadow bank and my boat lay directly 
across it. Swimming up to the sneak 
box, he placed his forepaws on the side, 
and raised his body from the water, and 
there he was, with his nose within eight- 
een inches of my face. I never moved 
a muscle, and it was an amusing and 
interesting sight to see the puzzled ex- 
pression on his countenance, his little 
eyes glistened like beads, and he wrinkled 
his nose in a very funny manner. 
Afiter looking me over for at least a 
full minute, he slowly removed his paws 
from the boat, and turning, silently beat 
a retreat the way he had come. I rea- 
soned that his curiosity would make him 
look back, so when he disappeared behind 
the clump of marsh elders, I quickly 
swung my gun in position. Surely enough 
he peeped back to see what strange thing 
F ORTY-FIVE or fifty years ago , 
sportsmen — good ones, too — 
did many things that they would 
not do today. None of us then had 
the prescience to see what was com- 
ing. We were as blind to the 
future of the wild-fowl as the 
plainsman and the Indian of that 
day were to the fate that a little 
later overtook the crowding herds 
of buffalo and the antelope that ran 
so smoothly over the prairie. The 
incidents in this story occurred 
when spring shooting ( now hap- 
pily done away with ) was consid- 
ered not only legal but entirely 
within the bounds of good sports- 
manship . — [Author’s Note.] 
he had been in contact with, when a 
charge of duck shot in the head, sent him 
to the mink’s happy hunting ground. 
When I picked him up, I found I had 
killed the largest mink I had ever seen. 
I later learned that he was well known 
to the trappers, who had been after him 
for years. 
S LOWLY the fog thinned and lifted, 
while an occasional faint puff of air 
could be felt, coming from the west, 
and then dimly through the mist, I saw 
a small flock of ducks flying toward me 
up the shore from the beach. They 
swung in nicely over the decoys, and gave 
me a fine double, and when I picked them 
up, I found I had shot a beautiful pair 
of drake red-heads in full spring plum- 
age. The wind was freshening from the 
west and soon the fog was gone, and then 
in the northwest began to rise great banks 
of ragged clouds, tier upon tier. They 
rose until the whole sky was covered 
while the sun, which had shone out when 
the fog lifted, was again obscured, and 
its faint wintry rays cast a weird light 
on the troubled waters of the bay, Nearer 
came the fantastic, whirling masses of 
clouds, and fainter grew the light, and 
then with a roar the gale burst upon me, 
and old Boreas blew until his cheeks 
cracked. 
For an hour or more the wind blew 
furiously, the white capped waves rolled 
steadily on the shore, and some times the 
sun would peep out, forming beautiful 
rainbows in the mist, blown from the 
crests of the breaking waves; then the 
force of the gale gradually subsided, to 
be renewed from time to time during the 
day. 
Directly to windward of me across the 
bay lay Mosquito Cove, a famous feed- 
ing ground for red-heads and broad-bills. 
As the wind rose, I could hear a con- 
stant bombardment from that locality, 
evidently six men were shooting from 
the bar at the mouth of the cove, as the 
ducks passed over, for there were twelve 
shots fired in every volley. They must 
have made a great bag, for I shot eight 
crippled red-heads during the day, that 
swam in to my decoys. They came from 
that direction, and no doubt were 
wounded birds that had escaped them. 
Just after the force of the first squall 
had abated, a single Smew came to me 
quite high. I gave him both barrels, and 
he began at once to climb at an angle of 
about seventy-five degrees, right in the 
wind. Higher and higher he flew, until 
at least two hundred yards in the air, 
and then, flying steadily all the 
time, he began to descend backwards, at 
just the same angle he had risen, until 
he struck the water, where he began 
swimming around in small circles. I 
waded out to him, and found a shot had 
passed through both eyes, completely 
blinding him, otherwise he was un- 
touched. 
The ducks appeared to be wild, and did 
not decoy well, but from time to time I 
added one or more to the score. As I 
was eating my lunch, a flock of about a 
dozen buffle-heads came along, just out- 
side of the decoys. As I drew up on 
them, four or five bunched and at the 
crack of the gun five dropped, three in- 
stantly disappeared, to come up again 
flying, and I found they had dived from 
the wing at the flash of the gun. This 
(continued on page 40) 
The ducks were wild and would not decoy well, but from time to time I added one or more to the score. 
