392 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July, 1920 
WILD LIFE CURIOSITY 
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF A TOLING DOG AS 
A METHOD FOR ATTRACTING DUCKS TO THEIR DOOM 
By EDWARD T. MARTIN 
That’s 
Bunching 
Them 
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Three-in-One Oil Ct. 
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C218 
PRACTICAL EXTERIOR BALLISTICS 
for 
HUNTERS and RIFLEMEN 
by 
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Donovan, M.D., F.A.C.S. 
The Most Practical Up-to-the-minute Book 
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Do your own figuring, and have the sat- 
isfaction of knowing that you are absolute- 
ly right. All necessary tables. 
Evegy problem that comes up in the life 
of every rifle man and hunter is worked 
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ballistics is solved. Be your own authority. 
Cloth, illustrated, 196 pages, 
$1.25 postpaid 
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and manufacturer of artificial eyes for birds, ani- 
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Please mention “Forest and Stream’* 
Us KERR gunIling 
WEBBING OR LEATHER FOR ALL RIFLES 
Used bv Army, Navy and Marine Corps 
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40 CEDAR ST. NEW YORK 
N my tenderfoot days 
they used to tell me 
that if I wished to 
have venison for din- 
ner the best way to get 
it was to attach a cow- 
bell to myself and, 
gun in hand, go parad- 
ing through the moun- 
tains with the bell 
ringing at every step; 
then all the bucks, 
does and fawns within 
sound of its tongue would come a-running 
to see what was the matter; and unless 
they caught a whiff of the man scent 
they would keep coming until within 
easy gun shot. 
At the time, my idea was that if a 
person should try a scheme like that and 
a deer drd follow the clang of the bell, it 
could be laid to a famine in the deer 
country and the greenness of the bell 
ringer, whom the animal had no doubt 
mistaken for something good to eat. 
Since coming to years of discretion in 
things pertaining to the wild, I have 
reached the conclusion that there may be 
something to it, and that that which 
was once told as a joke may have a 
foundation in fact. There is nothing 
so curious as a wild animal, not even 
excepting a woman, unless it is a wild 
duck. 
Domestic cattle are often drawn to the 
ambush of a cougar by the waving tip of 
that animal’s tail above a clump of grass. 
They see it, are curious, wish to find out 
what it is, and do. 
It is said that the black end of an 
ermine’s tail is bestowed by nature sole- 
ly for the purpose of drawing ptarmi- 
gans and hares within reach of its jump 
while the white body of the little animal 
is hidden in the snow and nothing is vis- 
ible but the moving tip of black. 
I well remember how in the fiction of 
my boyhood days there was exploited the 
enticing of a herd of antelope with- 
in range of a party of hunters by means 
of a white handkerchief tied to the 
ramrod of a gun and moving in the wind. 
As if a party of hunters, ancient or 
modern, who had been on the trail any 
length of time, would be possesed of a 
white handkerchief. 
The plan, however, was worked suc- 
, cessfully by other antelope hunters with 
I red flags, and there is much more truth 
than poetry in the idea. 
As far as deer are concerned, fire hunt- 
ing in the long ago w T as made possible by 
their curiosity. I, myself, once saw 7 a half- 
; grown fawn come within a few feet of a 
nitch-pine torch a negro boy was carry- 
ing. when some of us young chaps were 
coon hunting. So close was the fawn 
that w 7 hen I tried to catch it, the attempt 
all but succeeded. The paxty was not 
especially quiet, either, for every boy of 
the lot w 7 as telling every other boy at the 
same time what he meant to do with that 
coon after he got it. 
If antelope will decoy to a wind- 
wagged rag; if cattle will proceed to in- 
vestigate the tail of a cougar; if deer 
will come to a bright light, why should 
not the same over-weening curiosity 
prompt them to follow a man perambu- 
lating through the hills ringing a cow- 
bell? Indeed, why not? 
We all have heard of the toling dog 
and his manner of working ducks. Be it 
known, the curiosity of wild-fowl even 
exceeds that with which Mother Eve was 
blest, or curst. 
The writer, to gratify hie curiosity, 
once went duck hunting with a toling 
dog. Once, but never again. It was in- 
teresting only as an exhibition of Patsy, 
the dog’s working methods, and that was 
marred by angry gestures and whis- 
pered commands from the major-domo, or 
whatever the title was, of the man who 
owned Patsy and leased the ducking 
shore. 
A cocker spaniel, his owner said Patsy 
was, but he appeared large for a cocker 
and probably was crossed with some other 
variety. 
As a sport, I am much inclined to class 
toling with sneak-boat shooting, which 
is no sport at all. 
This shoot was staged on a sandy shore, 
fine white sand of a kind that geese 
and ducks like so well to sit on and sun 
themselves ; also it formed a perfect 
background to show off the dog and his 
antics. The water was very shallow close 
in and only a foot or two deep, 30 yards 
out. When the party, old major-domo and 
one other besides the writer, landed from 
a sailboat, half a mile farther up shore 
were several hundred redhead, a few 
pintail, and here and there scattered can- 
vasbacks and bluebills, most of them 
bunched up and taking things easy on the 
sand. They were not very shy, but, as 
we came near, of course, they flew, the 
pintail towering and keeping on for a 
long distance to some inland pond, the 
others going out only a few hundred 
yards to deep water, where they re- 
mained, seeming to think, “Those people 
won’t stay long. We’ll just wait till they 
go and then come back.” 
Twenty yards back from the water was 
good cover, sedge and broom grass, also 
the remains of a blind used the year be- 
fore, including a trench for the feet and 
boxes to sit on. 
It took but little work to put things 
in perfect order, which included the pull- 
ing up of several armfuls of dead grass 
and patching: up the thin places in the 
blind that had become weatherbeaten. 
