540 FORESTANDSTREAM December, 1921 
THE WHIMSICAL NATURE OF DUCKS 
WHY THEY WORK WELL ON CERTAIN DAYS, AND ON OTHERS, UNDER 
APPARENTLY THE SAME CONDITIONS, REMAIN JUST OUT OF RANGE 
By EDWARD T. MARTIN 
S PORTSMEN often wonder why 
water-fowl work well one day, and 
the next, under apparently the same 
conditions, turn up their bills at 
decoys and grin at the gunner. 
Wind and weather are factors in the 
working of ducks. For example, in a 
drizzle of rain, bluebills and redheads 
in great numbers seem to come from 
nowhere and disappear again as soon 
as it clears off. All water-fowl hunt for 
shelter in a storm and, in so doing, move 
around much. But the fact remains 
that there are days when the shooting 
is very good and others when it should 
be but isn’t. There is always a reason 
for this, however, and to find that rea- 
son should be the study of the gunner, 
for often a simple little ruse will re- 
move it. 
Once, when the ducks were shying 
from a new blind built on an old feeding- 
ground, I placed a dark-colored pair of 
gloves on the outside of the blind and 
deceived the ducks into the belief that 
they were blackbirds. They thought the 
place was safe for them, too — and a very 
bad morning was supplemented by a sur- 
prisingly good afternoon. 
I once made the claim that if I was 
shown birds I could make them work, 
and I proved that I could do it. 
In one place it was a question of feed. 
A freshet had washed out the duckweed 
and buried the celery. The few ducks 
there were all rovers. There was noth- 
ing to hold them anywhere. They would 
light in a place but when flushed never 
come back. 
As soon as I ascertained what the trou- 
ble was, common sense told me to find 
out where those ducks were feeding and 
to go to them. 
In a light boat with a ten-foot paddle 
a man can cover a very considerable dis- 
tance in a day without undue fatigue. I 
kept going until a spot was reached 
where the current from the bayou lost its 
force, where no mud or sediment was 
dumped on the duck food, and there I had 
good shooting. 
At another place, a wide stretch of 
open water with a large slough at one 
end and a fair-sized lake at the other was 
a great fly-way for ringbills which, at 
best, are not easy to work. 
They fought shy of every clump of 
buckbush thick enough to conceal a hun- 
ter or large enough to serve as frame- 
work for a blind. Many of the local 
market shooters had tried often and hard 
to get a good day at those birds — and 
failed. My shooting mate and I deter- 
mined to show them how. 
We built two blinds in thin brush, one 
on each side of this fly- way about the 
middle and perhaps three hundred yards 
apart. Between them we set up two 
“scare-ducks,” old coats — each set on a 
tall piece of brush stuck in the mud 
which, with arms extended, looked hu- 
man enough to make the ducks shy, and 
as each “scare-duck” was only some 
eighty yards from either my partner’s 
blind or my own, a little shying brought 
them within fair gunshot. 
This plan worked well for a day; then 
the ducks got wise and by noon of the 
second day they were paying no more at- 
tention to those old coats and passed over 
and between them, shying only from our 
decoys, but we got plenty before they 
found us out. 
Could the hunt have been prolonged it 
might have been possible by substituting 
a gunner for a coat and letting the ring- 
bills shy from the decoys, to have picked 
up quite a few more. But lots of work 
would have been required for this — such 
as sinking platforms in the soft mud for 
the gunner to stand on and our time was 
limited. 
There are places, particularly during 
mild weather, to which only a few 
stranger ducks come and the original 
ones are very wise. Even the most skill- 
ful hunter is often balked; some new de- 
vice is necessary and new devices good 
enough to fool educated ducks are scarce. 
That type of ducks avoids anything 
which resembles a blind and can tell a 
decoy, even a dead duck set up, from the 
real thing as far as they are able to see it. 
WHILE wind and weather have much 
** to do with the flight of wild-fowl, 
they are not always to be depended on. 
The poorest day’s shooting and the best 
day’s shooting I ever saw around the 
Gulf Coast were both experienced under 
almost identical conditions. 
The poorest was near the mouth of the 
San Jacinto River in Texas just before 
a severe Norther. The water was dead 
and glassy, its surface as smooth as a 
mirror. My kill totalled four. 
My best morning’s shoot, also in Texas 
■ — on Surprise Lake — was before a 
Norther, too. The water was smooth 
and oil-like. That day I killed twenty- 
five canvasbacks, besides many other 
varieties, and was through by ten o’clock. 
And the reason why? 
In the first instance, the ducks were 
all old-timers which had been feeding 
around the mouth of the San Jacinto for 
a couple of months. They knew what 
they wanted and how to get it and they 
were fat and lazy. 
Those on Surprise Lake were mostly 
newcomers — could be seen coming from 
the Northwest high in the air and lower- 
ing when they reached the lake. They 
were tired and hungry and nothing would 
have kept them out of the decoys. 
The Norther was a blast from Boreas 
so strong that when it struck, I was 
obliged to pull up and run. Had I cared 
to finish the day’s shooting the boat 
would not have been large enough to 
carry the dead ducks. 
There was no mystery about the ac- 
tions of these two lots of ducks. The 
old-timers preferred sleeping to eating 
and knew where to find shelter if it be- 
came necessary to look for it. The others 
were ignorant and thought the decoys 
would tell them how to find it. 
I remember a small lake in the North- 
west that I shot over persistently. Be- 
fore the wind-up of the season the mal- 
lards learned to know what a caller was. 
The calling was good and the instrument 
itself perfect, but they just knew, that 
was all, and it would scare them like the 
report of a gun. Strange ducks came to 
it, however, and there were enough of 
them to save the situation. 
Even the wise ducks fell for calling in 
another section of the lake — calling that 
I didn’t think as good as mine. The rea- 
son must have been that they associated 
my style of duck talk with danger com- 
ing from that particular spot and avoided 
it; or they may have been veterans wear- 
ing “shot dimples,” who were playing 
safety first and knew what to expect if 
they came close. In spite of this my 
eighth day in that blind was nearly as 
good as my first. 
Before I came to the lake the local 
gunners had been unable to do anything 
with the ducks. “They can’t be made to 
work,” I was told by several. “Four is 
the high bag for the season,” said one. 
Yet my kill the first day — not a full day, 
either — was seventy-eight. Black clothes, 
big boots, dark-colored blinds — in sharp 
contrast to the light-yellow rice straw 
with which the lake was filled — furnished 
sufficient cause for the failure of the 
ducks to work. 
I have often been asked why the lakes 
and marshes near Chicago in the old days 
never got “burned out.” Why, with 
thousands of black-coated shooters bang- 
ing away day after day in season and out 
of season, one who knew how could al- 
ways get ducks. 
It is simple enough. Lake Michigan 
was and is a duck reservoir, a sort of 
storage plant to furnish water-fowl for 
the much shot little lakes and sloughs all 
the way from Koshkonong to Kankakee. 
