December, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
541 
T 
brawn by JJwignt W. iiuntington 
When ducks are working well there is no finer shooting in all outdoors 
A similar but smaller benefit accrues 
to the adjacent country from making a 
game reserve of Fox Lake near the Wis- 
consin State line. This fall the lake was 
full of ducks and well watched by many 
game wardens while the neighboring 
lakes were full of shooters with only here 
and there a duck. 
The ducks seemed to be able to read 
the posted notices : “Game Refuge. Keep 
off”; for they would swim near the 
boundary line in large flocks accom- 
panied by their poor relations, the mud- 
hens. They would take a look, quack, 
dive, splash in the water a bit, then turn 
and go back, never once crossing the 
danger line; while the hunters, hiding in 
the “open territory,” could only shake 
their fists and say things to them. 
In this Fox and Grass Lake country, 
they have something in use which should 
be termed an “Alibi-killer.” Nothing 
more nor less than a deep-toned bell 
which rung at sunrise and sunset, says: 
“Commence shooting,” or “Cease firing,” 
as the case may be, shutting out the old 
excuses : “The warden’s watch was 
wrong,” “The sun was hidden by the fog, 
but I did the best I could to obey the 
law.” 
A NOTHER thing that makes bad 
actors out of usually well-behaved 
ducks is tobacco smoke. I have seen it 
spoil shooting for a hunter who should 
have known better than to be smoking a 
pipe when ducks were working up wind 
to his decoys. 
Taught by years of experience ducks 
associate a puff of smoke with danger 
and when it comes from a thick bunch of 
grass they imagine it to be a noiseless 
gun, all smoke and no sound; so, taking 
no chances, they tower away and go else- 
where. 
Shooting one day, half a mile down 
wind from a gunner using a strong pipe, 
many a whiff reached me and a shot or 
two was spoiled. As for the shooter, 
when ducks would set their wings and 
start for his decoys and, scenting the 
smoke, turn away, he would show his 
anger by banging away at them regard- 
less of distance, thus spoiling the shoot- 
ing for others and adding to the shyness 
of the game. 
Another thing that prevents ducks 
from working and makes the shooter 
wonder why they do not is a boat bobbing 
around in a blind. It is better to lay 
crosspieces below the seat in the blind 
and pull the skiff up on them than to have 
it jumping and pounding and scaring 
away every duck that starts to come in. 
A more desirable way, however, is to 
have a shooting partner and take turn 
and turn about with him, one shooting 
and the other tending, then there is no 
skiff in the blind to bother about. 
If you think that ducks are finiky and 
hard to please, they are not a circum- 
stance to geese. This is not appreciated 
so much in the East — where I have never 
seen any real good goose shooting — as in 
California where, in the old days, bags 
of a hundred were very common; but 
now, with the small limit restriction, 
large bags are impossible. 
Usually with geese, where one flock 
goes the others follow. The shooting in 
California is from pits; and no parlor 
floor is more carefully swept than the 
ground around a newly-dug goose pit. 
Not a spoonful of loose dirt is left — 
nothing the geese can see — nor is an 
empty shell thrown out. 
A flight was turned one morning by a 
single empty shell that an automatic had 
tossed back of a decoy and out of sight 
of the shooter. 
The geese had been coming low and 
without fear. Suddenly the flocks began 
splitting on the pit, avoiding it as if it 
were a plague spot; some going on one 
side just out of range, some on the other 
and in vain did the shooter search for the 
reason until the flight was half over — 
then he spied that shell. When it was re- 
moved the geese worked all right again. 
The shell had fallen in such a position 
that the rays of the sun were reflected 
from its brass head, making a bright spot 
that caused suspicion on the part of the 
geese. Had it not been taken away, there 
would have been but little more shooting 
that day and the man might have attrib- 
uted the splitting of the flocks on the pit 
to a whim of the geese and perhaps have 
told the story as an illustration of how 
notional wild-fowl sometimes are. When 
he learned the reason of their fear, it was 
a good lesson, and one not forgotten. I 
know, for I was the man. 
