October, 1919 
526 
forest and stream 
OLD DUCKING DAYS ON CAPE COD 
CONCERNING A GREAT STORM AT EEL GRASS COVE ON THE BARNSTABLE 
FLATS WHEN DUCKS INIMYRIAD NUMBERS SWEPT IN FROM THE SEA 
By WALTER M. HASTINGS 
The marshland is threaded with narrow water-ways 
T wenty years 
ago, my only 
black duck 
shooting had been 
over live decoys 
from a well-ap- 
pointed stand. The 
old market gunners 
objected to wing 
shooting as not be- 
i n g remunerative 
enough and any- 
thing except sit- 
ting shots when a 
flock decoyed was 
severely frown^ 
upon. I did not 
care for this kind 
of sport and when 
I first heard about 
wing-shooting from 
a boat over wooden 
decoys, I was very 
anxious to try it. 
One Thursday aft- 
ernoon in the mid- 
dle of October 
found me in a little town on the south 
shore of Cape Cod watching my young 
friend Oscar trying to get a shot at 
a crippled coot on the beach. He was 
sitting in an old chair well exposed 
to view, waiting for the “game” to 
come ashore. The coot escaped. Oscar 
had been convalescing from an illness 
and was now in good shape, so when I 
suggested that we prevail upon a mutual 
friend, William H., to take us on a duck 
shooting expedition to the Barnstable 
marshes, Oscar was on fire in a minute. 
The more so probably because he was 
soon leaving for home and school, and the 
salt air, the wind in the pines, and the 
smell of the marshes would be a thing 
of the past in a very short time. 
A word about William H. or Billy, as 
his friends call him. Imagine a slight, 
wiry man, a little below medium height, 
brown hair and mustache, who knows by 
intuition where birds and fish will be. A 
noted shot, a capital cook (ducks eight- 
een to twenty-five minutes according to 
your preference) and a most charitable 
friend — and you have him. He will ex- 
cuse your poor shots and your failure to 
land the big bass. He never gives advice 
unless pressed for it and is then a lit- 
tle shy about it for fear of offending. 
We found Billy painting the east side 
of the school house. And all three of us 
sat on the flag pole to talk it over. The 
flag pole was new and was on the ground. 
Billy offered a number of objections — 
he is not however a hard man to argue 
out of work if there is a prospect of a 
good bag. We discussed ways and 
means. 
That night at 7 o’clock, Billy and 
Oscar drove up to Mrs. Nye’s, where I 
was staying, to pick me up. Strange to 
say, the last thunder storm of the sea- 
son caught us before we could get away. 
Finally at eight, we started north on 
the six-mile drive across the Cape to 
the shack on the south side of the Barn- 
stable marshes. Billy and a few friends 
had built it for just this purpose. 
Before the days of the automobile, I 
used to enjoy the rides at night over 
the sandy main roads and the wood roads 
on Cape Cod. Everything as black as a 
hat — I always wondered luw anyone 
could find his way about. Now your 
light goes with you and the roads are 
as smooth as a floor. The night in ques- 
tion was damp and cloudy and especially 
black. We arrived in due course. 
T O the uninitiated, the harbor and 
marshes are curious places. At the 
bottom of Massachusetts Bay, a 
strip of beach and high dunes seven 
miles long form the coast, broken at the 
east end by a narrow entrance to the 
harbor, guarded by the lighthouse. Run- 
ning along south of the dunes is marsh- 
land threaded with wide and narrow wa- 
terways, except at the east end where 
the harbor is situated. From the dunes 
to the mainland is about three miles, so 
there are about fifteen square miles of 
territory to play over. The salt creeks 
form many marsh islands and sand is- 
lands and shell fish, ducks, gulls, seals, 
and various kinds of fish are abundant. 
To be in a well-thatched boat, decoys 
out, the stars still shining and watch 
the early dawn and the teeming life 
around you is a worth-while experience. 
A pair of blacks, talking in low duck 
language, swim in from the neighbor- 
ing thatch. 
The drake says something and the duck 
breaks into a loud call. Other and more 
distant ducks chip into the game. Then 
three black bullets 
pitch out of no- 
where and with a 
long drawn splash 
land in the decoys 
— you cannot see 
them. Presently as 
the sky-line light- 
ens in the east, the 
gulls begin to call 
— a flock of crows 
come from the 
mainland making 
much noise. In the 
half tAvilight, you 
flush the ducks in 
front of y o u and 
get in both barrels 
with success. At 
once, with a loud- 
quack, a duck 
springs from the 
thatch directly be- 
hind you and is off 
like a bullet. Now 
small flocks that 
will not decoy jour- 
ney from the marsh a mile or so to west- 
ward out to sea. Some cross near where 
you are lying, but do not notice the de- 
coys. Your duck call is usually useless 
at this time. The chimes of a flock of 
yellow-legs come floating down the wind. 
The sun comes up, its almost level rays 
producing wonderful color schemes with 
cloud, blue water and golden thatch. 
Sparrows take quick short flights around 
your boat; meadow larks sing and in the 
distance you can hear beetle-head calling. 
Something scares a flock of big gulls on 
a sand spit a half a mile across the 
water and they look like a snowstorm in 
the sunlight; a seal comes up among the 
decoys and noses them. The wind is 
rising- — the day has begun. 
•'T'HE shack was simplicity itself. Six 
I bunks, a stove, sink, table and 
closet. The smell of oil skins and 
tarred rope greeted one on entering and 
mingled with bacon and coffee and wood 
smoke in the morning. We did not make 
an early start. At eleven, after over- 
hauling the boats, we got away and I 
took my first lesson in the new (to me) 
kind of shooting. 
Going in a northwesterly direction 
from the open water of the harbor up a 
broad creek, Billy announced that we 
would separate. He said to me, as we 
came to a little creek in the marsh wall: 
“When the tide is high enough to float 
your boat you go through here and you’ll 
come out at Eel Grass Cove. Set up on 
the point the way I’ve told you and 
ducks’ll fly when the tide gets up near 
full. I’ll come for you at sun down, 
so you stay right there till you see me. 
I’ll place Oscar and go to Slough Point 
myself.” These names meant nothing to 
me then. While waiting for the tide Pll 
