142 
THE MALLARD. 
tion for being raked from a concealment of brush, &c. on shore. 
The appearance of these usually attracts passing flocks, which 
alight, and are shot down. Sometimes eight or ten of these 
painted wooden ducks are fixed on a frame in various swim- 
ming postures, and secured to the bow of the gunner’s skiff, 
projecting before it in such a manner that the weight of the 
frame sinks the figures to their proper depth ; the skiff is then 
dressed with sedge or coarse grass in an artful manner, as low 
as the water’s edge ; and under cover of this, which appears 
like a party of ducks swimming by a small island, the gunner 
floats down sometimes to the very skirts of a whole congregated 
multitude, and pours in a destructive and repeated fire of shot 
among them. In winter, when detached pieces of ice are 
occasionally floating in the river, some of the gunners on the 
Delaware paint their whole skiff or canoe white, and, laying 
themselves flat at the bottom, with their hand over the side, 
silently managing a small paddle, direct it imperceptibly into 
or near a flock, before the ducks have distinguished it from a 
floating mass of ice, and generally do great execution among 
them. A whole flock has sometimes been thus surprised asleep, 
with their heads under their wings. On land, another strata- 
gem is sometimes practised with great success. A large tight 
hogshead is sunk in the flat marsh, or mud, near the place 
where ducks are accustomed to feed at low water, and where 
otherwise there is no shelter ; the edges and top are artfully 
concealed with tufts of long coarse grass and reeds or sedge. 
From within this the gunner, unseen and unsuspected, watches 
his collecting prey, and, when a sufficient number offers, 
sweeps them down with great effect. The mode of catching 
wild-ducks, as practised in India,* China,f the island of Cey- 
lon, and some parts of South America,^ has been often de- 
scribed, and seems, if reliance may be placed on those accounts, 
* Naval Chronicle^ vol. iL p. 473. 
f Du Halde, History of China, vol. ii. p. 142. 
Ueloa’s Voyage, i. p. 53. 
