BAY SHOOTING. 
115 
tamest and most tedious of sports, waiting at stands for Deer 
always excepted. 
All wild-fowl shooting, with that one exception—sailing for 
Brant—must be executed by ambush, not by pursuit; and, not 
being patient, to me lying in ambush is an insufferable bore, 
-whether the result is to be the getting a hundred shots at Sand¬ 
pipers and Plovers, or one at a great terrified Hart or Hind. 
To those who are fond of this sort of thing, however, the mode 
to be pursued, for which there are abundant opportunities, and 
excellent grounds everywhere, from Cape May to Montauk 
Point, and again in Boston Bay, is to sally forth at the fitting 
period of the tide, to conceal themselves either in a boat moored 
in a niche scooped out of a mud bank, or behind a screen of 
sedge on a salt marsh, near some one of the little ponds which 
abound in such locations, and having set out a number of wooden 
decoys, shaped and painted like the various kinds of shore birds, 
as if they were feeding in the marshes, or wading in the little 
pools, to await the approach of the flocks. 
These, as the tide gradually rises, and successively covers the 
various feeding grounds which they frequent, begin to fly in 
great numbers ; and as they pass the various leads or passages 
between the salt meadow islets, are lured down by the gunners, 
who possess rare skill in imitating the cry or whistle of every 
separate species, to the vicinity of the decoys, or stools, as they 
are technically called, over which they will hover within fifteen 
or twenty yards of the shooter’s ambush, and among which they 
will sometimes alight, and begin to feed, unconscious of the de¬ 
ceit. In order to render this more artful, some gunners are used 
to set up the dead birds which they have shot, by the aid of small 
sticks, among the decoys, or to tether a wing-tipped bird to a 
peg among them, in order to call down his passing comrades. 
Some of the species are whistled much more easily, and come 
down more readily than others; but the proficiency which some 
of the men obtain in the art of deceiving, and calling down the 
various Sandpipers and Plovers, is very striking, and with 
good man, such as John Verity, Jem Smith’s boys, the Raynors 
