FOWL SHOOTING. 
125 
as they will frequently let a boat run almost into the midst of 
them, before they will attempt to rise, and when they do so, as 
they usually face the wind in taking wing, they are compelled 
first to breast you, and then to present fine side shots. 
I do not doubt that Mr. Giraud is perfectly right when he 
states, that this practice, if persisted in, has a tendency to 
frighten the Geese from their feeding grounds; and therefore 
for the sake of preserving these, it may be advisable for those 
who have an interest in protecting them, to discountenance the 
method. I cannot for my life, however, see in what respect it 
is unsportsmanlike; nor by any exertion of my wits, can I dis¬ 
cover what there is sportsmanlike at all, in any portion of our 
system of fowl shooting. Indeed, though it be well enough as 
a mode of killing game, it is to me wofully dull work, however 
rapidly the shots may come in, to lie cramped up on your belly 
in a boat, or still worse, on your back in a battery, in cold au 
tumn weather, with the salt water freezing wherever the spray 
falls on your pea-jacket, or sou’-wester, or in warm spring-time, 
with the sun blazing down in your face, and reflected upward 
from the intense mirror of the liquid surface. 
There is no accounting for tastes, however, and certainly no 
true sportsman will take much heed of the fatigue, or roughing 
of any kind, to which he must submit, in the pursuit of his favo¬ 
rite game. If less discomfort, there is more toil by half in Up¬ 
land shooting, whether it be winter or summer, than in decoy 
fowl shooting ; to me the lack of excitement, and the sameness 
of position, is the great drawback to the sport; I have learned, 
however, to respect the tastes of all men, and to depreciate no 
kind of sport, especially one which has so many ardent and en¬ 
thusiastic followers, as this of Long Island fowl shooting. 
I should, indeed, be but a degenerate sportsman, and a poor 
disciple, had I listened so often as I have done to the quaint 
converse, and revelled so rarely in the eloquent descriptions of 
my poor friend, J. Cypress, junr., rejoicing to narrate how he 
and Ned Locus “could each cut down a Leather-head, flying 
by a point of marsh before a strong north-wester, sixty yards 
