UPLAND SHOOTING. 
299 
DUCK SHOOTING, ON INLAND WATERS. 
N the Eastern and Midland 
States, unless on the borders of 
the great lakes, this sport of late 
years can hardly be said to exist 
at all. The birds k are becoming 
rare and wild, and, although still 
shot in sufficient numbers by the 
local gunners, on the streams of 
New-Jersey, to supply the demand of the markets, they are not 
found numerous enough to justify the pursuit of the sportsman. 
Formerly on the drowned lands of Orange county, on the 
meadows of Chatham and Pine Brook, on the Passaic and its 
tributaries, before the modem system of draining and embank¬ 
ing, hundreds, nay ! thousands of acres were annually covered 
with shallow water, at the breaking up of winter, and the inun¬ 
dated flats were literally blackened with all the varieties of 
Duck which I have heretofore enumerated, affording rare sport 
to the gunner, and alluring gentlemen from the larger cities to 
follow them with the canoe ; in a day’s paddling of which, among 
the inundated groves, and over the floated meadows, it was no 
unusual event, nor regarded in any wise as extraordinary good 
fortune, to kill a hundred fowl and upward of the different va¬ 
rieties, all of which, however, are alike in one respect, that they 
are all delicious eating. I have myself been in the habit of con¬ 
sidering the Summer Duck as the most delicate and succulent 
