Forest and Stream 
Six Months, $1 50 . 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1913. 
VOL. LXXXI.—No. 1. 
127 Franklin St , New York. 
A Boy’s Recollection of his First Duck Shooting 
By LINWOOD 
U NDOUBTEDLY I awoke a half dozen 
times that morning before 5:30 and had 
dreamed at least three times during the 
night that Frank and I were already 011 the 
Ledge and the birds were coming in from “out¬ 
side,” but then, I was only seventeen years of 
age at the time and it was to be my first try at 
sheldrakes, so it was little wonder that I had 
some difficulty in getting anywhere near my 
usual amount of sleep. Finally with a great 
deal of impatience I scanned the face of my 
watch again by the dim lamp-light and found it 
to be exactly 5:30. 
Arising hastily, I bolted three molasses 
cookies and a glass of cold water—couldn’t stop 
for anything more substantial—and seizing gun 
and shells, sneaked out the end door. I say 
“sneaked,” for my folks weren’t over anxious 
about my going anyway. Already a dim shape 
was coming through the darkness across the 
lawn. It proved to be Frank, and I could see by 
his eager movements that he was every bit as 
anxious as myself to be off. Right here I want 
to say just a word about our equipment. 
Frank’s old gun, a double (?) barrel io-bore, 
had come out of the war of time and hard 
knocks with the loss of an arm—that is, one 
barrel, the left, I think it was, was out of com¬ 
mission. But Frank assured me that it had 
been honorably discharged and was good for 
quite a while to come. My gun, a single 12- 
bore “Champion,” with a trigger-pull of about 
ten pounds, was the envy of all my youthful 
acquaintances. It was the first gun I ever 
owned, and to me it was a thing of love and 
beauty. Our decoys (“tolers,” we called them), 
I’m afraid, must have brought a smile to the 
face of many a sheldrake. In the bunch of 
twelve there were four sheldrake, and one of 
them minus a head. The paint, too, if I re¬ 
member correctly, wasn’t any too bright; but 
we had some beautiful white-winged “coot” de¬ 
coys that more than made up what the others 
lacked. 
And last, but not least, were our pipes. Oh, 
yes, 25-cent genuine French briar with little gilt 
letters “C. P. F.” stamped on the stem. All 
true duck hunters you know smoke a pipe, only 
in our case we were more familiar with the 
pipe end of it than with the ducks. Anyway, 
our outfit was quite the thing and we felt rather 
proud of it. 
Everything stowed snugly in the skiff, we 
pushed off and pulled away for Great Ledge, a 
big black rock that at low tide rises twenty 
feet out of water between the end of Harpswell 
Neck and Haskell’s Island in Maine. The first 
gray streaks of dawn were already showing in 
the east before we had covered half the distance, 
and with some feelings of misgivings we bent 
harder to the oars. Did you ever pull a hard 
rowing punt With all your strength for a mile 
on three molasses cookies and a glass of cold 
water? Try it. As the Ledge hove in sight I 
forgot the gnawing in my stomach, and Frank 
got busy with the decoys. About this time I 
spotted four sheldrake coming toward us out 
of the gray mists. Another second and they 
saw us and promptly changed their course. We 
groaned. 
The decoys out, we rowed to the Ledge 
and pulled our boat up as far as we could out of 
sight from the incoming birds, loaded our guns 
and placed our shells where they would be 
handy for rapid work, then Frank suggested 
