648 
Nov. 22, I913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Duck Shooting Off Jacquish Ledge. 
A Casco Bay 66 Yarn 9 
M ANY times had Frank and I lain beneath 
the old spruce tree down on the Point 
smoking hayseed cigarettes and listening 
to the boom of the black powder as some fortu¬ 
nate gunner cut loose into a flock of coots off 
Jacquish Ledge. Sometimes on a Saturday 
morning we would lie for hours, dreaming of 
the time when we, too, could take a hand in 
the sport. 
Our dreams had come true. And one Octo¬ 
ber morning found us in a borrowed boat on 
the way to Jacquish. The over surplus of our 
youthful ardor left us with two pairs of blis¬ 
tered hands from a too close attention to the 
oars, but such little inconveniences as those were 
soon forgotten in the keen enjoyment of antici¬ 
pation when we strung up the decoys. There 
were fifteen in all. Some of them so full of 
shot that they would scarcely float, but they had 
been shot over for twelve years, and the heavy 
weight of conscience in their guilty souls ought 
anyway to have sunk them. 
An old gunner had told us to anchor about 
one hundred yards to the southward of the 
ledge. He said he had shot “a good many birds 
round Jacquish and the Duck Ledges, and for 
proof he told us of the time he had shot fifty- 
six with a muzzleloader. “Oh, yes,” he said, 
nipping off a chew of “Black B. & L,” “you 
never saw no such a rip as that.” 
One thing I'll credit to the fiery enthusiasm 
of youth, it had procured us a good berth; there 
wasn't another boat on the grounds when we 
arrived. Soon, however, another craft contain¬ 
ing two men put in an appearance, and from 
the way they swore when they found that two 
striplings had secured their position, I judged 
they must have come from Bailey’s Island. It 
lacked a half hour of daylight then, so we 
waited and listened to their lurid opinions of 
ourselves. It was certainly an education in it¬ 
self, plugged full of descriptive adjectives. In 
the meantime several other boats showed up, 
and with the first gray streaks of dawn we put 
out the decoys. As I said before, we had fifteen, 
and we decided to put a string of nine toward 
the flight, and another of six astern of us in 
case anything should come from that quarter. 
I told Frank he might attend the latter, but he 
Licked like an old army musket and said “he’d 
be hanged (?) if he would.” 
Just a word here in regard to the ideal 
shooting location of Jacquish Ledge. Jacquish 
Island lies south of Bailey’s Island, in Casco 
Bay, Maine, with Jacquish Ledge south of the 
island bearing the same name. The coots fol¬ 
low the coast line coming from Small Point 
and Seguin, thence to the Ledge straight in the 
path, and from there to Mark Island and the 
other islands outside all the way, to the Cape 
shore along Portland Head, and so on, prob¬ 
ably giving us a shot at those same birds down 
here in Plymouth, Mass. 
Frank was plucking at my sleeve and in 
answer to my interrogative glance he nodded 
toward the east. Coming on a beeline were six 
little gray coots. With necks held stiff they 
sailed into the decoys, and we, like idiots, al- 
By FRANK L. BAILEY. 
lowed them to alight, then we proceeded to 
murder them. Yes, we got them all. We de¬ 
served to lose them, though, and Frank said he 
didn't exactly feel right about shooting them 
that way. He said we should have taken them 
on the wing. He was right. Only a hog will 
deliberately permit coots to alight and then 
slaughter them. We cast off the halter and 
rowed off and picked up the birds. Hardly 
had we returned ere there was a “Rip, whang!” 
from the boat inside of us and four whitewings, 
out of a bunch of seven, pitched into the water, 
the remaining .three flashing by us to leeward, 
enabling Frank to stop one. We secured that 
one and waited. After a few moments I spotted 
a single 1 utterball coming from the eastward 
I was wishing for something to distract my 
attention when a loon accommodatingly hove in 
sight. He was coming some, too. It's a habit 
they have around Jacquish, and they generally 
manage to measure a gunshot pretty well, at 
that. We saw that he was almost out of reach, 
but we were shooting io-bores and heavy loads, 
so we let him have it right and left. He let out 
a yell that could be heard for a mile and headed 
for Turnip Island Rock, as though to split it 
in halves. The last we saw of him he was howl¬ 
ing occasionally, but making fair time. This 
loon episode reminds me of a story that once 
went the rounds of the bay. An old disciple of 
the muzzleloader, cooting at Jacquish, saw a 
loon coming at him like a cyclone with a fair 
FRANK MADE A 
and bet Frank two “Blue Rival” shells against 
a “New Club” that I could stop him with one 
barrel. Frank took me up and I lost; in fact, 
I missed him with both, and my companion shot 
him dead. 
The boat inside of us was getting the choice 
shooting, owing to the fact that they had 
squeezed in there almost too close for safe 
shooting. Frank said he didn't “care a rap” 
if we did put some No. 4s into them. Then he 
muttered something about “game hogs” (he’d 
read the expression somewhere in a sporting 
magazine). 
The sun rose slowly round and clear, appar¬ 
ently from out of the sea just as it might emerge 
from a morning bath, but its fresh, early beauty 
was lost on me, for I had suddenly discovered 
that the toss and pound of our craft was gener¬ 
ating a peculiar, death-like feeling in the pit of 
my stomach. I realized all at once that the 
sea was rough. And let me tell you when the 
old Atlantic gets to doing things with the south¬ 
ern end of Bailey's Island, it is rough. I noticed 
that Frank hadn’t been doing much in the con¬ 
versation line for the past ten minutes; no doubt 
his stomach had him guessing, too. 
CLEAN DOUBLE. 
wind. When the loon came so near that the 
man thought the bird had designs on his life 
insurance policy, he let him have it “right be¬ 
tween the face and eyes,” then threw up his 
arms and fell forward on his face. The loon, 
with speed scarcely lessened, dove into the boat 
head first. The man picked himself up, and found 
the bird apparently dead. When the man was 
rowing home he felt a sharp pain about two 
inches below his hip pocket; the loon had handed 
him one. Then the man had to kill it all over 
again. 
There were two youngsters just outside of 
us that were doing some pretty fair shooting. 
Every boy on Bailey’s Island goes cooting the 
minute he is old enough to distinguish a gun 
from a crowbar. ‘ Ret” Sinnett was there, too. 
He generally utilized two or three guns, begin¬ 
ning with a “pump” as soon as the birds were 
within shooting distance and ending with a 
double 8-gauge, when they were just disappear¬ 
ing in the distance. He stopped them, too. 
Nearly everybody shot black powder, using brass 
shells mostly, and the puff and roar used to be 
something almost wonderful. I saw “Ret” make 
shots that day that would astonish you. A 1 
