712 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 6, 1913. 
Talk of an Old Timer 
By EDWARD T. MARTIN 
W ATER fowl shooting as an art is but lit¬ 
tle understood by the sportsmen of to¬ 
day. 
If “poets are born, not made,” the reverse is 
true of duck shooters. They are made, not born. 
In the days that are past and gone there 
were millions of aquatic birds; no limit to bags; 
no preserves. Then a shooter had plenty of 
practice and many became experts, not in the 
mere act of gun pointing—for there are just 
as good shots now as in the long ago—but in 
knowledge which can only be gained by experi¬ 
ence. Knowledge of ducks’ habits and ways; 
ability to locate properly, that is to find where 
they feed, or a fly way where they pass day after 
day; skill to judge distance and velocity; judg¬ 
ment as to windage and amount shot will drop 
in extremely long range shooting, and above all 
to know just the time to shoot when ducks are 
working to decoys and caller. These are things 
trap shooting will not teach. One can only learn 
them by long training in the field, training which 
with few ducks and small limit bags as at pres¬ 
ent, it is almost impossible to get. 
Among the things I learned was how to get 
into a light skiff after having been dumped over¬ 
board, and incidentally this knowledge saved my 
life. 
It is hardly probable conditions will render 
such information valuable to the shooter of now- 
a-days, but one can never tell, besides it is not a 
bad story after all. 
It was at American Bottoms in 1882. The 
Bottoms then were a great duck country, but now 
are drained and divided into farms. Big Lake 
with its fifty miles of shore line was the main 
location for shooting and sixty shooters made 
their living and supported wives and children 
from proceeds of game killed on and around it. 
They were skilled mechanics too at this trade 
of duck killing, and unlike other places where the 
writer has been, placed little dependence on de¬ 
coys, relying almost entirely on their ability at 
calling. There were men around Big Lake who 
could talk to the ducks as readily as to one 
another. Talk? Do ducks talk? Indeed they 
do. 
I learned all I ever knew of scientific shoot¬ 
ing by field training, by much experience and 
hard drilling, and by careful study of methods 
used by older and better hunters coupled with 
determination to succeed and a great love of the 
sport. I picked up new ideas wherever I went. 
At one place it was how to improve in the build¬ 
ing of blinds, at another how to use a caller 
properly; then somewhere else, the value of a 
large flock of decoys and how to . keep them 
moving and diving when the water was still. 
North or South it was the same. Some shooter 
would have a scheme figured to ge't the better of 
the birds, which, perhaps with a little modifica¬ 
tion could be borrowed and used later on. The 
writer learned and kept learning until it is prob¬ 
able few men living know more of the fine points 
of duck shooting than he, and it is certain he 
has killed as many water fowl as any man in 
America. 
IN A DUCK BLIND 
Every species of birds has its language. Every 
one has heard a rooster growl out his warning 
if he sees a hawk flying over, or call to a favored 
hen, “Here’s something nice,” when he uncovers 
some tit bit he wishes her to share; or crow a 
ringing challenge of defiance to a neighboring 
rival. So if dullards like domestic fowl can talk, 
why shouldn’t birds of superior intelligence such 
as mallards or geese have like power of express¬ 
ing themselves so as to be understood? 
Let me say* too, a goose may be a goose, 
but not in the common acceptance of the term, 
for geese are among the keenest and quickest 
witted birds that fly. 
“Birds just make sounds; they don’t talk,” 
said a doubting Thomas. Granted, but what is 
human speech but just sounds? I can understand 
what a duck says, can answer so the duck will 
understand me. which is more than he can do 
-VI 
with a Russian, a Chinese or a Japanese when 
such a one speaks in his native tongue. 
To be sure, there are more words in the 
vocabulary of any human language than in a 
dictionary of the wild, but the sounds feathered 
people utter are enough for their needs and are 
talk for them as much as words are to the human 
race. Language any way is but sound and sound 
makes language whether spoken by man, quacked 
by duck or honked by goose. 
Living within twenty yards of Big Lake was 
a man named Glodo, with whom I and my shoot¬ 
ing companion, Fredericks, stopped. This man 
made a perfect caller, using a tongue of silver 
or brass and a body of seasoned walnut. Some¬ 
times it would take him a week to get the right 
twang to a tongue, but when once finished it 
would say everything a duck could and more be¬ 
sides. 
It was wonderful the way ducks understood 
him and the way he understood them. Talk to 
them! Why, he could have qualified as profes¬ 
sor of language in any duck university. 
, 
The night our party reached Big Lake it 
froze almost solid, which compelled us to protect 
the sides and bottoms of our hunting boats with 
zinc, else the ice would have cut them through. 
This done, runners were put on and shod with 
half-round iron so the boats would go over ice 
or snow like a sled. 
The shooting for a while was to be done 
entirely in airholes, and often twelve or fifteen 
miles search would be required before a suitable 
hole could be found. It was rapid traveling, 
though, for the shooter standing well toward the 
stern and using a long steel-pronged pole, could 
drive his boat as fast as horse would trout; 
but let the skiff once slew and the man poling 
would go off at a tangent, stopping goodness only 
knew where, the boat would go in another direc¬ 
tion and the pole somewhere else. By the time 
he had repaired damages and picked up his fix- 
