FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 6, 1909. 
216 
Old Time Duck Shooting at Currituck. 
One bright, crisp morning in February I 
awoke to find the waters of old Currituck 
frozen over from side to side. Donning my 
shooting attire and buckling on my skates I took 
a spin down the shore to get up an appetite for 
breakfast, d'his was speedily accomplished, and 
returning to camp, Tom, our cook, said, “Cap¬ 
tain, it am ready." So Will and I sat down to 
a pair of plr.mp, juicy ruddy ducks, roasted just 
thirteen minutes, with a dish of smoking hominy. 
I can taste them yet. For dinner I like mallards, 
redheads or canvasbacks, but for breakfast, 
ruddy ducks every time. Try it, reader, but in¬ 
sist on the hominy if you would be happy. 
While skating I had noticed a few bunches 
of black ducks and mallards flying in a 
southwesterly direction over the north end of 
Churches Island, near where our camp was 
located. It was intensely cold, the mercury 
hovering around zero, and I remarked to Will 
that these ducks were seeking a warmer clime, 
perhaps Reelfoot Lake, in Tennessee, or some 
of the Mississippi lakes or swamps. 
Lighting a cigar and feeling at peace with all 
the world, I slipped on my rubber boots after 
driving a few nails in the heels, dropped seventy- 
five shells in my shooting coat, and took the 
direction I had seen the last flock take across 
the island, hoping to find an air hole to the lee¬ 
ward on the southwest corner. During my walk 
of about two miles, several beautiful bunches 
passed overhead, but too high to shoot. Arriv¬ 
ing at a point known as Wolf House, I found 
it made a fine lee inshore, but there was no air 
hole to be seen, but large flocks of mallard and 
black duck with a sprinkling of widgeon and 
pintails continued to pass overhead. 
I walked out on the ice and tried to break 
through and make a water hole to attract the 
ducks, but it was too thick. I procured a stout 
stick and tried again, but it was no use. In 
the mean time the air was filled with ducks, all 
going the same way. Flow I did wash for an 
axe and a few mallard decoys, but it w'as ten 
miles to camp and time was precious. Gathering 
some flags I hastily made a small blind, then 
gathering twenty-five or thirty “buffalo chips,” 
dropped by the cattle during the previous sum¬ 
mer which had become dry and gray—just the 
color of a female mallard—I placed them on the 
ice about twenty yards to the leeward of the 
point. Taking my stout stick I soon broke off 
as many lumps of lilack frozen earth, or tus¬ 
socks, to keep the chips company. 
I had scarcely reached m'y blind wdien I heard 
a quack and the noise of many wings overhead. 
I tumbled all in a heap and grabbed my gun. 
Twenty or thirty mallards were hovering over 
my lumps of dirt and chips. Two females and 
a greenhead responded to the discharge of my 
gun. Taking a .^mall knife I bored three holes 
in the ice at the out edge of my decoys and 
placed a short stick in each, just high enough 
to support the head in a natural position. I had 
just set them out wdien I looked up to the north. 
Then I ran, fell, crawded, rolled and turned two 
somersaults, but landed on my knees. As I did 
so, at least a hundred black ducks were trying 
to alight among my decoys. Ordinarily with 
such a flock I would expect to kill several 
ducks, but was so much excited I fired in the 
middle of the flock and made a clean miss with 
the right, but killed two with my left. I gath¬ 
ered them and had only time to place their heads 
beneath their wings and gef to the blind when 
six pintails swooped down and were on the ice 
before I could shoot; but when their feet came 
in contact with the slippery ice, they slid and 
fluttered in ever}- direction. On arising, how¬ 
ever, they bunched and I bagged four. 
From that time for tw'o hours I never saw 
such a flight of ducks in all my thirty years’ 
shooting. I could scarcely keep my gun loaded, 
and it became so hot at one time, notwithstand¬ 
ing a zero temperature, I had to open it and 
let one flock come, alight and go away, IMy 
seventy-five cartridges bagged a goodly number 
.■f blacks and mallards, four pintails and one 
redhead. 
The follow'ing night was the coldest I ever 
knew at Currituck, and the ice was five inches 
thick on an average, but I was up with the sun 
and planned a day among the canvasbacks and 
THE NOON HOUR. 
Photographed in the Catskills by G. E. Lceble. 
redheads. Taking a small skiff, commercially 
used at Currituck, and placing two pushing poles 
beneath it for runners, and loading in twenty- 
five canvasback and redhead decoys, we started 
for the middle of the sound. Finding an air 
hole two hundred yards long and fifty yards 
wide. Will and I divided the decoys, and each 
took an end of it. We had each taken a sheet 
from our beds and a six-foot plank to lie on. 
Covering with the sheet this made a perfect 
blind that could not be seen by the ducks. 
I was just located and had loaded my gun, 
when seven canvasbacks dropped down out of 
the sky. It was a beautiful shot and three large 
drakes stayed with my decoys. In ten minutes 
a flock of two or three hundred redheads passed 
by at about forty yards. Fourteen dropped, but 
I only gathered eleven. This is the largest num¬ 
ber I ever killed over decoys with two barrels. 
At the other end of the air hole Will was hav¬ 
ing just as good sport, and on counting up in 
the afternoon we had fifty-seven redheads and 
twenty canvasbacks. 
In all my experience this duck shooting on 
the ice capped the climax, and I learned more 
about it during February, 1899, than I had 
learned in all the years before. 
More Anon. 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and noiv in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
A Squall and Duck Shoot. 
“Hi, Ed., slack away the jib halliards. Quick 
now! Overhaul that downhaul. Let go, peak 
and throat halliards. Good job. Now let’s get 
her snug, before that norther hits us.” 
“Three reefs and peak lashed down is about 
all she’ll stand. Ease her, Vic., ease her; don’t 
let that sea catch her quartering. Good girl— 
good girl.” 
And as the first gust of the squall, with its 
foam-crested sea, swept past, the good sloop 
Alix mounted it buoyantly; balanced for a 
second on its crest, then bowing gracefully, 
slipped down its incline, to meet the second 
roller that snatched at her keel, killed what 
little headway was left and strove to broach 
her to. As Ed. and I swayed to the halliards 
and gave her the treble reefed mainsail, she 
staggered haltingly for a moment, the lee rail 
awash, and the third sea racing madly at her 
out of the darkness. But our confidence in her 
staunchness was not misplaced, for even as 
her cutwater began to rise, with the first up¬ 
heave of the comber, she again gathered way, 
and taking it cpiartering, leaped up its incline, 
sending the foam crest spattering across her 
deck. Plunging her nose into the smother 
ahead, she tore through the rapidly frosting 
air, with that dash and buoyancy that denotes 
a good sea boat, and sets the blood tingling 
through a sailor’s veins. Quickly we snugged 
the jib and stowed it; then drenched and chilled, 
were glad to seek the protection of the half 
cockpit, half cabin, where we changed to dry 
clothing and oilskins, then relieved Vic. at the 
tiller. 
By this time the wind was snarling through 
the rigging, and the yeast-capped seas were 
racing at us, out of the darkness, with the 
re.gularity of the beat of a pendulum. Half 
Moon Lighthouse seemed to speed toward us 
out of the night, its yellow e'ye glinting steadily. 
-Suddenly it flashed red, for the shoals were just 
ahead. So down we jammed the tiller, as she 
mounted a comber, round the Alix spun as 
though on her heel, as the wind spilled out of 
her storm sail, and the boom swept to port, 
and she filled away again on the other tack. A 
short run, then about again, almost under the 
light, and then we seemed to hang, as the full 
force of the current, pouring through the reefs, 
caugli^t at her keel, and strove for the mastery; 
but the pressure of the wind proved greater, 
and slowly the light tower slipped back into the 
night as we clawed through the pass. But the 
white smother of the surf of the east breakers 
was dangerously near, as we filled away, on 
another tack. 
Back and forth across the bay we raced, fight¬ 
ing for each mile that we won from the north 
wind. Tack and gybe, as gradually the shore 
smells grew stronger, the spicy odors of the 
pine, and the biting smoke from the charcoal 
burner’s kilns in the pine woods on the ridges 
above the marsh struck sharply on the nostrils, 
grown more sensitive from the fresh ozone of 
the storm wind. And we knew shore was near. 
Here, too, the seas were less riotous, and now 
and again a clanking and chugging of wood 
against wood came to our ears. 
So it was “Down sail; let go the mud-hook,” 
and await the dawn. Ear off to the eastward lay 
the highlands of Anahuac. and due north, prob- 
