FOREST AND STREAM 
415 
Even “inside the fence” on the reserves, ducks 
seemed to know when club rules allowed shoot¬ 
ing, usually Wednesdays and Sundays, being less 
plentiful those days than at other times, or at 
least the members say so, and toward the end 
of the season the night flight, even in stormy 
Education of the Waterfowl 
weather, was very light until after quitting time. 
The air is full of sprig and spoonies every 
night just before dark,” said one shooter to the 
writer. “We could do nothing but come away 
and leave them.” Education. Education. The 
Pacific Coast ducks are learning as fast as their 
brothers of the Middle West. 
There is no doubt of it; each year game is 
gaining in wisdom. Learning more and more 
the ways of their enemy man. Let them learn. 
They must, to keep pace with the wiles of the 
humans and the advance of civilization. Good 
luck go wifh them in their efforts at acquiring 
an education. 
On the Road to the Arctic by Hudson Bay Steamer. 
It is not generally appreciated that far beyond the last outflung line of civilization, on the 
great rivers of the Canadian north, the Hudson Bay Company maintains steamers that make 
trips of thousands of miles down rivers that the average sportsman knows only by seeing the 
name on the map. The above illustration shows one of these steamers, the “Grahame,” tied up 
for the night on one of the sub-Arctic rivers. These boats are not for passenger service, but 
some day as the country is opened up they may be used as such. 
Ducks of the Pacific Coast are Following the Lead of Their Brothers of 
the Middle West in Learning of Man and His Ways 
By Edward T. Martin 
HAT the ducks of California are 
gaining in worldly wisdom and 
knowledge of the ways of man, 
was very evident toward the 
close of the past season. Dur¬ 
ing the previous spring, as a 
result of an early ending of 
shooting, through the Federal 
law many hundreds of mallard, sprig, teal, with 
not a few canvas, bred in the marsh lands and 
low-lying hay fields around San Francisco Bay. 
These stayed in the reserves and fresh water 
ponds, occasionally perhaps visiting others of 
their kind up Sacramento way or along the 
Suisun marshes until opening day, October ist. 
Then came such a cannonade that they picked up 
and left. Going perhaps to deep water in the 
center of the bay, perhaps to the big fresh water 
lakes in central California or possibly further 
north where they found less guns and gunners. 
Anyway, go they did and remained until the 
cold storms at November’s end brought them and 
thousands of their Northern kindred back again. 
Well, the ducks stood this heavy bombard¬ 
ment for several weeks. Their numbers did not 
seem to decrease although thousands were 
killed. There were great rafts of them in the 
bay. The baited ponds were still populous. 
Fifteen years ago they never seemed to wise up 
to blinds and decoys; now it was different. Each 
day they swung wider and wider from the line 
of blinds. Each day the main flight up and 
down the shore kept further and further out 
and fewer singles and pairs decoyed from the 
flocks, until after the middle of January all a 
blind shooter could do was'watch a constant 
flight of canvasbacks and bluebills half a mile 
out, and sing, “It’s weary waiting here.” Those 
coming to feed by day lit two hundred yards be¬ 
yond the outer blinds, then swam in, craning 
their necks and looking for danger with every 
stroke. They passed between the blinds just 
out of shot until reaching very shallow water 
where they stayed. If some gunner rowed in 
shore and put them up, they circled beyond his 
reach and flew just too far away for any occu¬ 
pant of a blind to kill, finding safety among 
their kind in deep and distant water. They had 
learned. They knew and were as wary as if 
each blind were labelled in big, black letters of 
the duck alphabet, “Danger. Keep your dis¬ 
tance.” Nor is this all. They seemed to know 
when it was quitting time for the hunters and 
as a result did most of their flying very early 
and very late. The Federal law, sunrise and 
sunset, was a dead letter, everyone around the 
bay, commencing half an hour before and con¬ 
tinuing until half an hour after, as provided in 
the State law. A Federal district judge in San 
Francisco had some goose shooters who were 
arrested by a United States marshal, brought be¬ 
fore him and—as the two laws conflict—re¬ 
leased them because the present status of the 
Federal law is doubtful, having been decided 
unconstitutional by the district court of Arkan¬ 
sas, and the reverse by a court of like authority 
in North Dakota. 
