FOREST AND STREAM 
1233 
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“OLD FREAK” 
AROUND THE ROARING CLUB FIRE 
DUCK HUNTERS TELL THIS TALE 
By C. M. Clark 
T HE mystery of Hill Top is still the talk of 
native duck hunters of the low country 
around the headwaters of the Gunpowder 
river, in Maryland. 
Old river hunters never tire of telling the 
story, and with a fresh log in the old-fashioned 
fireplace and a soft, red glow to gaze at, such 
guests will never tire of listening. 
Hill Top is the name of an old ducking club 
that for generations has held forth in a weather¬ 
beaten frame house that gave the club its name. 
The clubhouse fronts every nor’wester that rips 
and snorts across the vast marshes at the head 
of the Gunpowder, about a mile above the Penn¬ 
sylvania railroad bridge. Standing on a knoll 
on the Harford county side, the old house over¬ 
looks the entire marshy expanse. Some time 
it rocks and groans when the wind comes out 
of the northwest. Truly it has to put up with 
much more than its share of this sort of violence. 
But these same winds sometimes blow much 
good to the gunners. They blow ducks and geese 
shoreward despite their strong wings and give the 
sportsmen many recherche shots that but for 
the wind they would not get. These marshes 
in the days to which this story relates were a 
paradise for wild fowls, especially mallards both 
gray and black. Also a great many geese bedded 
and fed there at night. The mallards usually 
made their first appearance there on their south¬ 
ern flight along about September, according to 
the weather around their northern breeding 
grounds. The best mallard shooting in the Gun¬ 
powder usually came between dusk and ’ark, 
when the birds stole in from the Chesapeake Bay 
and its tributaries to feast upon the harvest of 
wild oats that a bountiful nature had scattered 
in utmost profusion all over the swampy ground. 
Legally the shooting season then did not open 
until November i. From the first day Hill Top 
members made the most of their privilege. As 
a rule, they hunted also around daybreak, killing 
many birds as they began their retreat to wat.rs 
far beyond their merciless human foe. 
Those who went to the Gunpowder in the 
season of 1904-5 will not forget it. Any of them 
could count the ducks he bagged from its be¬ 
ginning to end. If the birds had been scarce 
nobody would have thought anything of it. They 
were fully as plentiful as in the past few years. 
Flock after flock they came, tens of thousands 
of birds feeding on the marsh at one time. As 
if something had suddenly happened, the flocks 
got so wise that the gunners could seldom get 
a shot at them. Never before had it been thus 
with the old timers around here. A 1 Grupe, 
Bill Spicer and other veterans who shot there 
were considered far above the average in skill 
with the duck gun. Yet they were little more 
successful than the mere tyros who had just 
come into the ranks of the gunners. 
What was the matter? 
The question was thrashed out through long 
winter evenings in front of log fires. The oldest 
natives could shed no light upon it. Although 
resorting from day to day to all the old tricks 
that had served them so well in the past, the 
hunters still found their efforts wasted. Ordi¬ 
narily the mallard, though accounted by old 
hunters one of the wiliest of the feathered tribes 
falls easy prey to an experienced man with a gun. 
Something was wrong. 
It was not lack of live decoys. They had 
suddenly become worthless, although a bran’- 
new specimen had just been added to the flock. 
One evening at dark Grupe and several other 
Hill Top members were standing on the railroad 
bridge at the north shore of the river. Suddenly 
a huge winged shadow flew across the moonlight 
near the shore. Grupe was the first to see it. 
He threw his gun to his shoulder and fired. A 
heavy body dropped in the water. Two men put 
out in a punt and after a battle with the fowl 
brought it ashore. It turned out to be merely 
crippled. 
What all had thought to be a large Canadian 
goose proved to be a great curiosity to all duck 
hunters who ever saw it. With every mark of 
the drake gray mallard from the green head 
feathers to those of the same hue in the tail, 
it was plainly a huge member of that species, 
only ten to twelve times the normal size. Its 
captors’ idea about its genesis was expressed in 
the name they chose for it “Freak.” 
The left wing bone was shattered by shot, but 
apparently nowhere else had it been hit by a 
single pellet. It was carried off to Hill Top and 
penned up in a close. The domestic flock of 
ducks, known as “puddlers,” but in reality a 
domesticated breed of the gray mallard family, 
that made their home on the place, were all 
curiosity over their overgrown kinsman. In 
duck file, which corresponds to the single Indian 
style, the tame birds waddled round and round 
the close until they got on quacking terms with 
the prisoner. The friendship between them grew 
so fast that it was not long before the wild 
captive was leading the domestic flock around 
and enjoying all the other ducks’ liberties of the 
estate. With one wing broken, flight was impos¬ 
sible. As much as possible had been done by 
crude surgery for the broken wing. 
What a splendid decoy to call the wild flocks 
in the marshes Freak would make already had 
dawned upon Hill Top members, and they were 
only waiting their chance to try him out. Finally 
it came. Freak was tethered in the grass just 
as the others were and he quacked with the 
little ones. But there was something new in the 
big fellow’s coarse gutturals—something extra 
thrown in between the familiar quacks—that the 
gunners had not heard before. Nor had the 
other decoys ever heard it, but they soon got on 
to it. At first their imitations were crude, but 
they improved them with almost every call. 
But the new call drove the wild flocks away 
instead of decoying them within gun shot. Luck 
deserted the hunters. They were puzzled. The 
flocks kept on coming in, but almost invariably 
found safety in some far-off segment of the 
marsh where no gunner could surprise them. 
The men followed them with their decoys, 
but there was no use. The flocks simply would 
not decoy to these birds. The call only made 
them turn and crane their necks to sense the 
direction of it. Then the drakes that led the 
flight would steer the flock away from danger. 
Thinking at last that the big decoy might have 
frightened the fowls, the hunters decided to try 
leaving him ashore. The old reliables were 
taken out after that, but the flocks still gave 
them a wide berth. The hunters confessed 
themselves beaten and at their wits’ ends. 
Along toward the spring of 1905 solution of 
the mystery came by accident. Grupe and Spicer 
pushed off shore one morning before daybreak. 
The fussing and splashing sounds from the marsh 
