On the Rail Grounds. 
New York City, Sept. 20. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: I have always been fond of rail shoot¬ 
ing, and each season try to get one or two days 
in the boat on the grounds where 1 used to 
shoot many years ago. More than once have 
I sent you exciting accounts of my days on the 
river. 
There is nothing strenuous about rail shoot¬ 
ing, and yet its activities may vary in degree. 
An old friend of mine used to sit in a revolving 
chair and shoot in kid gloves; while a young 
friend wore nothing but a flannel shirt, trousers 
and a pair of canvas shoes, and was in the water 
and on the marsh about as much as he was in 
the boat If one has energy to be active and 
helpful, and to go overboard whenever it seems 
necessary to lighten the boat and get it off a 
hummock or through a thick piece of grass, he 
makes work easier for the pusher and covers 
just so much more ground. 
This year I was unable to get out on the 
opening day, but that did not trouble me much, 
for long experience has taught me that the 
opening day is often very disappointing. All 
that one may do then, can be done a little bit 
later just as well, as if he were first in the field. 
For the same reason I do not think it neces¬ 
sary to start out for my upland .shooting at the 
crack of dawn. Give the birds a little time to 
get onto the feeding ground and to work around 
through them. In that way you are more likely 
to find them and you make things easier for 
your dog. 
When I got down to the river the other day, 
Charley, my shover, told me that there was lots 
of grass, that the seed had already begun to 
fall; that the first two or three days of the sea¬ 
son had not been satisfactory, but that he be¬ 
lieved a new flight of birds was about due. The 
tide did not promise anything very great, and 
when we started out from the bank we seemed 
to be the only boat on the river. I was very 
glad of this, for I do not like too many boats 
about. I was unlucky enough once to get in 
the way of a charge of shot, and while the pep¬ 
pering that I received caused no serious dam¬ 
age, still it stung a little bit, though only a few 
pellets reached the skin and these did not stick 
in it. It is lucky sometimes that the shot used 
in rail shooting is small and the powder charge 
light. 
I 
The tide was running up the river pretty 
strongly, yet it would be some time before we 
could get into the grass. So we just drifted 
along, and while we drifted, talked over old 
times, with their bird plenty, and old shooters 
whose exploits used to be so well known on 
the river, but who long ago laid aside gun and 
rod. At last having reached the grass, we 
shoved in a little way and then sat there until 
the tide had risen to the proper point, and 
then pushed in. 
It seemed good to hear again the smooth 
■swish of the grass against the sides of the boat 
and the patter of the seeds as they fell into it 
from the grass. We had gone only a boat 
length or two, when a rail hopped up ahead and 
flew quartering away and gave me a shot. 
Charley threw the block with his usual skill, 
and two or three minutes later block and bird 
were recovered. 
As we pushed on, a number of birds were 
started, most of them flying slow and heavily, 
for there was no wind to hurry them along, and 
the birds seemed fat and logy. 
“I believe this is a new flight, Charley,” I 
said, “these birds are fat and heavy, and I be¬ 
lieve they have just come in, and not come from 
far either. Look at this one”; and I tossed 
him the last bird recovered. 
“ ’Tis a heavy one, isn’t it, sir,” he replied. 
“I thought, from the way those birds flew, that 
a new flight must have just come in”; and so 
it proved. We started a number of birds in 
this piece of grass, all of them slow to get up 
and fly, and all of them heavy. Pushing inside 
this piece of grass and up a little creek, we 
found the birds very different. Much more shy 
and much more active. Some of them were 
even wild, and at the sound of our voices rose 
far out of shot, and then dropped down on the 
meadow where it would be useless to try put 
them up. After that we ceased to talk and got 
two or three birds. The new flight had just 
come in and had dropped down in the outside 
grass, and as yet had not scattered out over 
the grounds at large. 
Coming back, a blow of the pushpole among 
some cat-tails near the mouth of the creek 
started a Virginia rail which I saved, and then 
going out and taking to the oars again, we 
rowed up to a patch of thin grass which grows 
on the point of an island. It hardly seemed 
worth while to shove through this, because the 
stems of the grass stand so far apart that it 
looks as if you could see through the grass and 
see everything that was in it. Nevertheless, we 
had not gone far before a couple of rails got 
up together, and I made the only double of the 
day. A little further on I heard a splashing 
noise in the water, and presently saw a mud- 
hen, which here we call a sea crow, pulling foot, 
as hard as it could, for a bunch of thick weeds 
at the edge of the land. It came very near 
getting away, but I managed to stop it before 
it quite reached the place of safety. As it was 
flapping along with much noise, I thought of 
the title “splatterer,” one of the names which 
Trumbull gives for this species, and which is 
admirably descriptive. 
Just as we were at the outer edge of this 
grass, a bird got up and turned in toward the 
island, and.just as I w T as about to pull the 
trigger, the bow of the skiff ran up on a floating 
drift log and threw off my aim. The bird fell, 
nevertheless, and Charley said he thought he 
had been hit by the edge of the load. Although 
the grass was open, he threw a block, but when 
we got to the place nothing could be seen of the 
bird. We searched and searched, examining 
each little bit of grass that stuck up out of the 
water, to see if it was not the bill of the bird, 
and finally Charley shoved the boat sidewise 
over the place two or three times, but without 
avail. We then decided to give the bird up as 
lost, and to go on, and Charley had already be¬ 
gun to prepare for the first shove, when, taking 
a last look over the side of the boat, I saw 
the rail clinging to a grass stem, in plain sight. 
No doubt it had been hidden somewhere di¬ 
rectly under our noses, but the moving of the 
boat had brought it to the surface. 
1 he tide was now beginning to fall and we 
commenced to work toward home. As we 
pushed through a fringe of grass on another 
small island, a tiny little heron jumped out of 
the grass and swiftly flapped off. I pitched up 
my gun to shoot at it, and then seeing what the 
bird was, took it down again, for there was no 
reason for killing a little least bittern. These 
birds are scarce enough at best, and because 
they are not often seen all the collectors and a 
great many people who are not collectors like 
to kill them. I have seen men who killed birds 
that they did not recognize, simply for the fun 
of the thing, and then after they had looked at 
them, threw them overboard. Such an act is 
far from sportsmanlike, and seems to me very 
unworthy. 
On the way to the landing we saw three little 
bunches of ducks. A pair and a trio were 
black ducks evidently, and presumably had been 
bred somewhere hereabouts. A little bunch of 
six or seven that rose at a distance were clearly 
teal, though they were too far off for me to 
identify with certainty. I believe they were 
green-winged teal, a species which is quite un¬ 
usual so early in the season as this. In old 
times blue-winged teal were not scarce in rail 
shooting times, but now are very seldom seen. 
I was interested in Charley’s statement made 
on the way to the landing, that a month or 
two ago he had heard snipe on the meadow. 
This was before haying began on the wet 
meadows, and it is fair enough to suppose that 
the snipe that he heard was a breeding bird. 
He could not well have been mistaken in the 
note, for he has known English snipe from his 
babyhood. If a snipe spent its -summer on 
these wet meadows, it is pretty certain to have 
bred there. In old times, of course, snipe, as 
well as many species of our ducks bred over 
much of the Middle States. 
When we got to the landing, and counted the 
birds, we found that we had seventeen rail, in¬ 
cluding the Virginia rail, and the sea crow, or 
eighteen birds in all. This is not many com¬ 
pared with the bags of many years ago, but is 
a very decent shoot for these days. 
Pushpole. 
Essex, Conn., Sept. 16. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: The season for shooting rail opened 
up on Sept. 12 with plenty of shooters and a 
large number of birds. There were all of twenty 
boats in here in the North Cove at this place 
