A Trip to Aransas Bay.—II. 
■ The morning after my first experience with 
the redhead we got underweigh arid sailed down 
the bay toward the pass, landing upon the shore 
where we dug a supply of fiddler crabs. We 
then anchored in the channel and amused our¬ 
selves by catching a mess of sheepshead, fish 
that abound all the year round in the waters of 
the bay. 
That afternoon we fixed out near the shore 
of the island which lies opposite the entrance 
to the pass, this time in an old scraggy blind 
upon a tiny island of grass where the water 
was so shoal that the decoys were scarcely 
afloat. About 4 o’clock the birds began to come, 
and if by any chance a flock lighted before 
reaching us, Armstrong would take up my rifle 
Having all the game we could use I tried all 
sorts of freak shots and made one that will 
bear description. An old cock redhead lighted 
in the stool about twenty-five yards from me, 
and I turned to Armstrong and said: “Now I 
am going to try to make a double on some in¬ 
coming bird and that fellow sitting in the stool. 
Just watch when the next bunch of them comes 
along.” 
I saw an amused smile come over his face as 
if he thought I was fooling him, but he said 
nothing. In a few moments six birds came 
sweeping across the decoys from my left hand 
and about four feet above the water. I had 
my gun covering the bird on the water and 
my eyes on those in the air, and I thought one 
of them would pass just in the right place. He 
did, and when he was about three feet away 
bottom of the boat. However, I felt repaid for 
our labor, as I got quite a varied bag, killing 
seventeen different kinds of game birds in that 
one place. 
I told Armstrong that I had had shooting 
enough, but he insisted upon my having a try 
at the canvasbacks in a pond hole up at the 
northern end of the bay. This pond was fresh 
water and it was a favorite place for the birds 
to come in the afternoons to drink; so the next 
morning we sailed up the bay to this place and 
hauled our sharpie over a narrow bank of sand 
which kept the salt water of the bay from get¬ 
ting into the pond, paddling through the grass 
and bushes out into the open water. Here we 
stuck a blind of boughs in water eighteen inches 
deep, hid the boat in the grass and put out our 
decoys. I sat in the blind on two boxes, one 
Shoal Water Ponds. 
SCENES IN ARANSAS BAY. 
The Ranchhouse on the Island. 
and drop a bullet over their heads. Then the 
birds would get up and come piling in to our 
decoys, and I saw this happen a dozen times 
that afternoon. 
Between our blind and the shore there was 
about fifty feet of open water less than three 
inches deep and I had Armstrong set out half 
a dozen old iron snipe decoys in the middle of 
this place. When I got tired of shooting ducks 
I would turn around and amuse myself by kill- 
t ing yellowlegs and others of the snipe family. 
By this time I had found out that my close 
. shooting pigeon gun was utterly unsuited for 
the work I was doing, being full choked in both 
barrels and targeted for thirty-five yards. As 
I rarely got a chance to shoot at a bird more 
than twenty yards away I wished I had brought 
a cylinder bore with me. As near as I could 
calculate the pattern was eleven inches wide at 
about seventeen yards, and I amused myself and 
Armstrong by seeing how often I could shoot 
between two incoming birds without killing 
either. I became quite expert at this rather 
unusual style of shooting, and found that I could 
throw the charge between two birds—if they 
were not closer together than twelve inches-— 
without hitting either. 
from the line covered by my gun I pulled the 
trigger and killed both him and the old cock 
on the water twenty feet beyond. “By gosh!” 
said Armstrong, “I wouldn’t have believed it if 
I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t think it could be 
done.” 
“Well, Armstrong,” I said, “I freely confess 
that I did not think it could be done, either. 
You can be sure I will never tempt Providence 
that way again.” 
Now, Armstrong was a real artist with the 
gun; one who could shoot all round me and not 
half try, but he did not see how it was done 
until I drew a diagram of the shot. It was only 
a lucky freak and is not set down here as a 
boast of skill. 
Over half the area of the Aransas Bay the 
water is scarcely one foot deep, and often only 
about three inches, so there are great stretches 
where the birds congregate in countless num¬ 
bers safe from the pursuit of man. The next 
morning we hauled the sharpie with its load of 
decoys and boughs some two miles across one of 
these shoal places and fixed out. The journey 
was a tough one and we were quite played out 
when we stopped, the clumps of oysters and 
the piles of shells cutting our boots and the 
on top of the other and Armstrong went down 
to the other end of the pond to keep the birds 
from lighting there. 
About 4 o’clock the first birds came, low from 
the west over a ridge and straight down the 
pond from my right hand. They passed in front 
of me about seventy yards away, flew to the 
end of the pond, turned back, passed behind me, 
circled around in front of me and set their 
wings for my decoys. As they lighted on the 
water not twenty feet from me they dipped their 
bills in the fresh water and then raised their 
heads to let it run down their throats. It was 
such a beautiful sight that I left them undis¬ 
turbed until they had slaked their thirst, and 
then I scared them up, picking out the two 
finest cock birds and getting one with each 
barrel. 
All the birds that came went through the 
same performance, and when I had down all 
I could use, I sat there watching them with the 
greatest interest. If I am ever so fortunate as 
to revisit the Aransas Bay I am going armed 
with a reflecting camera and shall be content 
to count my game upon the photographic plates. 
I have had so much shooting in my life that I 
am no longer filled with the lust to kill. Kill 
