lore “Ceph” and I got to the marshes, pending metamorphosis from dusk to 
°° •*„!’ m fa f t ’ t0 hope t0 make dawn being 1 °ne of the most poignant 
‘limit” bags each of 25 birds a day, 
unless a storm in the north should 
happen to send down the ducks 
in unusual numbers. But we 
had made up our minds to take 
an “uncertainty” shoot; to test 
our luck under adverse condi¬ 
tions. We wanted to visit the 
old haunts where we had for¬ 
merly had such fine shooting, 
even if we had sight of nothing 
more than a foraging hawk 
beating above the marshes, or 
a troop of noisy black-birds 
flying across the tule-beds. 
The alarm clock in our tent 
of all of nature’s myriad transforma¬ 
tions. The sharp bow of our little 
l!!lllll!lill!!ll 
“It takes practice to make a fine duck shot, 
and no experience with quail, snipe or 
ruffed grouse . . . will make up for lack 
of practice on the ducks themselves.” Es¬ 
sentially narrative in tone, this article con¬ 
tains much practical information besides. 
rounding vegetation. The tules, heavy, 
dark-green rushes growing as thickly 
as the hair on a dog’s back, made ex¬ 
cellent “blinds” in themselves, but the 
built “blinds” were infinitely 
easier and safer to shoot from. 
Heavy wooden supports had 
been sunk firmly in the river 
mud, and a platform of planks, 
with a long seat in the back, 
made an ideally comfortable 
place to shoot from, and to rest 
between shots. 
This hiding-place was built 
high, so that the tops of the 
tules just hid the shooter as 
he sat crouched on the seat of 
the “blind.” Below the plat- 
W h * £ 
' v 
fi * \ 
sputters its rattle-snake warning at duck-boat cut the water swiftly to the form was a liiZ run Ccut out of 
a candle and beean'to hustte m^’ ’* f P addles> and we pres,:ntly the tules, for your boat to slide into 
clothes ’ A hastv hreakf e f n °" r c ourselves across the main b ° d y be tied during the shooting. As 
thes. A hasty breakfast of bacon of open water and entering a long and a rule, we do not pick up our ducks 
hot cfff^ Va and steaming rather narrow passage-way of river here until the shoot is over, as the 
flight is often 
over in the morn¬ 
ing in an hour’s 
time, and if you 
go out to retrieve 
birds, other ducks 
are almost sure 
to come in to the 
decoys and you 
lose chances for 
shots. Generally 
speaking, the 
dead birds do not 
drift away any 
further than the 
edges of the 
thick-growing 
tules in the 
Alamo marshes, 
and are easily 
found after the 
flight is over and 
the shooting has 
ceased. 
The stars 
paled, the east 
grew into a shield 
of dun and glim¬ 
mering ivory, the 
coots left off their 
complaining, and 
the signs of ap¬ 
proaching day 
grew more and 
more manifest. 
Finally a flock of 
sprigs came by, 
hot coffee, and 
we were off to 
the landing 
where the steel 
duck-boats were 
hitched beside the 
tule-beds, that 
stood straight 
and ebony-hued 
in the darkness. 
What a world of 
stars were ablaze 
in the morning 
skies. It almost 
seems, in the 
hour just before 
day-break, that 
the stars grow 
larger and 
brighter, as if 
they were spread¬ 
ing and flowering 
to their final fall 
in the sea of 
dawn. 
We trailed 
down to where 
the boats were 
tied, with guns, 
shells, and the 
cameras, and 
paddled out be¬ 
yond a towering 
wall of tules into 
a broad sweep of 
open waters. It 
was a scant hour, 
perhaps, before sunrise as we started. 
There is a hush above the marshes at 
such a time broken only at intervals 
by the cackle of some wandering coot 
among the rushes, or the whispering 
sound of some passing gust of wind 
in the tops of the tules. It is the 
most beautiful hour of the entire twen¬ 
ty-four, because of the sense of mys- 
L1VE MALLARD DECOYS IN THEIR PEN 
current, bordered thickly with the 
closely-knit tules on both sides of us. 
Here we found a “blind” from which 
we had shot in other seasons and the 
decoys which had been set out the 
evening previous, with here and there 
a dead limb sticking up among them. 
Our “blind” was a scientifically built 
structure, and one which corresponded 
high overhead, but out of gun-shot, 
and we “perked up” and watched even 
more keenly for birds to follow in the 
dawning flight. In a little while four 
sprigs dropped in from back of the 
blind” and started to light right 
among the wooden make-believes. We 
arose from our stooping position and 
(Continued on page 723) 
Page 681 
