A. F. STOEGER ««*» “fl«i*™F new YORK 
AMERICA’S LEADING IMPORTER OF 
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FIELD CLASSES AND BINOCULARS 
Sole Authorized Importer of the Only Genuine 
MAUSER and LUGER ARMS; Mauser 30/06 U. S. Government Rifles of every description; Repair Parts; Mauser, Luger Mann 
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nd Canvas Holsters and Gun Cases; Stoegerol, the wonderful Combination Gun Oil—nitro-solvent, rust-preventing lubri¬ 
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BEWARE OF IMITATIONS. DON’T BUY HYPHENATED MAUSERS. 
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the 4 P. M. train left for New York 
City. My friend and I saw him jog¬ 
ging along on the rail tracks, and with 
that gentle, sweet smile, beckoned us 
to join him in the ice cooler. From his 
^creel he took out six of the nicest 12- 
inch trout I had seen for many a long- 
day. “There,” says he to my friend, 
“put them in your bag, and the gol darn 
rats can go to where they don’t use 
coal.” Admiration for a worthy deed— 
coupled with thanks for it were super¬ 
fluous. It was his nature—“to right a 
wrong”—when an impudent rat should 
have the gall to rob a guest. To my 
mind such actions, without words, pro¬ 
claim the true, the courteous and gentle 
angler. 
DUCK SHOOTING 
ALONG THE ALAMO 
(Continued from page 681) 
turned loose four shots at them. Three 
sprigs dropped, two to a “double” 
from “Ceph’s” 16-gauge, and one to 
my twelve-gauge, the last bird eluding 
my second barrel and darting away 
to safety. Then a single came past, 
not looking as though he intended 
stopping, and as he came to my side 
I took the shot and nailed him clean 
with the right-hand barrel. All of 
these birds drifted to the tules, and 
lay in plain sight along the edges. 
Then a pair of green-wing teal 
flashed by like feathered arrows, and 
four shots from our guns only ac¬ 
counted for one bird. Then three 
canvas-backs, a part of the advance 
guard from the north, put in an ap¬ 
pearance and began to circle warily 
above the decoys, but always out of 
range. Magnificent birds they were, 
the kings of the duck tribes, and our 
eyes were glued to the rushes in front 
Page 723 
of us that constituted the outside of 
the “blind,” and we scarcely drew a 
long breath as we thought of the pos¬ 
sibility of their coming rushing in on 
top of us. Nearer and nearer they 
came, and just as we were silently 
congratulating ourselves that they 
would swing into range, a shot, and 
a second report from a “blind” not 
far away turned their course and 
made them start to climb up out of 
danger. We watched their flight to 
the north, commenting audibly on the 
luck that had made some fellow- 
sportsman fire just at that psycholog¬ 
ical moment. 
After that there was a lull, an in¬ 
terval of non-activity on our part. 
And still we hugged our “blind” and 
talked, if at all, in whispers. Guns 
boomed in various directions from 
time to time some distance from us, 
but it was evident that the flight was 
irregular and comparatively light. 
And then a sudden breeze sprang up 
and for about an hour we had quite 
a bit of shooting. Ducks came in sin¬ 
gly, in pairs, and in small flocks, and 
we had close and pretty shooting while 
the flight lasted. The birds were all 
sprigs, and except for “travellers,”— 
birds flying south and going high up, 
and not counting on stopping, the 
shooting was not difficult. The sprigs 
would sometimes circle once or twice 
above the decoys, and stoop so as to 
afford easy shots, or they would come 
in with a sudden dip without circling. 
The crippled ones did not dive instant¬ 
ly on hitting the water, as wounded 
mallards so often do, and we got them 
handily with a second shot. 
And still we made a number of 
misses. There is a deceptiveness in 
duck-shooting which is sometimes hard 
to account for. You will see a duck 
coming, and have plenty of time to 
gauge his speed, and plan as to your 
lead ahead of him if he is coming past. 
As he gets in range, you rise, swing 
your gun on his line of flight, take 
your lead ahead, press the trigger, 
keeping your gun moving all the time, 
and down comes your duck, evidently 
smothered by the center of the charge. 
You smile complacently and say to 
yourself, “they’re gone when they give 
me a shot like that!” And then an¬ 
other duck of the same species heaves 
in sight, flying perhaps a trifle higher 
than the first one, but a straight side- 
shot, just as duck number one. You 
rise at exactly the right moment, 
swing ahead the proper distance as 
you judge, press the trigger, miss, 
swing ahead again, fire your second 
barrel, and “brer!” duck whizzes by 
without a single feather ruffled. 
You are surprised, not to say dis¬ 
gusted. But the fault was yours, not 
your gun’s. The second duck was go¬ 
ing a little faster than the first, and 
you held a trifle less ahead of him than 
you did on the first bird, so that the 
charge from your choke-bored gun just 
missed his tail feathers when you first 
fired. On the second shot, although 
you swung far enough ahead for a 
straight side-shot, the duck was turn¬ 
ing and rising, and your charge went 
under him and a scant inch or so ahead 
of him. Sometimes you may hold too 
far ahead as you think, and are about 
to shoot the second barrel just as 
your bird drops dead. Many shooters 
experience no difficulty in shooting 
ducks which have alighted in the 
decoys and start to rise as the shooter 
gets up, but they shoot above birds 
that are about to settle by the decoys. 
It takes practice to make a fine duck- 
shot, and no experience with quail, 
snipe, ruffed grouse, woodcock, bay- 
snipe, China pheasants or other birds 
will make up for lack of practice on 
the ducks themselves. Sometimes you 
must shoot under and ahead of a bird; 
sometimes over and ahead, sometimes 
straight ahead, but the variety of 
speed and gyrations of the ducks will 
test the best marksmanship. 
The variety of speed even in ducks 
of the same kind is noticeable. If a 
duck has been shot at a few times, or 
if he is coming in on a stiff wind, he 
is going much faster than ordinarily. 
Shooting at teal coming down-wind is 
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