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Worthless Marsh Made Attractive to Wild Ducks and Muskrats 
Right here 
in Wisconsin, 
within a hun- 
dred miles of 
Chicago, lay a 
piece of worth- 
less marsh for 
many years, 
This marsh 
area was sort 
of triangular 
in shape, bor- 
dered on one 
side by a high- 
way, on an- 
other by a hilly 
pasture and on the third side by a lake. It was im- 
possible to drain the marsh and make pasture land, 
for the lake level could not be controlled . The marsh 
was too low for pasture land and too high for 
trapping ground, therefore it was considered useless. 
This marsh had a couple of potholes, which a local 
plumber used for duck shooting. The potholes were 
small and a few shots in the early morning would 
drive out the ducks. Then his day’s sport would be 
over, and back to his plumbing work he would go. 
However, this man liked the quiet of the marsh, 
broken only by the occasional call of a wild duck or 
Page 38 

a rice hen or splashing of the semi-webbed feet of 
a coot trying to make his way over the very shallow 
waters. 
One morning in late October, as he sat in his blind 
hoping to get a shot or two at some curious wild 
ducks that might swing over in search of food, the 
thought occurred to him that he could build a dike 
across the lake side of this marsh and control the 
water level inside the marsh. An artesian well 
could be driven to flood the area or a water conveyor 
could be built to lift the lake water into the marsh. 
What a swell idea: He could have shooting all over 
the marsh then. 
First he had to buy the marsh. It covered two 
hundred acres. Upon talking to the farmer, he had 
little difficulty in making a deal. As a matter of 
fact, the farmer thought he sure had a sucker, for 
the marsh was no good at all. He sold it at a very 
reasonable price. 
Now the plumber had a marsh, The next thing 
was to build a dike. During the following winter 
months he built himself a ditch digger, a simple 
home made contraption, run by an old automobile 
engine. While the marsh was still frozen over, he 
started to dig his dirt for the dike. The digging 
started about twenty-five feet in from the lake’s 
edge—his ditch on the inside and the dike toward 
the lake. It ran from the highway to the hill. Finally 
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