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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 
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 
his marsh was enclosed. Next he dug a ditch con- 
necting the potholes with the perimeter ditch, throw- 
ing the dirt on either side, 
During the spring he planted his dredge banks 
with wild millet to bind the soil and also make food 
for the teal and mallards. Throughout that summer 
the banks settled and became solid and firm. 
The next job was to get the water to flood his 
marsh, So he drove a pipe for a six-inch artesian 
flow. Only thirty feet into his marsh, but not enough 
to flood the area as he desired. However, it was 
sufficient to offset seepage and evaporation. 
Now to get water out of the lake. To do this he 
had to dig a ditch from the lake to the dike, then 
build a water conveyor to lift water over the dike 
into the marsh. 
His conveyor was a crude arrangement, a wooden 
trough six feet long and one foot deep, extending 
from two feet beneath the water over the top of the 
dike. Into this was built a chain conveyor with 
boards about three feet apart, that caught the water 
and pushed it up the trough over the dike, This was 
run by his same auto engine that dug the ditch for 
the dike. It worked very well. 
Another duck season was now at hand and talk 
about ducks—every duck hunter for fifty miles en- 
vied him! The marsh was full of lowland weeds 
laden with seeds when he turned on the water. May- 
be you think the ducks didn’t go for those seeds. It 
was like baiting with corn in the old days. Well, sir, 
“It was so good that the local banker, the doctor, 
the lawyer and seven other businessmen leased the 
duck shooting rights for the next five years at $1,000 
per year, and wrote into the lease that he himself 
and one friend could also shoot there any time dur- 
ing the open season, free of charge, he to retain all 
fishing and trapping rights.” 
This plumber knew that for this good shooting to 
continue he must do something to keep up the supply 
of food for those ducks. So he started to plant his 
marsh with natural foods. Around the banks he 
sowed smartweed and wild millet seeds. In the 
shallow waters he planted wild rice, and wapato duck 
potato, burreed, pickerel plants, wampee duck corn 
seed, water smartweed, and others. Some he bought 
and some he took from their natural state in nearby 
marshes. In the potholes and ditches he planted wild 
celery, sago pondweed, deep water duck potato, and 
other kinds. The waters were good, the soil rich, and 
“wow,” what results, 
During the summer he caught bass out in the big 
lake and kept them in his live box, and then turned 
them free in the potholes in his marsh. 
In the fall another problem came up. The musk- 
rats invaded his marsh, It kept him busy patching 
the dikes. I believe his place actually coaxed in about 
half of the muskrats from the big lake. There were 
so many that he had to buy windfall apples, carrots, 
and undersize potatoes and scatter them over the 
marsh to keep them from eating up the duck food 
he had planted previously. 
Finally, after the fall duck season was nearly over, 
he started to trap the muskrats, Their pelts were 
now prime. Talk about a surprised man. He kept on 
trapping and every day his traps were full, it took 
him half the night to skin, clean, and stretch the furs, 
At the end of the season his figures added up to 
2,800 muskrat pelts that brought in the handsome 
sum of $5,100. This, plus his $1,000, was not so bad 
an income off a worthless marsh, and he was his 
own boss, doing the thing he liked. 
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