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it the weapon par excellence for shooting our mallard in the West and South, but a No. 12 gun loaded with an ounce and a quarter of No. 7 shot before three drachms of strong powder is far more destructive, and requires much less skill and craft to successfully use it. I have an eight-pound, twelvebore, breech-loading shot-gun, which is the size and kind I would recommend for shooting mallard on small waters. Take a skiff or "dug-out" that will hold two persons, viz., yourself and your assistant, seat yourself in the bow of the boat, and direct your man by signs in the way you wish to go. Now, if you are on a river like the Kankakee, you will keep along shore under the fringe of button-ball bushes and tall oat-grass till, just as you turn a jut of marsh, or strike across the mouth of a little estuary or creek, up goes a flock with a great clapping of

set out some excellently-finished mallard-decoys on a little lagoon within easy shot of my shooting-cabin, and, during the week that they were allowed to float there, twenty scaup-duck settled by them to one mallard. On Southern streams and fresh-water lagoons, mallard - shooting is often mere murder where ordinary shot-guns are used, and yet I have seen men, calling themselves sportsmen, using a kind of swivel loaded with a half-pound of No. 2 shot! At one discharge the water would be blackened with dead birds. This fine duck is not second even to the canvas-back in juiciness and flavor, especially where it has for some weeks had access to wheat, rice, or wild-oat fields. I think it best when kept from the table not longer than eighteen or twenty-four hours, and it should be drawn as soon as killed. If the weather is warm, stuff it with green-grass leaves and

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wings and scattering cries of "Quap, qua-a-p!" their bodies darkening the air above the shaken and rippling water. At this instant your trained assistant backs his oars or paddle. Your boat steadies itself quickly, up goes your gun, and sharply, spitefully, rings out the double shot. The gentle wind bears off the light-blue smoke-puffs, under which with limp wings and ruffled feathers you see three, four, five birds pitch down upon the water and lie there, rising and sinking with the miniature waves their concussion has generated. Sometimes a lone mallard rises close ahead, giving you a pretty single shot. This game may be shot in great numbers if one can find a good "stand" in the line of flight from a "roosting" or sleeping pond to a feeding-ground. I have killed many at such points with both gun and bow. The mallard will drop to stool or decoy ducks, but cannot be relied upon to do so. I once

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keep it in the shade. If, however, you prefer a rank gaminess of flavor, you may let your bird remain undrawn twelve hours.

No accomplished American sportsman can look into his memoranda of days by flood and field without coming across notes of plover-shooting. I cannot speak in very high praise of the plover as a tablebird, but he is rather gamy and toothsome when well served. Most kinds of plover fly well, and, if killed clean, drop right down upon their backs with closed wings and without a quiver. I have found them from Florida to the Northern lakes in great abundance wherever the country is suited to their habits. The upland plover, so roundly lauded by Frank Forester for its delicious flavor, may be seen by the thousand on the prairies and flats of Illinois and Indiana, where in an hour's time a heavy bag is easily taken; but the prairie chicken or hen is there

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also, and the sportsman forgets the plover. The golden plover, the black-bellied plover, and quite a number of sand-pipers, all called plover by most sportsmen, and reckoned excellent table-birds, are in no wise difficult to shoot, though on clean ground and in windy weather they rise rarely short of forty yards from your feet, and scud away like a dry leaf on a strong breeze. I have seen places in Florida where kildee-plover made the day terrible with their

shrill clamor, and where at one shot I could have potted a score of them. The sportsman in the engraving has approached the birds under good cover, and will no doubt make a clean double shot, or, if he is a pot-hunter, he will rest his heavy gun against one of the trees and pour in a murderous three ounces of No. 8 shot among them as they stand. If, instead of a gun, he has a long-bow, he will be sure to bowl over the bird you see sleeping with its head behind

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not say it is ever resident there. I have reason to believe, however, that a few breed in our States from Georgia to Minnesota. All the plovers are trim, graceful birds, swift of foot and light of wing, wary, watchful, and timid.

The rail is justly a favorite with sportsmen. He is one of the sweetest and juiciest of table-birds, always tender and delicately flavored. I cannot say that rail-shooting offers particularly fine, sport, however, for this bird's flight is slow and labored. He gets up at the last moment, right under your nose; and, if you are at all deliberate, you cannot fail to hit him. I have killed several kinds of rail from Florida to Michigan, and have not infrequently knocked down a clapper-rail on the mud-prairies of Illinois. On the marsh-islands of the Georgia coast, and on the meadow-bogs of the James and Delaware Rivers, great numbers of rail are killed every season. The negroes of the South "slash" them, as they term it, which is done by fixing a large pitch-pine torch in a canoe, and going, at or near high tide, on moonless nights, into the submerged marshes. The rail, startled by the canoe, and blinded by the light, spring up and flutter round the torch, and are stricken down by the negro "sportsman" with long, slender bundles of small oak limbs or switches. Though very slow on the wing, the rail runs rapidly, darting through thick grass and matted rushes at great speed. Lying in a boat at low tide, I have often

Passing from the smallest to the largest of aquatic game-birds, a word about the swan. He is an ungainly bird, poets to the contrary notwithstanding. He swims tilted forward, as if about to "turn a somersault," and his flight, though strong and swift, appears labored and rolling. The accompanying engraving will give the reader a good idea of the swan seen to the best advantage when sitting on still water, with his great neck curved to Hogarth's line. He is said to be a delicious table-bird when young. I cannot testify to the truth of the assertion, however, for the only one I ever tasted was not more savory than leather quilted with wire. He is also given the praise of singing his own requiem in a charming voice-but this may be a poetic burlesque on his rasping vociferations and his almost interminable longevity. The swan is probably by far the longest-lived of all birds. A few years ago one was killed, on a stream in Indiana, in the breastbone of which was found firmly imbedded a beautifully-finished arrow-head of fish-bone, which must have been there for very many years. Like the wild-goose, the swan goes farther north in summer than man has ever gone, probably to an open sea yet undiscovered by navigators. In winter I have seen him as far south as Florida. He is the wariest and most difficult of approach of all birds, and holds on harder to life after a death-shot than any animal, biped or quadruped, with which I am acquainted. As an in

stance of the latter, take the following from our notes of shooting on the Chesapeake: "Shot a swan with a broad-headed arrow, striking him through the lungs. He rose heavily, and I gave him right and left of my No. 10 breech-loader at short range with swan-shot; but after whirling over a time or two he recovered his balance, and escaped." The swan is a brave bird, and, when wounded and infuriated, will fight with great desperation as long as life lasts.

Leaving the aquatic birds, let us spend a while with the feathered inhabitants of our woods and fields. The first in everything except size is the quail, which is altogether the best game-bird of America-strongest of flight, swiftest and readiest in rising, keeping down best in cover or out of cover, never flying beyond the limit of a five minutes' walk, and rarely taking to wing outside a circle of twenty yards' radius from the sportsman as a centre. The quail is often called the "Bob White" from the cry of the cock-bird in spring and summer, and in the Southern States partridge is its common name. From Texas to Florida, and thence to Maine and across to Minnesota, it is our most familiar bird, on the prairies and in the woodlands, in the grain-fields and clover-meadows, in the pine-barrens of the far South and the hazel-thickets of the North, everywhere busy, contented, querulous, well-fed, a beautiful bird and a hardy one, best for the table. The strongest strain on the sportsman's skill is its rushing flight, and the

handle it easily and freely in any kind of cover; then, when your dog stiffens on the game-there by the boisd'arc hedge, for instance-while you are shoulder-deep in the blackberry-briers close by, if the birds suddenly flush, you may whip up the light weapon and do fine work under most adverse circumstances. Our quail is a very prolific bird, and but for its many enemies besides man would always be as plentifully distributed over the country as the most ardent sportsman could desire. Foxes, opossums, raccoons, skunks, muskrats, minks, weasels, house-cats, owls, various kinds of hawks, and the common snakes of our fields, all prey upon the quail. In cold winters, when the snow lies deep for a long time, the poor birds have nowhere to hide, and the contrast of their dark-brown plumage with the white of the fields exposes them to every enemy, and renders them utterly defenseless. No sportsman should ever let slip an opportunity to kill any bird, quadruped, or reptile, of the above list. Death to them is life to quails. Many and many a pinching winter morning I have heard the calls and answers of a scattered bevy attacked the night before by some murderous assassin, and it is quite common to find the blood and feathers of the hapless victims of the owl and fox. The quail has a peculiar cackling cry, never uttered save when fleeing from a pursuing hawk. The sportsman, if accomplished, never mistakes this sound, and he should always fire at the hawk, instead of the quail,

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