DECOY
,—a canal, river, pond, or sheet of water, appropriated to the profitable purpose of taking wild ducks and teal: it is a business peculiar to those only who profess it, and conducted upon a principle of the strictest stillness and regularity. The person having the management of a decoy, must possess taciturnity and patience in a very great degree, both being brought into constant practice; without which, success can neither be expected or deserved. The fowl are brought within the tunnel of the net by stratagem, where, at a critical moment, they are enclosed and taken. All this, however, depends upon the industry, sagacity, deception, and exertion, of the DECOY-DUCK, by whose wiles and allurements the whole flight are brought within the space allotted to their destruction. The decoy-ducks are trained to their business almost from the shell, and amply demonstrate what services may be obtained, what fidelity insured, or what attachment excited, by the exertion of tenderness and humanity, even to the more inferior parts of the creation.
It, however, often happens, that the wild fowl are in such a state of sleepiness and dozing, that they will not follow the decoy-ducks. Use is then generally made of a dog trained to the business, who passing backwards and forwards between the reed screens, attracts the eye of the wild fowl, who not choosing to be interrupted, advance towards the small and contemptible animal, that they may drive him away. The dog all the time, by the direction of the DECOY-MAN, plays among the screens of reeds, nearer and nearer to the purse-net; till at last the decoy-man appears behind the screen, and the wild-fowl not daring to pass by him in return, nor being able to escape upwards on account of the net-covering, rush on into the purse-net.
The general season for catching fowl in decoys is from the latter end of October till February: the taking of them earlier is prohibited by an act 10th of George II. which forbids it from June 1st to October 1st under the penalty of five shillings for each bird destroyed within that space. An action will lie against the disturber of a decoy, by firing a gun, or any other act of wilful injury to the owner.
Decoys cannot be formed, nor need they be attempted, but where nature has been a little diffuse in her favors for the formation: marshy low lands, plenty of water, and sequestered situations, are indispensably necessary to a successful embarkation. They are to be found in different parts of the kingdom, but more plentiful in the northern and eastern counties than in any other. Essex, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and some part of Warwickshire, are remarkable for many of considerable extent, and from the principal of which the markets of the Metropolis are so plentifully and so reasonably supplied.