The night preceding the day fixed for shooting, so soon as the ducks have already quitted the lagoons and spread themselves afar over the surrounding cornlands on their accustomed nocturnal excursions in search of food, the posts of the various gunners are prepared. This work involves cutting a channel through some islanded patch of reeds situate in the centre of open water. The channel is merely wide enough to admit the entrance of the punt from which the gunner shoots, the cut reeds being left to remask the opening so soon as the punt has entered.
Somewhere between three and four o’clock in the morning the sportsmen sally forth from the shooting-lodge (situate on the Isla de los Asnos), each in his punt directing a course to the position he has drawn by lot. In the boat, besides guns, cartridges, and loader (should one be taken), are carried thirty or forty decoy-ducks fashioned of wood or cork and painted to resemble in form and colour the various species of duck expected at that particular season.
Each of these decoys is furnished with a string and leaden weight to act as an anchor. A fixed plummet directly beneath the floating decoy prevents its being blown over or upset.
Generally speaking, the sportsman awaits the dawn in the same boat in which he has reached his position, but should shallow water prevent this, either a lighter punt, capable of being carried by hand, or some wooden boards are substituted as a seat. Having set out his decoys, and arranged his ammunition, each gunner awaits in glorious expectancy the moment when the first light of dawn shall set the aquatic world amove.
Singly they may come, or in bands and battalions—soon the whole arc of heaven is serried with moving masses. Should the day prove favourable, firing continues practically incessant till towards ten o’clock. From that hour onwards it slackens perceptibly, ducks flying fewer and fewer and at increasing intervals up to noon or thereby, when spoils are collected and the day’s sport is over.
There are at most but four or five puestos, or gun-posts, at Daimiel, and that only when ducks are in their fullest numbers.
Under such conditions, and when all incidental conditions are favourable, a bag of over 1000 ducks in the day has not infrequently been registered. On such occasions it follows that individual guns must gather from 200 to 300 ducks apiece.
Almost incredible as are the results occasionally obtained under favouring conditions, yet the duck-shooting at Daimiel is nevertheless subject to considerable variation in accordance with the sequence of the season. The biggest totals are usually recorded during the months of September, October, and November in dry years. The bags secured at such periods are apt to run into extraordinary numbers, but with this proviso, that quality is then sometimes inferior to quantity. For the chief item at these earlier shoots consists of teal, with only a sprinkling of mallard, wigeon, and shoveler, and, in some years, a few coots. But at the later tiradas (shootings), although game is usually rather less abundant, it is then entirely composed of the bigger ducks—beyond all in numbers being the mallard, pintail, wigeon, and red-crested pochard, while an almost equal number of shovelers and common pochards are also bagged.
At these earlier tiradas a good gun should be able, with ease, to bring down, say, 400 ducks, although this number dwindles sadly in the pick-up, since but few of those birds will be recovered that fall outside the narrow space of open water around each “hide.” One may say roughly that at least one-fourth are lost. For, although each post be surrounded by open water, yet many ducks must fall within the encircling canes, while even those that fall in the open, if winged and beyond the reach of a second barrel, will inevitably gain the shelter of the covert, and all these are irrecoverable. Others, again, carrying on a few yards, may fall dead in open water, but at a distance the precise position of which is difficult to fix by reason of intervening cane-brakes. Thus between those that are lost in the above ways and others that may be carried away by the wind or the current (besides many that are devoured by hawks and eagles under the fowler’s eye but beyond the range of his piece) it is no exaggerated estimate that barely three-fourths of the fallen are ever recovered.
To the above description another Spanish friend, Don Isidoro Urzáiz, adds the following:—