Sport Versus Slaughter
Equally false and mischievous, though not involving a violation of law, was the charge that a party of which I was a member killed five hundred ducks. Our shooting force on that expedition consisted of five gunners of various grades of hunting ability, including one who had not “fired a gun in twenty years,” and another who could “do pretty well with a rifle, but didn’t know much about a shotgun.” We were shooting four days, but on only one of these days was our entire force engaged. There was not one in the party who would not have been ashamed of any complicity in the killing of five hundred ducks, within the time spent and in the circumstances surrounding us; nor is there one of the party who does not believe that, if the extermination of wild ducks is to be prevented, and if our grandchildren are to know anything about duck shooting, except as a matter of historical reading, stringent and intelligent laws for the preservation of this game must be supplemented and aided by an aggressive sentiment firmly held among decent ducking sportsmen, making it disgraceful to kill ducks for the purpose of boasting of a big bag, or for the mere sake of killing. Those who hunt ducks with no better motives than these, and who are restrained, in the absence of law, by nothing except the lack of opportunity to kill, are duck-slaughterers, who merit the contempt of the present generation and the curses of generations yet to come.
Our party killed about one hundred and twenty-five ducks. We ate as many as we cared to eat during our stay among the hunting marshes, and we brought enough home to eat on our own tables and to distribute among our friends. It seems to me that gunners who kill as many ducks as will answer all these purposes ought to be satisfied.
On the Cooking of Wild Ducks
And just here I want to suggest something which ought to greatly curtail the distribution of wild ducks among our friends. In households where no idea prevails of the difference between properly cooking a wild duck and one brought up in a barnyard, a complimentary gift of wild fowl is certainly of questionable advisability; for if these are cooked after the fashion prescribed for the domestic duck they will be so thoroughly discredited in the eating that the recipient of the gift will come near suspecting a practical joke, and the donor will be nearly guilty of waste.
In Virginia they have a very good law prohibiting duck shooting on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and of course on Sundays. These are called rest days. We arrived at the very comfortable club-house of the Back Bay Club, in Princess Anne County, about noon one Saturday, with weather very fair and quiet—too much so for good ducking. From the time of our arrival until very early Monday morning, besides eating and sleeping, we had nothing to do but to “get ready.” It must not be supposed that those words only mean the settlement in our quarters and the preparation of guns, ammunition and other outfit. Many other things are necessary by way of stimulating interest and filling the minds of waiting gunners with lively anticipation and hope. Thus during the preparatory hours left to us our eyes were strained hundreds of times from every favorable point of observation in search of flying ducks; hundreds of times the question as to the most desirable shooting points was discussed, and thousands of times the wish was expressed that Monday, instead of being a “blue bird day,” would present us with a good, stiff breeze from the right direction. The field of prediction was open to all of us, and none avoided it. A telling hit was made by the most self-satisfied weather-prophet of the party, who foretold an east wind at sundown, which promptly made its appearance on schedule time.