The shooter lies on his back in this modified coffin, and whenever a flock approaches he rises to a sitting posture and fires. He cannot leave his floating home, and is unable to retrieve his ducks without the aid of an assistant. There have been many accidents arising from carelessness or inexperience, not merely in the use of the machine itself, but from the fault of the tender; and so many guns have blown holes in the bottom of the box, that it is the habit of the gunners on the south side of Long Island always to warn green hands, and instruct them how to rest and hold their guns. In two instances within my own knowledge, the sailing boat that accompanies the shooter, and serves as his tender and protector, was unable to return to him. In one case it was driven to leeward, and could not work back to windward, and in the other it went aground on a falling tide just before dark, when the thermometer ranged but little above zero. In both cases the sportsmen were saved, but in both the hand of death grazed them closely.
Night shooting is a still more deleterious practice. Wild fowl must be allowed to rest at night; indeed, the same might be said of most other animals, including the human family. If they are not, they will inevitably wend their way elsewhere. The discharge of one shot at night, with its accompaniment of flame, and its noise reverberating more horribly in the still and silent hours, will do more to frighten away the marsh ducks than any amount of daylight shooting. As the night begins to fall, the fowl begin to seek the marshes. They rise from the open water where they have been resting, perhaps without being able to feed at all, and move towards the shore, coming on in a steady unbroken flight, until they have all found nesting and feeding grounds in the shoal water. Drive them from such places in the night, and there will be no shooting during the day.
The use of pivot-guns is another reprehensible practice that has been so earnestly condemned, even among market-gunners, that it has been in a great measure abandoned. Still, however, in some quiet bay of one of the great lakes of the West, where there is no one to observe the iniquity, or of a moonlight night on the Chesapeake, the poaching murderer, sculling his boat down upon an unsuspicious flock crowded together and feeding or asleep, will discharge a pound or two of coarse shot from his diminutive cannon; and wounding hundreds, will kill scores of ducks at the one fatal discharge. The noise, however, reverberating over land and water, scatters the tidings of the guilty act far and wide; and often brings upon the criminal detection and punishment. To avoid this the pivot-shooter will sometimes, as soon as he has fired, throw his gun overboard with a buoy attached to it, and if pursued, pretend he has used nothing but his small fowling-piece. The practice of pivot-shooting, however, has almost ceased, never having been extensively adopted; and has nothing whatever sportsmanlike about it, being a mixture of cruelty and theft.
Another mode of pursuing ducks, which is at the same time attractive, exciting, and injurious, is by the use of a sail-boat. Not only is there the excitement of the pursuit, the rushing down wind with bellying sail and hissing water—the crested waves parting at the prow and lengthening out behind in two long lines of foam—but there is the free motion and the pleasant breeze to stimulate the sportsman. This is really a delightful sport, combining the excitement of shooting with the exhilaration of sailing; but as it disturbs the flocks upon their feeding-grounds, as it gives them no rest during the noontide hours, when it appears that ducks—like all other sensible people—love to indulge in a quiet nap, it eventually drives them away; and not only makes them shy of the locality, but injures the sport of the point-shooter, who depends upon their regular flights for his success. It is not often very remunerative, but is uncommonly attractive, and is only condemned with great reluctance on proof of its injurious results.
But while sailing for ducks is wisely forbidden by the laws of New York and of most of the older States, that prohibition should not be stretched beyond the true meaning and intent of the statute. Coots, the big black sea coot of the coast and his congeners, not the little mud coot or blue peter of the fresh waters, may be ducks from a scientific point of view, but they were never intended to be included in the prohibition. These dusky gentlemen are wonderful divers, they swim under water almost as readily and rapidly as they fly above it, and seek their food at the bottom. They do not so much live on fish, in fact I have never noticed fish in their stomachs, although some authorities say that they feed on them, but they devour incredible numbers of small clams and oysters. They are not content to take the full grown bivalve, two or three of which would make a solid meal even for a voracious coot, but they invariably select the tiny fellows just starting in life, and of whom it takes a great many to furnish forth a breakfast or dinner. There is little sport in shooting these tough fellows, and no sport except in killing them from a sailboat when underway.
In this chapter on the obligations that man owes to his feathered friends, his naturalized assistants must not be forgotten. The imported sparrow, though small in himself, has done a great work for our country, and still more for our cities. We all know that gratitude is a fleeting sentiment, and looks rather to things hoped for than to those which have already been conferred, and it is somewhat the fashion to decry the bustling busy immigrant from abroad; but those who remember the condition of our streets and parks, hung full with disgusting measuring worms pendent from every tree and branch, till to pass through them was an annoyance, will not wholly forget our debt to the English sparrow. He has been, wrongfully I think, accused of driving away our native birds, but before we condemn him it will have to be shown, not only that he has done so, but in addition that he has driven away birds more useful than himself.
It is but a few years since he was first brought among us, and already have the caterpillars so thoroughly disappeared, that one is rarely seen in our streets, and the trees are allowed to bear their foliage in peace, instead of being reduced to bare boughs, as was their invariable fate in old times. The sparrow has been accused, and has been compelled to plead guilty of the crime of not eating the hairy as well as the smooth-skinned caterpillar, but it ought to be urged in mitigation, before he is condemned to condign punishment, that his adversaries do not do so either, while they are guilty of the further crime of not even eating the smooth-skinned kinds.
CHAPTER II.
GUNNERY—MUZZLE-LOADERS AND BREECH-LOADERS.
To the young sportsman, armed with the finest of implements, and trusting much to them for his success, it is a matter of mortification and surprise how well a bad gun will shoot in good hands; nevertheless, no true sportsman ever lived but, if he were able by any self-denial to scrape the means together, would purchase a valuable and necessarily expensive fowling-piece. Not only is a well made and handsomely finished gun safer and lighter than a cheap affair manufactured for the wholesale trade; not only does it ordinarily carry closer and recoil less; but it needs fewer repairs, lasts infinitely longer, and is always a matter of pride and delight to its owner.
Many guns of inferior workmanship throw shot as strongly as those turned out by the best makers—although this is not the fact in general—but greater weight has to be given to insure tolerable safety, and the locks, if not the barrels, are sure to give out in a few years; whereas the high-priced article will be as perfect at the end of a dozen years—which have accustomed its owner to its easy, rapid, and effective management—as it was in the beginning, and will endure until failing sight, wasting disease, or accumulating years, shall compel its transfer into younger hands.