Silently a bird, rising close to the boat, wings its way, with pendent legs and feeble strokes, towards some one of its numerous hiding-places; instantly the punter plants his pole firmly in the bottom, holding the skiff stationary, the sportsman brings up his piece, and, with deliberate aim, sends the charge straight after the doomed rail, which pitches headlong out of sight. The punter has marked him by that single wild rice-stalk with the broken top, and heads the boat at once towards the place; but ere he has advanced a dozen feet, another bird starts and offers to the expectant sportsman, who has his gun still “at a ready,” another favorable chance, and, meeting the same fate, falls into that low bunch of matted wild oats. The breech-loader opens, the charges are extracted and others inserted, just in time to make sure of two rail that rise simultaneously, still ere the first has been reached, and which are both tumbled over and marked down—one, however, wing-tipped, and never to be seen by mortal eye again.
Thus have I experienced it on the Delaware, at Hackensack, and, in former days, among the tributaries of Jamaica Bay, and at many other places where more or less success has attended me. Although never having enjoyed great luck, never having advanced beyond the first hundred, and claiming to be no such marksman as several of my friends, I have had wondrous sport. Of a good day, when the tide is favorable and the game plenty, the excitement is continuous, and increased by a sense of competition.
Other sportsmen are on the same ground, stopping probably at the same hotel and shooting in close proximity—occasionally too close, if they are thoughtless or careless. Not only will a charge of mustard seed sometimes rattle against the boat, but is apt, now and then, to pierce the clothes and penetrate the skin, followed by an irritation of mind and body; but when the tide has fallen, and the sport is over, a comparison of the bag made by each sportsman is inevitable, and no general assertions of round numbers will answer, but the birds must be produced. It is vain to claim what cannot be exhibited, and more than useless to talk of the immense quantities that were killed but not retrieved; such excuses are answered by ridicule, and if the poor shot would avoid being a butt, he must be modest and submissive.
There is danger too, at times, although an upset in the weeds can result in nothing worse than a wetting of oneself and one’s ammunition, and the ruin of the day’s enjoyment; but I was once on the Delaware, opposite Chester, when a fierce north-wester was blowing, which had driven much of the water out of the bay and river. The tide, of course, was poor, having difficulty to rise at all against the gale, which kept on increasing every moment, and the birds were scarce and difficult to flush. The work of poling was laborious; the boats stopped after every push, and the heavy swell from the broad river, rolling in a long distance among the reeds, added a new motion to their natural unsteadiness.
Of course the sport was not encouraging, and the accidents were numerous; several sportsmen fell overboard, one upset his boat, and my man came so near it—his pole slipping at the moment he was exerting his utmost strength upon it—that his efforts to recover his balance reminded me of dancing the hornpipe in a state of frenzy. He kicked up more capers, and indulged in more contortions on the little platform, scarcely a foot square, which he occupied, than I supposed possible without dislocation of a limb; but he managed, however, to regain his equilibrium, and neither fell overboard nor upset the skiff.
These little incidents, and the shooting, such as it was, kept the party, which was numerous, interested until the time came for recrossing the river to our hotel. There was no stopping-place on our present side of the river, which presented one apparently endless view of waving reeds; and the alternative was simply to cross the open river, or pass the night in our boats. The swell had increased into high waves capped with snowy foam, and threatened destruction to our low-sided, short, and narrow boats. Many were the consultations between the various punters, and grave were the doubts expressed of a safe crossing; but as there was no help for it, the trial had to be made.
Selections were chosen of favorable starting-points, and most of the party put out at about the same time—the sportsman lying on the bottom at full length in the stern, and the oarsman timing his strokes to the violence of the sea. The waves broke over us continually; it was necessary to bail every few minutes, and several had to put back when they met with some more than usually heavy wave, and take a fresh start, after emptying the superfluous water. Of course we were drenched to the skin, but found a species of consolation in knowing that no one had the advantage of another. Had any of our boats upset, although we might have clung to them and drifted back among the reeds, we could have effected a landing nowhere, and would probably have terminated our career then and there; had this happened to a certain little skiff that held two men and very few rail, this account would probably never have been written. However, fate ordained otherwise, and we reached our destination in safety.
The best locality for rail-shooting is along the marshy shores of the Delaware River, above and below Philadelphia; many birds are also killed on the Hackensack and the Connecticut; they are abundant on the James River, and doubtless further south, but are not shot there; and they are found scattered over the fresh as well as the salt marshes throughout the entire country. I have killed them in the corn-fields of Illinois while in pursuit of the prairie chicken, and have bagged several and heard many among the wild rice of the drowned shores of Lake Erie. They are a migratory bird, and pass to the southward in the early fall rather in advance of the English snipe, and alight at any damp spots for a temporary rest wherever the growth of plants promises nutriment.
They are often flushed by the snipe-shooter, together with the larger fresh-water rail, rallus elegans, and their curious cry resounds along the reedy marshes where the wild-fowler pursues the early ducks. Nevertheless, they are difficult to flush and kill where there is no tide to drive them from their muddy retreats, and where the ground is too heavy for a dog; and, comparatively speaking, on fresh water, unless the wind shall have caused a temporary rise, they are safe from injury.
Their voices reply with the guttural “krek-krek-krek” to the noise of the boat, and tauntingly boast of their abundance and their security. Moreover, in a new country, where larger game is still plentiful, the excellences of the tender but diminutive rail are lost sight of by comparison with his more profitable compeers; and except along the Atlantic coast, he is known as a game-bird neither to the sportsman nor the cook.