[1] An article on this club appeared in OUTING, Vol. II., page 337. Another is now in preparation.--ED.
WILD DUCK SHOOTING.
BY W. G. BEERS.
AMONG the memorable events of my youth I can scarcely recall any rival to the days spent on foot and in canoe hunting wild duck. It was the master passion of the boyhood of many I know, becoming in later years a passion to master. It was the acme of enjoyment in the days when one was light-hearted and débonnaire, and went whistling through birthdays with that enviable serenity so few of us manage to retain.
Wild duck! With the last fall of leaves and the first fall of snow, their quack was music to the ear. Steeped to the lips in classics, one wondered if there were no duck on the coast of Campania, that Tiberius tired of the pleasures around him and sighed in vain for more; or if there were none in Assyria, that Sardanapalus sought to have new amusements invented; or if there were no real ones where Loelius and Scipio made them on water with flat stones.
The first wild duck one kills, like first love, or one’s first proof-sheet, causes a sensation that is never duplicated. The history of its mysterious and ecstatic thrill through the veins, its wild rush through the soul, never knows a repetition. The duck may be in the “sere and yellow,” stricken in years, scraggy on the crown, weak in the wings, tough to your teeth as parchment—aye, indeed, with one foot in the grave and the other shot off, and have long ago ceased to scud between earth and sky for mere fun—just as the first love may have been nearly old enough to have been your mother, and with no more love in her eyes than an oyster; or as the first proof-sheet may have been an immature production to which you are now thankful you did not append your name. But in the heyday of life a vivid imagination throws a halo around our achievements, and though other duck, like other love, may turn out more “tender and true,” yet there lingers about the memory of the first experience an inexpressible charm which no gross soul can know.
I do not think I shall ever forget the first wild duck I shot. It was impressed upon me in a manner too striking. During the school holidays a few of us undertook to dispose of our superfluous energy by a pedestrian pilgrimage around the Island of Montreal, and as a dose for the game we might encounter, we managed, by coaxing a big brother, to muster a single-barreled gun and liberal supply of ammunition. There was a strong suspicion of rust down the barrel, and a disabled look about the hammer, but the owner declared it was good enough for boys, with that sublime faith manifested by watermen who let boats to inexperienced lads, that Providence takes special care of people who cannot take care of themselves. A well-worn inscription on the butt was ominously deciphered as “Memento mori.” I’ve seen more defective guns since—but they had burst.
