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that wherein the other wild fowl are taken. A decoy for Dun Birds is called a flight pond, and has nets fastened to tall stout poles, twenty-eight or thirty feet long; at the bottom of each pole is a box fixed, filled with heavy stones, sufficient to elevate the poles and nets, the instant an iron pin is withdrawn, which retains the nets and poles flat upon the reeds, small willow boughs, or furze; within side the nets are small pens, made of reeds about three feet high, for the reception of the birds that strike against the net and fall down; and such is the form and shortness of wing in the Pochard, that they cannot ascend again from these little inclosures if they would; besides, the numbers which are usually knocked into these pens, preclude all chance of escape from them by the wing. A decoy-man will sometimes allow the haunt of Dun Birds to be so great, that the whole surface of the pond shall be covered with them previous to his attempting to take one; upon such occasions he bespeaks all the assistants he can get to complete the slaughter by breaking their necks. When all is ready, the Dun Birds are roused from the pond; and, as all Wild Fowl rise against the wind, the poles in that quarter are unpinned, and fly up with the nets at the instant the Dun Birds begin to leave the surface of the water, so as to meet them in their first ascent, and are thus beat down by hundreds. At the pond of Mr. Buxton, at Goldanger, in Essex, as many Pochards have been taken at one drop as filled a waggon, so as to require four stout horses to carry them away; and the lower birds in the pens have been known to be killed, and pressed entirely flat, from the numbers of their companions heaped up above them, by the fatal stoppage of the poles and nets.

Shooting Wild Fowl.

To be equipt for this sport in severe weather, it is essentially requisite to be well clothed; flannel shirt, drawers, and additional exterior and warm garments, will not be found unpleasant to those who face the cold winds upon the Marshes, or sit fixed in a Punt alongside the Oozes: thick yarn stockings, and over them what is termed wads by the Fishermen (knit stockings that come up to the middle, and, however inelegant in their appearance, have their solid comforts to the wearer); and over these double defenders of the legs, a pair of water-proof boots will also be found indispensable. A cap must be worn made of

* The two following receipts for Boots and Guns I was favoured with by the late Dean of Exeter, Dr. HARWARD, who was formerly one of the best Wild Fowl shooters in the kingdom.

If the Boots are new, half a pound of Bees' War, a quarter of a pound of Resin, and the like quantity of Mutton Suet or Tallow; boil them up together, and anoint the Boots well with the preparation lukewarm. Should the Boots have been used, Beef Suet is to be substituted for the Mutton.

Three ounces of Black Lead, half a pound of Hog's Lard, one quarter of an ounce of Camphor, boiled upon a slow fire; the gun barrels to be rubbed with this, and, after three days, wiped off with a linen cloth; twice in a winter will keep off the rust, which the salt water is otherwise sure to be continually bringing out from the iron.

skin, instead of a hat; the fowl will not approach near the latter, and nothing so much or so soon shies them.

The Punt Shooters (men who earn their livelihood in winter by attacking the Wild Fowl, night and day, according as the tide serves) kill great numbers. The pursuit is hazardoust,

*The Fishermen use this preparation for their Boots. Bees' Wax, Bargundy Pitch, and clean Turpentine, of each two ounces, clear rendered Tallow four ounces, all melted together, and applied over a weak flame until the leather fills; the boots should be perfectly dry before being liquored, and apply the liquor by degrees, so that one portion may be dried in before another is laid on.

Old MERRY dressed his boots with the following mixture: if new, he always wore them three or four times previous to using it; half a pound of Tallow, four ounces of Hog's Lard, of Turpentine, Bees' Wax, and Olive Oil, each two ounces; the whole mixed together in a pipkin, and kept stirring whilst melted: after warming the boots at a fire, the preparation was laid on hot as the hand could bear it, and well rubbed in.

+ Mr. GILPIN has given an interesting description of the Wild Fowl shooting upon the Hampshire Coast, and of the escape of a Fowler, which will be here inserted; premising that the danger in the night is upon all Oozes nearly equal, if the return of the Tide is not accurately observed. "The coast between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is peculiar, consisting at ebb tide of vast muddy flats, covered with green sea weed; it affords the Fowler an opportunity of practising arts perhaps not elsewhere resorted to. Fowling and Fishing, says Mr. G. are indeed, on this coast, commonly the employments of the same person. He who in Summer, with his line or net, plies the shores, when they are overflowed by the tide, in Winter, with his gun, as evening draws on, runs up in his boat among the little creeks which the tide leaves in the mud-lands, and lies in patient expectation of his prey. Sea fowl usually feed by night, when in all their multitudes they come down to graze on the Savannahs of the shore. As the sonorous cloud advances (for their noise in the air resembles a pack of hounds in full cry), the attentive Fowler listens which way they bend their course; perhaps he has the mortification to hear them alight at too great a distance for his gun (though of the longest barrel) to reach them; and if he cannot edge his boat round. some winding creek, which it is not always in his power to do, he despairs of success that night; perhaps, however, he is more fortunate, and has the satisfaction to hear the airy noise approach nearer, till, at length, the Host settles in some plain upon the edge of which his boat is moored: he now, as silently as possible, primes both his pieces anew (for he is generally double-armed), and listens with all his attention: it is so dark that he can take no aim, for if he could discern the birds, they would also see him; and, being extremely timorous, would seek some other pasture: though they march with noise, they feed in silence; some indistinct noises, however, if the night be still, issue from so vast a concourse; he directs his piece, therefore, towards the sound, fires at a venture, and instantly catching up his other gun, discharges it where he supposes the flock to rise on the wing: his gains for the night are now decided, and he has only to gather his harvest; he immediately puts on his

especially when there is much ice in the river, by which they sometimes get encircled, and then can only float with the current, and are kept often two or three tides before they can extricate themselves, and their punt is ill calculated to sustain pressure against its sides, which

mud-pattens (flat square pieces of board, which the Fowler ties to his feet, that he may not sink in the Ooze), ignorant yet of his success, and goes groping about in the dark in quest of his booty, picking up sometimes many, and perhaps not one: so hardly does the poor Fowler earn a few shillings, exposed in an open boat, during a solitary winter night, to the weather as it comes, rain, hail, or snow, on a bleak coast, a league probably from the beach, and often liable, without great care, to be fixed in the mud, where he would become an inevitable prey to the returning tide. I have heard (continues Mr. G.) one of these poor fellows say, he never takes a dog with him in these expeditions, because no dog could bear the cold which he is obliged to suffer; and, after all, others frequently enjoy more from his labours than himself, for the tide often throws next day, on different parts of the shore, many of the birds which he had killed, but could not find in the night.

This hazardous occupation once led a Fowler into singular distress; it happened too in the day-time, which shows still more forcibly the risque of such nocturnal expeditions.-Mounted on his mud-pattens, he was traversing one of these oozy plains in search of Ducks, and, being intent only on his game, suddenly found the water, which had been accelerated by some peculiar circumstance affecting the tide, had made an alarming progress around him, and he found himself completely encircled: in this desperate situation an idea struck him as the only hope of safety; he retired to that part which seemed the highest from its being yet uncovered by water, and striking the barrel of his long gun deep into the Ooze, he resolved to hold fast by it, as well for a support, as a security against the waves, and to wait the ebbing of the tide; he had reason to believe a common tide would not have flowed above his middle; but in the midst of his reasoning on the subject, the water had now reached him; it rippled over his feet, it gained his knees, his waist; button after button was swallowed up, until at length it advanced over his shoulders; with a palpitating heart, he gave himself up for lost; still, however, he held fast by his anchor his eye was eagerly in search of some boat which might accidentally be passing, but none appeared: a head upon the surface of the water, and that sometimes covered by a wave, was no object to be descried from the land, at the distance of half a league; nor could he exert any sounds of distress that could be heard so far: while, as the exigence would allow, he was thus making up his mind to the terrors of certain destruction, his attention was called to a new object; he thought he saw the uppermost button of his coat begin to appear. No mariner floating on a wreck could behold approaching succour with greater transport than he felt at this transient view of his button; but the fluctuation of the water was such, and the turn of the tide so slow, that it was yet some time before he durst venture to assure himself that the button was fairly above the level of the flood; at length a second button appearing at intervals, his sensations may rather be conceived than described, and his joy gave him spirits and resolution to support his situation four or five hours longer, until the waters had fully retired."

are not twenty inches high from the surface of the water; in this the Punter by night drops down with the tide, or uses his paddles after the fowl; he knows their haunts, and takes every advantage of wind, tide, moon, &c.; his gun, which carries as much as a little cannon, is laid with the muzzle over the stem of the punt, in a hitch, which regulates the line of aim at the bottom of the punt he lays upon his belly, and gets as near the rout of fowl that are upon the water as possible; when within the range of his gun, he rattles with his feet against the bottom of his punt, and when the fowl begin to spring at this unexpected sound, at that moment he pulls the trigger, and cuts a lane through their ranks; he instantly follows the direction of his shot, and gathers up those that are killed, or just expiring, for very seldom he makes it answer to row after fowl only wounded; he then charges his gun, and drifts further down the river, in hopes of a second, third, and successive shots. By this mode a man has brought home from fourscore to an hundred Wild Fowl, of various kinds, in one night's excursion; and this will not seem an exaggerated account, when the multitudes which in hard frosty weather, with the wind at East or North-east, haunt the Blackwater River are known: the numbers that are seen in their day flights, and the noises of the various kinds of a night, are almost beyond belief; to the Compiler, prepared as he was to behold amazing quantities, they exhibited far beyond what he was led to expect, and to others who have seen their throngs, the astonishment has been perhaps still greater. A Punt Shooter, of the name of Bowles, has been known to clear upwards of an hundred pounds in a season by his gun; the Wild Fowl were sold to the Higlers, &c. at two shillings a couple, one with the other: allowing his expences to be only thirty pounds, here were 2600 birds brought home; an immense destruction, when the whole period allotted for it does not much exceed five months. Forty-two Wigeons have been killed at a single shot in the day-time, and the difficulty of approaching the great flocks of fowl in the light, is ten-fold. A man in whose punt the Compiler was, got eighteen Wigeons at one shot, and many that were crippled, escaped. If in the day, or at night, the Punters get a shoot at the fowl at feed upon the Ooze, they tie on their Plashes (similar to the Mud-pattens used in Hampshire), and collect the spoil.

The best time for this shooting is the first or second day's thaw after a sharp frost, and when deep snow has long covered the ground; the fowl are then flying in every direction to dabble in the fresh water, which then appears all around inviting them. Another favourable opportunity is at the commencement of a frost, with the wind strong at East, and a sleet or snow falling; if the guns can but be kept dry, there is no complaint about the using them, and the fowl in such weather always fly lower than when the atmosphere is clear.

In the day, shooting upon the river below Goldanger, in Essex, at half ebb, very extensive Oozes are dry, where grows a long grass upon which the Wild Fowl feed; the nicety required is, so to place the punt in some of the creeks which intersect these Oozes, as to intercept the birds either in coming to their feed when the tide recedes, or when it makes so as to cover the feeding ground, and drive them from the spot. It is then the Shooter has full employment for an hour and a half or two hours; after which, the Foul either get settled

upon their feed beyond the reach of interruption, or, if driven from it by the tide, they hasten to the various decoy ponds upon that river to repose themselves.

The gun proper for this amusement has no occasion to be more than three feet eight inches in the barrel, which should not weigh less than twelve pounds; (upon this scale the whole. gun will be about eighteen pounds weight;) this quantity of iron at the above length will be as capable, or more so, of throwing shot sharp and distant as a barrel two feet longer. Should this heavy mass be objected to as cumbersome to carry, let it be remembered, that these guns are not meant to lay upon the arm, or to be carried about in the fields; the Shooter is either seated in a boat, or upon a marsh; in either situation the gun does not fatigue him, since he has nothing to do but elevate it as the Wild Fowl fly over his head; and, after firing and charging, let it again lay beside him until fresh objects require its use. Without this ponderous substance, no man can stand the recoil of a gun that will carry a sufficient charge for doing execution at great lengths, and to kill many birds at a shoot; a common fowling-piece may do its business well, so far as its capacity extends, but it will carry very few pellets of either single or double Bristol shot; the latter is generally used by the Punters for day, and the former for night shooting: the largest, B. B. patent shot, is too light for either, but even with that, a gun with a common sized bore would not carry enough to do any great execution, if a rout of Fowl was ever so numerous: a convincing proof Major CARTWRIGHT has given upon this point whilst he was upon the coast of Labrador.

"I got a shot at about forty Eider Ducks, pretty well doubled up, and killed three; also crippled five or six more, but got only one; for both the weather and water were so cold, that my Greyhound, who has learnt from the Newfoundland dogs to fetch birds out of the water, would go in but once; they were a very fine shot for a large gun, but my double barrel has so small a bore, that it carries no more than fifty-two grains of B. B. shot.”

The same Gentleman has written various observations he made upon the velocity of the flight of Wild Fowl, which shew the necessity of a barrel that will bear the explosion of an additional quantity of gunpowder, so as to throw shot thickly and strongly to a distance, with an equal rapidity to the volant object; and also how requisite it is, to aim before Wild Fowl that are either approaching, and must be fired at almost perpendicular; or, when crossing the Shooter to the right or left, the rapidity of their flight is such, especially if aided by a fresh of wind, that considerable allowances must be made for it. The lock of a Wild Fowl gun cannot be too good; the nicest care should be observed in regulating its movements to the utmost degree of quickness, and that all its parts are at the same time perfectly safe.

"In my way hither (says Major C.) I measured the flight of the Eider Ducks by the fol lowing method, viz. on arriving off Duck Island, six miles distant from Henley Tickle, I caused the people to lie on their oars, and when I saw the flash of the guns, which were fired at a flock of Ducks as they passed through the latter, I observed by my watch how long they were in flying abreast of us. The result of very many observations, ascertained the rate of their flight to be ninety miles an hour.”

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