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Updated: June 7, 2025
In that time, as our Business call'd us up and down the River and Branches, we kill'd of wild Fowl, 4 Swans, 10 Geese, 29 Cranes, 10 Turkies, 40 Ducks and Mallards, 3 dozen of Parrakeeto's, and 6 dozen of other small Fowls, as Curlues and Plover, &c.
It was a pretty assortment of game, six of them teal, three mallards and one of an unknown breed, which Maurice thought might be a broadbill, though he had an idea that class of divers kept near the salt water in its migration. "I forgive that wretched thief; he's welcome to the lone duck he took.
I killed four light-gray geese with yellow bills and legs and narrow brown bars across the head, and a broad brown stripe down the back of the neck. Later I found my identification to be correct, and that the bird is an occasional visitor to Mongolia. There were a few mallards, redheads, and shoveler ducks, and several bustards, besides half a dozen species of plover and shore birds.
His cares as a herder, vacheur, vaché, he called it, were wherever his slender-horned herds might roam or his stallions lead their mares in search of the sweetest herbage; and when rains filled the maraises, and the cold nor'westers blew from Texas and the sod was spongy with much water, and he went out for feathered game, the numberless mallards, black ducks, gray ducks, teal with sometimes the canvas-back and the poules-d'eau the water-hens and the rails, and the cache-cache the snipe were as likely to settle or rise just before his own house as elsewhere, and the most devastating shot that hurtled through those feathered multitudes was that sent by her husband hers her own possessive case belonging to her.
The magnificent mallards in particular afforded our Yankee neighbors royal feasts almost without price, for often as many as a half-dozen were killed at a shot, but we seldom were allowed a single hour for hunting and so got very few.
Phoebe's flock consisted at first mostly of Brown Mallards, but a friend gave her a sitting of eggs warranted to produce a most beautiful variety of white ducks. They were hatched in due time, but proved hard to raise, till at length there was only one survivor, of such uncommon grace and beauty that we called her the Lady Blanche.
The sharp prow of the canoe cut swiftly through the waves, a light spray flew occasionally in his face, and the wind blew pleasantly. In the cloudless sky swallows and swifts were wheeling, and on the water half a dozen mallards moved aside to let him pass.
We saw a flock of mallards alight in the short marsh grass and when I fired at least five hundred greenheads, yellow-nibs, and pintails rose in a brown cloud. Crouched behind the salt mounds, we had splendid shooting and then rode on to join the carts, our ponies loaded with ducks and geese.
In 1794, in the fall of his horse, as already mentioned, he wrenched his back, and in consequence, when he returned to Mount Vernon, this pastime was never resumed, and his pack was given up. Kindred to this taste for riding to the hounds was one for gunning. A few entries in his diary tell the nature of his sport. "Went a ducking between breakfast and dinner and kill'd 2 Mallards & 5 bald faces."
When at home, Washington now and then took a gun and went out after ducks, "hairs," wild turkeys and other game, and occasionally he records fair bags of mallards, teal, bald faces and "blew wings," one of the best being that of February 18, 1768, when he "went a ducking between breakfast and dinner & killed 2 mallards & 5 bald faces." It is doubtful whether he was at all an expert shot.
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