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Updated: June 13, 2025
Along the Atlantic Coast, where the shooting of wildfowl is an important industry with many people, the raising of Canada Geese is a common custom. Not only do these great birds serve as food, but they play the part of decoys when their owners go ahunting.
While eating my lunch of sandwiches under the lee of a reedstack, I observed that numerous flights of wildfowl on passing from one branch of the river to another crossed a low, marshy corner of the island, so that presently I made my way there and crouched down amongst the rushes behind a dyke, having a small lagoon immediately at my back.
Owing, however, to the increasing European colony at Shanghai and the numerous mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically untouched until the advent of Europeans.
Above and around was the continued whistle of wings as the wildfowl, with their strange, early-morning persistence, insisted on returning to the spot whence they had been so lately disturbed. A movement shook the boat as Mr. Kincaid arose to his feet. Bang! Bang! spoke both barrels of the ten-gauge. "Two," said Mr. Kincaid in his natural voice.
"I am afraid that we cannot expect always to camp on the borders of a lake or river," I answered. "It will be plenty one day, and starvation the next. However, if we are prudent, I hope that we shall get along without much suffering. There are probably wildfowl to be found, and then we may fall in with friendly tribes, of whom we can purchase food.
So he hied him thither to learn some news; and as he asked what goods they had o' board, he soon found that their whole cargo was venison, hares, capons, turkeys, pigs, swine, bacon, kids, calves, hens, ducks, teals, geese, and other poultry and wildfowl. He also spied among these some pieces of velvet, satin, and damask.
Suddenly the brooding wildfowl rose from the bosom of the lake, soared in the air, and, uttering mournful shrieks, whirled in agitated tumult. The deer started from their knolls, no longer sunny, stared around, and rushed into the woods.
At six o'clock on those November mornings, about the time that, far away from the city, the wildfowl rose up out of the calm marshes and passed to the troubled spaces of the sea, at six o'clock the factory uttered a prolonged howl and gathered the workers together, and there they worked, saving two hours for food, the whole of the daylit hours and into the dark till the bells tolled six again.
Therefore I filled my pockets with duck shells, seized my close-choked 12-bore, and followed Uncle Jim. We walked across three fields. "Those ducks are acting mighty queer," proffered Uncle Jim in puzzled tones. We stopped a moment to watch. Flock after flock stooped toward the little pond, setting their wings and dropping with the extraordinary confidence wildfowl sometimes exhibit.
Near at hand the sparse gray sagebrush reared its bonneted heads; far away it blurred into a monochrome where the plains lifted and flowed molten into the cañons and crevices of the foothills. Numberless crows, blackbirds, and wildfowl crossed and recrossed the very blue sky.
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