•56 THE MALLARD.
any suspicion of danger, and at these a shot, however long,
at the first sign that they are on the qui vive, is most likely to
tell. Then you must be able to tell, from the way they hold
their heads and tails, the way they move and face, when they
first begin to suspect that there are hostile influences in the
neighbourhood ; you must know the exact tone of their calls as
suspicion deepens into alarm, and when they resolve to be
off. To fire at the exact nick of time is half the battle, and
this is only possible after careful study of the behaviour of
each species when gradually or suddenly alarmed. I say suddenly,
because it will often happen that you can only get a good
shot, by yourself starting the fowl by a kick on the side of the
boat, or a slap with a paddle. You must be exactly in the
right place with reference to your bore and size of shot, and
you must be able to judge distances extremely correctly, lying
flat at the bottom of the boat with your eye only about ten
inches above water level. And you must be able to allow for
the pitch of the boat, since even in our broads and lakes
wavelets of considerable size get up under a stiff breeze. And
above all you must have strong arms and wrists and dogged
perseverance, to work up dead to windward against a good
wind ( this is perhaps when the heaviest bags are made,) lying
flat, with only your hands over the gunwale just behind the
bulge of the boat. I say nothing about the necessity of care
as to where exactly your face and arm are with reference to
the butt of the gun, but this too is a serious matter ; for staunchcons
will break, and the long swivel dart back to the stern,
and cheek bones and arms suffer if due count of such contingencies
has not been taken.
There is more skill, knowledge, and endurance brought into
play, and therefore more sport, in one day's big gun shooting than
in a week of even shooting such as Captain Butler describes ;
but punts and swivels, here and at home, have utterly gone
out of fashion, and no gentleman now-a-days knows how to
use them, (the professional fowlers no doubt stick to them, and
with vastly improved and breech-loading guns, and only an old
fowler knows how much this means), and it is useless playing
the part of a laudator temporis acti, or saying more of a form
of sport which, however glorious, is as much extinct, where
my readers are concerned, as falconry and hawking.
Knormous numbers of wild-fowl are yearly captured by
natives, and it may be as well to say once for all, something
about their modi operandi.
I have only seen fowl captured in India, in any numbers, in
three* ways :—First by hand. Here the fowler enters the water
• There are two other methods of capturing Wild Fowl, said to be most successful,
but which have never succeeded with me. The first is to have a strong but thin
cord stretched tightly eight or fen inches above the water, being tied, every ten yards
or so to poles firmly set in the mud below, with their heads projecting, only the
unperceived, with something over his head and shoulders, precisely
similar to something that the fowl are accustomed to
see floating about, and which thus enables him to move about
up to his neck in water, but with his head above this, and yet
quite screened from sight. For this purpose they use, in some
places, large earthen vessels, (chatties, or gharrahs,) in some
large gourds, in some baskets stuck about with rushes, so as
to look like floating lumps of these. In Sindh, as I noted
many years ago, they use the skin of a Pelican. I said talking
of the Silver-grey or Dalmatian Pelican:—
" This is the Pelican that the fishermen on all the inland
waters keep tame. As with the Herons, so with the Pelicans,
they generally sew up the eyes, and fasten them, by a string
tied to the leg, to the roots of some bunch of rushes, or to a
stake driven in below water level. They thus serve as decoys
to other water-fowl, who, knowing how wary Pelicans usually
are, readily settle where they see one or more of these birds
sailing slowly about backwards and forwards, and are thus
netted or captured in other ways. These Pelicans serve the
fishermen, who are fowlers also, in another way : they skin them
carefully, and cutting away the abdomen, in fact the greater
portion that would be below water-level in the live bird, line
the skin with a frame of thin basket work. They are very
clever in mounting the birds, especially in dyeing the pouch
and colouring it with turmeric so as to look exactly as in the
live bird, and also in imitating the eyes which they manufacture
out of lac. When ready, the fisherman places it on his
head, gets into the water, and progresses slowly and softly, making
the skin, which conceals his head, sail about in the water in
the most natural way imaginable, until he reaches the spot
where some of his blinded and tethered Pelicans are surrounded
required amount above the surface of the water. This line is thickly set with horsehair
nooses, at all possible angles, so that a duck can scarcely swim under the line
without getting its head through some noose or other. This line is set in one of
those jhils in which ducks colne to feed at night, and after they have settled, they
are gently worked to and fro, backwards and forwards, under the line, never being so
pressed as to lead to their rising, only sufficiently to make them swim away. Natives
have continually assured me that they have caught hundreds in a night this way,
with a really long line, and I believe that there is no doubt that they do thus capture
large numbers, but owing to some blundering on my own or my people's part, I have
never succeeded in making any hauls this way. It seems so reasonable, that I had a
beautiful line made fully 500 yards in length with between 30 and 40 thousand
nooses on it, and I had it set, time after time (a very troublesome and laborious
business, as each noose has to be put in a proper position), and I never caught
above a dozen birds in any night, though thousands of fowl must have passed under
that line a dozen times at least. Others may manage better.
Another plan is to peg down a strong line along some foreshore where fowls feed
at night close to the waters' edge. The line is pegged about every yard, and from
each point, where a peg is put down, a thin line, a yard or so long, is led out at right
angles into the shallow water. Each line carries two or three strong fish hooks which
are baited with worms, large water crickets, small frogs, fish, and the like. The
lines and pegs are covered with sand, only the baits are left showing. 1 have never
tried this, but especially on sea coasts, where large bodies of fowl feed regularly
in particular spots, it is said to be very effective.