University of Virginia Library

4. NO. IV.
DUCK SHOOTING.

We wonder if the Poet ever got any answer to that question.
We will bet a bag of buckshot, that the water-fowl to
whom the interesting interrogatory was addressed, was out of
sight, and out of the sound of its echo, before the spoken sentimentality
ran up against a mark of interrogation. “Whither,”
aye, “whither” should a duck go, in the age of percussion
caps, batteries, and patent cartridges? Under what upper
cloud may “the fowler's eye” mark in “distant flight,” his

“figure floating,” “vainly,” or without power to do him “wrong,”
or his fowler self, justice? The bird, which the bard apotheosised,
must have been either close by, or afar off. If he
was near, he could have been talked to, or shot at, according
to the taste of the spectator, and there would then have been
no gammon about “vainly the fowler's eye.” If he was too
far off, and only “painted on the crimson sky,” then neither
goose-shot nor poetical questions could have touched a feather
on his ear.

Let us pray to be forgiven by all just admirers of the
thoughtful music from which we have adopted the entablature
of our present madness, if we have seemed to borrow.—God
save the word! when could we repay!—steal—look at—
with any sort of levity,—the choice-culled flowers of phrase
that sculpture those sweet dreamings of Bryant. They are
mournful philosophy, reasoning grief, imagination with feet.—
Sense, heart, mind, flight. That brings us to the subject of
ducks.

Talk of “flights,” and you will remember straightway old
Drayton;—

Permit us, dear reader, to call your attention, for a few moments,
to the flight of the mallard, or shoveller—which, we
know not—in the precedent picture. If thou art blind, yet
hast shot heretofore, know that the engraving exhibits, water,
sky, bushes, hassocks, two ducks in trouble, a boat, one man
with a setting pole, and another with a gun, in the bow. If
thou BE blind, thou hast not lost much, for we do not hold the
picture dearly. Two very-gentle-men have come out, at three
hours after sunrise, to shove for crippled birds of any nation
or species, black or white, infidel or christian, grasseater or

crabcannibal. They are of the class of people who take their
comfort while they shoot. Their clothes are accurate and
comely fits. The gentleman with the pole, shoves with his
coat on, buttoned up. Doubtless, they will knock over the
invalid who flutters in the rear. It will be a merciful certainty,
if the shooter stands firm, and holds right. The
wounded one winnows the air weakly. Those birds had
flown to the up-gushing fountains of the fresh meadows, and
the healing creek-greens, to cure their stricken pinions, and
sides sore with lead spent to sting them, in the lower bays;—
not killed, but feverish after a hard experimental blow, struck by
some patient point-shooter, who had begun to be tired of waiting
for a company to wheel up nearer to his stool. That
wooden parallelogram, called a scow, chiefest for a trout-pond
cannot accomplish an original death;—unless a spring of teal,
or a river broadhill, lie in close security behind some straggling
patch of rushes, in the direct track of the intended water
road. Yet let us not do injustice to the pretty picture. It
shows, how, in a quiet way, a lover of pure air and kaleidiscopical
colors, may float down an ebbing stream, through
channel-enclosing bushes, and sedges trespassing upon the
ancient but diminishing dominion of the river gods, and suddenly
startle from his falsely imagined safety, some unfortunate
speculator in water-weeds, who thought his weak or
shattered fortune would be made sound and fat by “going in.”
One of these ducks is clearly “lame.” The other looks as
though he was taking the benefit of the wild-fowl absent
debtor act.—[That act differs from the enactment of the human
New York Legislature, in one peculiar respect. In the one
case, if the fowl owes you any feathers, or flesh, and can get
out of your jurisdiction—or rather Collineodiction—he is safe;
and may grant, bargain, sell, devise, bequeath, and run away
from, all and singular his right, title, principal and interest in
and to, and so forth, his temporary home and feeding spots.
In the other case, the Sheriff is apt to form a strong attachment
for the feeding places and singular chattels of the abscondant,
and hold on to them, against his assignee, with a
love “passing the love of women.”]—The gentlemen have
made a call upon him: but he is “out,”—out of reach.
Whither is thy flight, good fowl? Of what shell-bank wert thou
cashier? “Whither, midst falling due” notes, of which—
knowing thy business place, and full of trust,—we thought
we held the substance?—Thou art lost, gone, etherealized
silvered over with a cloudy dinner set, and wilt set thy table
in other waters!

How crippled fowl will Biddleize and Swartwoutize, and
make the fowlers who are after them d—n their eyes!

No matter. There are ducks enough left, not so flighty, and
with whom we can, easier, talk, in plain sight. Who doubts
the assertion? If it be he who goes to Audubon's exhibition,
and judges from that heterogeneous mixture of fish, flesh, and
Indian sculls, what the glorious bays of Matowacs[6] can produce,
in this present, existing November, of Anseric and
Anatic providence; or he who tries to assimilate or to reconcile
the classifications of the proudest ornitholigical grammarians—Latham—Buffon—Bewick—Wilson—Audubon—

and all the rest,—into any sort of society, of which the members
may be identified by some possible nomenclature without
an alias, or without a doubt expressed as to their family
title;—men that call the American gander “Anas Canadiensis,”
instead of “Anser,” forgetting those Roman “hawnkers,”
worthy of a classic name, who saved the empire treasury from
the rapacious Gauls;—then, we pray thee, friend come with
us, and look at the streaming squadrons, crucking, quacking,
whistling and perutting in the Great South bay of Long Island.
The most accurate images,—and those of Audubon—
bird Prometheus—almost live, are faint copies of the rushing
glories of the bay. No one can paint like Goddess Nature.
Break thy pallet, tear thy canvas, thou mortal who dare presume.

Knowest thou Jim Smith?—James X. Smith,—called by
judicious distinction from some rascals, who, by paternal authority,
have stolen his name, James Xenophon Smith?—Illustrious
cognomen!—worthily won; as every angler well appreciates,
who has perused the map of his “Anabasis” to
Steph. Sweesy's pond, and has moralized over the stumps where

Jim and we once pitched our tents, long, long before “Yorkers”
found out that trout floated there, and before Jim X. had
learned that he could make moneys out of frail travelling nature,
by building a good ice-house near “The Sportsman's
Hotel.” James X. Smith's biography is yet to be written!
He lives now, and we introduce him briefly. Ample provision
will, unquestionably, be made in his will, for his eulogist.
We name James X. as being the fortunate proprietor of one
of the chiefly selected stopping haunts, and sallying ports, of
all shooting visitors of Matowacs. You cannot mistake his
house, if you hold up at the sign-post at the corner of Jerusalem
lane and South turnpike. It is a pious neighborhood.
The name gives you a confidence in that truth. Babylon,
the mother of miscellaneous people, is nine miles farther
east.

But what changing panoramas of vocal regiments of air-climbers
will you not see shifting, with their living paintings,
all singing in their own particular crotchets, when you go out,
in the early morning, striking the sleeping inlets with your
oar, before the sun has waked up! Will you look into Wilson
for an enumeration, or gloat over Audubon? Yet neither
they, nor Bonaparte, have told the names—for they never
had their acquaintance,—of all their familiar varieties. Probably
the families have intermarried and crossed the breed,
since those authors wrote, and new baptisms are to be
sprinkled. Wilson was certainly never on Matowacs. He
shot his own acquired specimens, at Egg Harbor and Cape
May. The rest were sent to him, with an eel-spears-man's
description, which he translated.

We are not learned, nor critical, which latter we might be
without being instructed; but every bayman on Long Island,
to whom you would read the ill-arranged ordines, genera, and

species of Wilson, translating the latin to him, and putting it into
honest South-side dialect, would say “Pshaw! he hasn't got
down one half the different kinds of broadbill,—let alone other
salt-water birds who hold their public meetings on our
marshes!” But even in Wilson, you find twenty-odd enumerations
of feather-floaters, who either strut by their own
domiciles, or occasionally, call in at the Squaw Islands, Linus
Island or Wanzas flat, and are ready for the reception of visitors,
who come in the shape of Youle's No. 3.

Let us take a skiff and put out and bless the abundance.

It is three o'clock, A. M. If thou art cold, and, last night,
slept too little—for reasons, which as a dear friend, loving
thy usual abstinence, and chastising thee by silence, rather
than by unnecessary recapitulation, we forbear to hint at, lie
down in the bottom of the boat, in the dry salt-meadow grass
which thy man will fix for thee, with thy head upon an air
cushion resting upon the bow-head, and sleep. Sleep! when
birds are swimming in the skiff's pathway, and ducks quack,
and brant cronk, and broadbill prut about thee? No; thy poler
or oarsman, even if he had not read Shakespeare, would soon
cry out “Sleep no more,”—or else, “Mister, I reckon there's
fowl ahead—close by—take them as they rise.”

Such a heart-stirrer and ambition-provoker, puts you on
your knees, and you will try to see through the dark. How
queer! we bend our bodies upon our knees when we pray to
be saved; and yet we often kneel, in the same way, to destroy
ducks! When are our prayers most earnest?—Don't
think of it. Knees have dangerous associating reflections.

But you will by-and-by arrive at some jutting point, or
thatchy island, where you may lie securely hid, wrapped up
in the warm envelopments of sedge-grass and your overall,
and wait for the peeping daylight to set the various tribes of

ducks to their works of travel and diving. Happy wretches!
who have nothing to do but to fly, and to feed, and be loved,
and shot,—killed without notice, without lingering sickness,
or surgical torment. Yet they, many of them, have their ails
and aches; and the inexperienced amateur, shooting when
they fly in his eyes, and the old leather-head batterer straining
a broken musket at a distance immeasurable but by a fowl,
has planted many a shot-wound needlessly, by accident, in the
side of a straggler, or luck-loser of the flock.

But thou art at thy hiding-place now, and thy poler—polar
star of thy existence, if thou knowest not the road, and how
to pull, and he fall overboard,—is setting out his stools.

If thou be inexperienced, thou mayest look into all the dictionaries
that have ever been collated, and we hold the last—
Richardson's, the poorest, and a great humbug, yet it comes
nearer to our taste in its illustration of this word—and thou
wilt not learn what the sporting meaning of “stool,” is. To
save the trouble of distant reference and inquiry, we will therefore
certify and explain that “stools,” in shooting phraseology,
are graven images made in the likeness of geese, brant, and
ducks, before which the hassock-skulking adventurer bows
down and worships—not the graven images—but the providence
that permits the living squadrons at whom he shoots, to
be cheated by the false colors which he has hung out, to persuade
them to come in. How many—many—honorable villains,
might be indicted for obtaining ducks under “false pretences.”
The district attorney of Queen's might soon make
his fortune, if he would only do his duty. Stools, to talk plain
American, are wooden devices of the shape, size, and complexion
of the fowl you wish to subduce from the upper air.
Sculptor and painter are employed in their manufacture. Jim
X. Smith's boys unite and body forth the sister arts. Let

them set out a congregation of stool for thee, and thou wilt for
ten minutes cry out “there's a bird,” fast as guns can be reloaded,
and shoot every stool to pieces. The old man, himself,
was not slow at sculpture. We remember one April day
—it was the first, and the old man wanted his revenge on us
for some innocent devil-play—when lying in Goose-Creek,
after sheldrakes, Jim suddenly got up, and wrapping his pea-coat
around him, stepped from the boat to the marsh, and said,
“he believed he'd take a walk, and see if there wasn't any
black ducks sitting in that pond down there,”—somewhere.
He went. After a quarter of an hour's travel he returned, and
with all the solemnity of a regular cheater, observed that “he
reckoned he see a crippled faawl sittin down on the edge of
that are pint.” “I'll go after him,” exclaimed our companion,
who had in the mean time, with poor luck like our own, called
to give us a visit of condolence, in another skiff. “No, no;”
cried the excellent Jim X., “I want that fowl in our boat. I
found him first, and Mr. Cypress is entitled to the shot. You
can come along, and if he misses, you can kill after him.”
And so we went—slop, sink, stick, jump, through and over a
wet, soft meadow. At last we heard the welcome intelligence,
—“Stop, Mr. Cypress, there he is: don't you see him?—just
a leetle north-east of that bunch of bushes on the edge of the
bank?” We looked: there he was.

“Jim, that's a dead bird. He can't rise.”

“Yes he can; and if you don't shoot it sittin, he'll tumble
off into the water, and dive, and there'll be an end of him.
Shoot, shoot, and if he rises take him with the other barrel;
stand ready, Mr. B—.”

We shot, the bird sat and grinned at us.

“You've killed him—you've killed him,” cried Jim,—
“don't shoot your other barral.”

It is no great grief to renew; but we had rather tell the
story ourselves; and it was April day, and it was James X.
So he went and picked up our game, one of his aforesaid stools,
which he had privately secreted under the folds of his great
coat, and carried out to help the solemnization of April-fool
day, in the South bay. We have not had our revenge yet.

James X. is wary, and moves out of the county on the last
day of March. But retribution is in pickle for him; and it
will be funny.

This simple incident in our biography illustrates the subject
of stools. They are miserably wooden pictures of bay
birds, whose distant view brings enchantment to the living
jaunters, when they dip in here, and who are apt to look at the
arrival-book of the public places of “entertainment for ducks,”
and stop where their friends are; and will, of course, call in
and say they're “happy to see them.” Alas! how many
credulous, ruined hearts, of human structure, have been
pierced, and stricken, bleeding, by a similar profession of
love, and good feeding-ground! The stools are anchored off,
some twenty or thirty yards, held safely by a brick or angular
stone, tied to a string attached to a nail driven in their middle,
and there they float, like independent slaves tied to their
desk or counter, bobbing up and down and looking “happy
—very happy,” but yet unable to take the wings of the morning,
or of the moonlight, and to fly away. The fresh flocks
just arriving, and not knowing where to go, following example,
as they imagine, whirl, with congratulatory clang, into
the expected welcome of their fancied neighbors, only to
be met by the rough, harsh, remorseless, bang, bang, with
which “the obtainer of ducks under false pretences,” lies
hiding to destroy them.

They used to have another device “down East,” called

“machines,” Dannel Post, Ike Rose, and the Alibi's, were,
if not the inventors, at all events, the constant practisers and
mechanists, in the time of the prevailing architecture to which
we refer. Let no man flatter himself that that order of art
is beneath his notice. The genius of the structure itself sneers
at the Corinthian, speaks with cold respect to the Doric, and
calls itself the Colline-anatic. But those old batteries are
decaying; for the Legislature has enacted a law, forbidding
worship in such temples. General Jones, of Queen's, Senator
and nobleman, noble-man as a Republican could wish to
be, takes the responsibility of the constitutionality of the
imposed penalty. Fifty dollars for every bird shot out of a
battery? All honor to him if the law can be enforced.
Whether it be a law just and sustainable upon the ground of
“equal rights,” or the “sumptuary” prerogatives of law-making
power, we have not yet made up our conclusion.
Our judgment is only doubtfully retained, having been spoken
to on both sides, without an advanced fee from either; therefore,
we decline being anxious to precipitate an opinion.

We must confess, however, that, personally, we have lain
in those coffins, not dead, nor dying, but the cause of death
in many two-legged people with feathers on. But we have
always had doubts about the morality—the mor—what?
—what is morality, as applied to ducks? A duck's safety
lies in his wings and feet, not in acts of the Legislature. He
can spring yards enough, at a single leap, to cheat his enemies;
flies two miles in a minute, to overtake his friends;
and dive, and scramble, and hide, better than the cunningest
Seminole. Yet, perhaps, our ducks need protection. Perhaps
we ought to repair our house, and make things comfortable,
or the tenants will move away. There is a great deal
in that consideration. Years ago, the southern bays of Matowacs

were brilliant with sparkling plumage, and bright eyes
of birds of every hue and shape. Now!—Look for the intended
progenitors of a “long line of descendants,” in the kitchens
of people who go to Fulton Market. The marshes which
were joyfully obstreperous, even in summer, are now silent.
The banquet halls of the feeding-flats are deserted. Instead
of taking board, or hiring a house and lot, and making themselves
comfortable, as in old times; the ducks, now, are
only travellers, who just stop and take a drink, where they see
the proper sort of bar. It is natural, and therefore excusable,
that they stop at those Hotels where they see the most people
congregated; for a congregation argues good patronage;
and good patronage argues good beverage.

This brings us back to the subject of machines. A machine,
or battery, is a wooden box of the necessary dimensions
to let a man lie down upon his back, just tightly fitting enough
to let him rise again.—It is not unlike that box which we
have all got to be shut up in, at the end of the chapter of our
lives.—It is fitted with wings of board horizontal, and so sustained
and nailed as to lie flat upon the water without sinking,
the top fringing, and the sides keeping you unwet by the
surrounding and over-floating tide, which gurgles around your
ears, and just does not come in, because the weight of stones
laid upon the wings, accurately adjusts the sinking depth of
the box. This receptacle for the body of the fowl slayer, is
anchored in some middle bay, where, in its shallow waters,
the birds have a “haunt,” and fly to feed upon the thick-growing
crops of Valisneria, and other goodly sea-wheat, far from any
point or plashy hassock, where, with their constant experience,
they might fear some skulker hid. The battery is
anchored. The wings, about five feet by seven, are covered
carefully with sand and carelessly scattered sea-leaves, and

there is thus built an artificial sand-bar in the middle of the
wide, and to the credulous victim, seemingly safe, bay. You
get into this machine, and lie down and watch. Your man disposes
the stool-birds to your leeward, and sails away to stir
up flocks miles off, and drive them towards you, leaving you
in the waste of waters, where a little leak might sink and
anchor you at the bottom,—fun for ducks to dive and flop at,
—to lie, cheat, counterfeit, and kill. That is “shooting out
of a machine.” The now arrivers coming in from sea, see
the supposed happy family you have around you, afar off, and
set their willing wings, fatigued with long exertion, and
come, crucking musical “good mornings,” among your false
masques. Then, then!—as they swoop in thick company
before they settle,—you rise from under the water, like a
sudden demon, and scatter thunder and lightning and death
among the deceived and ruined unfortunates!

Plant these machines all along the southern coast of Matowacs,
from Gowanas bay to Montauck point, and can any
man wonder that James X.—who hasn't got any proper spot
to set out a battery,—should sometimes say that “ducks is
scace?”

Mercy on us; we came near expressing an opinion! But
we are not committed. And lo! we have prosed a long half
hour, almost, and have not said a word we intended to. Dear
reader, we will usurp no more. Talk, now, thyself.