CHESAPEAKE BAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1585, 8 April 1882, Page 26

CHESAPEAKE BAY.

DUCK-SHOOTING IN THE ' SINK-BOX ' DURING

DROBMBfeB.'

There is perhaps no region in the whole world, certainly none in its more thickly settled portions, where wild-fowl congregate in greater numbers than along the low-lying and indented shores of the Chesapeake bay.' This is the more singular when one considers the uninterrupted persistence with 1 which, owing to its accessibility from the great eastern cities, the birds on its' waters have through' all time been assailed by every artifice that' human ingenuity can devise for their destruction.' ' Of late years, however, what the,,law can do towards regulating the slaughter has ' been done. Swivel guns have been ' prohibited, close seasons strictly enforced, certain days of the week only in some spots thrown* open to sportsmen even in the open season, and licenses required for the use of th'e'most deadly method of destruction still legal-r-namely, the ' ( Sink-box.' From the very head of ' the bay ' (as the eastern sportsman affectionately calls it), where the Susquehanna' spreads' its bright waters over those' broad flats that have made the name of Havre de Grace a household word in American sporting ■ annals, to, where the reedy banks of Curictuck, upon the 'shore of North Carolina, receive the whole sweep of the Atlantic, the Ist of is a busy day. The ducking season is waning, if- not actually dead, across the whole northern portion of the continent, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Rocky Mountains. The smaller lakes and rivers of the far north and north-west are beginning to succumb to the grip of winter, and the great lakes themselves are not infrequently coated ever with a thin crust' of ice along their shores as the last steamers of the season, shorn of tourists and picnic parties, plough their melancholy way from port t6 f port. Sportsmen for the most part have hurried homewards from camp and club-house before the lowering forecasts, if not the actual lash, of early snowstorms, and the fowls themselves, in countless throngs, and with the clashing of a myriad wings, have begun to seek more genial climes, where the waters still ripple in western winds, and where the sun shines bright upon the still golden woods. Of all the methods of wild-fowl destruction practised on the Chesapeake and allowed by the law, that of the sink-box, as before mentioned, is in the hands of experts the most deadly. The caustic stranger who had once succeeded in squeezing his limbs into the .illomened looking craft' (for it is of the shape and size of a coffin) would be apt to suggest that it was not only for the ducks, but for the ducker . also, that danger lurked in its canvas wings. If those powers of physical endurance which sporting literature so delights to extol are of any value, two weeks on a Chesapeake duckingsloop in December would be as admirable an opportunity to the tyro ambitious of testing his powers in that direction as could well be imagined. To get an idea of the real thing, however, he. must refuse all invitations to any of the numerous Philadelphia or Baltimore clubs whosestately mansions deck the shore, even if he is lucky enough to get thorn ; and, shunning . such abodes of comparative luxury, cast in his lot with one of the sloops, either jirofessional or amateur, that havo taken out licenses to anchor on the flats at the mouth of the SusJuehanna, Late in November, _or early in >ecember, he will in all probability encounter the cold, cutting winds, accompanied by sloet , or snowstorms, that so often mark that season in the Middle States. Two hours before the dawn of day he will be aroused from such slumber us a hard bunk in the cuddy of a 10-ton cutter can aiford, to launch the ' box ' and set out the decoys. The decks are slippery with ico and the sails crackle with the same, while tho cold night wind howls through tho rigging, and pierces flannel shirts and woollen jerseys like paper. The box itself, shaped like a coffin to fit the human frame, lined with lead, and supported on the water by wings of canvas stretched on wooden frames, is by the aid of all hands slipped olf into the water and anchored to the bottom, while the boat is pulled alongside and loaded with three or four hundred decoy ducks from the hold, which in their turn have to be each separately placed, their anchors unwound, within r-hooting distance of the box. After an hour or two of this benumbing work the frozen sails are hoisted, the anchor weighed, and the sloop, leaving- ono of her miuiber upon the scene of action with a couple of breech-loading ten-boms sheers off to a point some half a mile distant just as the.

first faint lieht of day is breaking. Of all the remarkable "positions in which the sportsman in different quarters of the world and under different conditions is required to stretch himself, that which a successful sojourn in a Chesapeake sink-box demands is perhaps the most unique. Stretched flat upon his back, with head resting in purgatorial misery upon the edge of the box, so that his eyes and as little else as possible may be above the water-line, with arms pressed into his side by the narrowness of his coffin, and his gun, reposing with its butt somewhere in the neighbourhood of his chin, and the muzzle resting between ,his feet, the enthusiastic amateur, or the mercenary pothunter 'lies in wait j for the clouds of canvas-back-black-heads' and ' greasers,' the whistle of whose wings comes sounding across the water from every direction with the dawn of day. Lying thus below the level of the water, the canvass wings that support the box covered with iron decoys, and an immense flock of wooden ones dancing round upon the waves, the sportsman's concealment is complete, and * bunch' after bunch of fowl will alter its course to dart at the decoys ; and very much surprised must they be to see a human figure spring to a siting posture, apparently out of the depths below, and pour two showers of leaden hail into tjbeir midst. The professional, shooting from either shoulder with equal ease and precision; and using two guns, will often make astonishing bags from the sink-box in the course of a single day. Upon the Ist of November, 1880, 500 head were killed by one man ; upon tho same day this year 380 was. the highest chronicled. To an amateur- or fresh hand, no matter what his success, on terra, jbina } the circumstance's ■are strongly in favour of his coming out of the box with • feeHngs of unmitigated disgust towards, himself and, the world in general. The sun,' if it, is sjiining,, glares i' down' upon his upturned face 'with a persistency from which there, is no escape.. His 1 limbs are, not only cramtie'd, but often drenched by the waves that splash ever, him and wet his bed. The. difficulty > to unpractised .ears of detecting the quarter from 1 , which approaching ducks, are coming is great, and last, but npt ,least, the measurements for shooting fowl that have been flying, for two or three miles are .utterly at variancp .with those that guide the eye and hand 'of the slayer of ordinary game. I remember hearing, or reading somewhere of an Englishman' who, with justice, estimated his Bho'oting powers very high, and who was the guest of an American ducking club for his first experience 'of flight-shooting proper. 'Mr /Said an old Yankee 1 veteran as they were smoking in the club-room the evening before, 'have you' ever shot ducks on' the flight? because, if not; I giiess'by this time to-morrow night you, will feel pretty mean.' Our friend was silently and contemptuously .indignant, bat on taking his stand at the'point next morning found to his intense.disgust that shot after shot. went by untouched, and that for the first time in .his life he 'was making an absolute spectacle oi: himself in, the eyes Of his fellowsportsmen, who had each a heap, of f ducks laid round. him as the result of an hour's' rapid shooting,'. "He was, about ,td give'uD the game in disgust, and, fired the last cartridge I ' m his bag at ' f th'e pleading bird of.a string 6f ducks, when', 'to : ]iis astonishment, instead- of the first bird falling, 'the last one of iihe five I ,' flying from ten to : fifieen\ feet behind the leader, toppled over 'into, the 1 jtfater, opening Kis eyes' to the reason- 1 of his hithertp unaccountable want -of success. «' ' ;', ' !/■ ' : „'«!• To view the, ducking grounds of the Chesapeake, however, on a bright morning in November is a'very different affair" to freezing-in a sink-box in a r dreary December dawn, and 'a very,' much cheerier , occupation : when not'ta ripple moves over the whole surface of itsJwide waters, ' and ,when, far down the bay, points and, islands seem to' simmer .in mid .air, and marks upon the horizon the only visible division, between sea . and sky. - Black massea of ducks can be descried in every direction, like bedsj of Seaweed floating upon the surface of the'water, only .rising now and again like great clouds into the sky with the roar of a thousand wing's as some approaching foe draws near them.'. The i long line of sink-boxes can be counted by the stools of decoys, which on a clear' morning are visible at great distances, by their attendant sloops and by the constant firing, which, however, grows slacker and slacker towards midday. •< Boats, too, can be seen moving in . every direction after ' cripples,' while little steamers, the property of shooting clubs', dash hither and thither with the view of keeping th 6' birds as much as possible on the wing. Neither is the Bhore a safer place for the hunted fowl; fau at every promontory a white puff of smoke rises at intervals, showing that the 'point shooter' is also busy. And yet year after year the ; supply seems to be the same, and no possibility of the epicure being stinted in ihis supply of canvas-back has as yet been so much. as! even hinted at in Eastern markets. . .