DUCK CATCHING IN JAPAN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 29, 19 September 1911, Page 6

DUCK CATCHING IN JAPAN.

One of the peasant industries of Japan is the catching of wild ducks, which is done in a very simple manner, as related by an English traveller wiio has lately returned from the land of the Chrysanthemum. Fls says:—“l was waited upon at a teahouse one morning, after a night’s hunt for ducks, by several professional duck-hunters, with the request that I would not go out again, and they would give me as many ducks as I wanted to take uway. * I consented, with the proviso that I ■should see the fun, and went with them to the village. The chief hunter had a comfortable house and young family, all looking well-to-do. His wife was preparing birdlime in a large crock, over a charcoal fire, and tiio others were all cutting reeds into lengths of about eighteen inches, and those wore tried up in bundles of a hundred. When the birdlime had boiled down to his satisfaction, tho bundles of reeds were dipped in the not fluid, and held over it until there was no drainage, and thou stood on end. Towards dusk we sailed forth, wth the bundles slung to bamboos, and, on arrival at the )swamp, the limed reeds wore stuck lightly in the rand, with tho lime just above the water. This took until dark, when we made ohr way hack to the teahouse. Next morning, at daybreak, iva returned to the swamp, ana round sixty-five bundles of reeds, each containing an exhausted duck, and almost every reed had been displaced.” He tolls also of a similar novel manner of catching rats, which our English vermin-hunters might try. He was much disturbed during tiie night by hordes of rats, which had been driven indoors by the cold, and therefore 'consulted a native hunter, who promised relief. The rat-catcher brought a number of sheets of paper, smeared with birdlime, and distributed them about tho room after nightfall. In the morning'' there .wore no less then seventeen bundles of paper on the floor, each containing a living rat, their /squeaks and contortions being, as may be imagined, very absurd.