File:American game bird shooting (1882) (14753222284).jpg

Identifier: americangamebird00murp (find matches)
Title: American game bird shooting
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: Murphy, John Mortimer
Subjects: Game and game-birds Hunting
Publisher: New York, Orange Judd
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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dollar each, and from ten to fortyare bagged at every discharge of the western piece of ord-nance. I have seen flocks which were so indifferent tothe noise of firing that they would merely rise or clmib,as the jDrofessional hunters have it, a few feet in the air,and, after honking their alarm and their sense of annoy-ance at being disturbed, return to the ground again, andremain there until the shooting made them take to thewing once more. Some persons manage to secure largebags by digging holes in the stubble-fields and coveringthem with straw, and then blazing away at the geesewhen they come to feed. These men tie the birds whichthey have wounded to stakes driven in the ground, anduse them as decoys to lure their congeners to destruction,for they are exceedingly clamorous callers. Dead geese,if properly grouped, are also useful decoys, but their at-titudes should be as natural as possible, or they may domore harm than good. If the ground is covered with snow, the wild-fowler ^k.Mi M
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WILD GEESE. 245 either screens his gopher hole with a white sheet,makes a blind of the same material, and lies in ambushbehind it, or else dons it as a garment and fastens a hand-kerchief around his hat, and then throws himself flat onthe earth, until the unsuspicious birds come near enoughto be shot. A person whose dress does not harmonizewith the landscape in hue, rarely gets an opportunity ofbagging them, unless he is concealed in a blind made ofstraw, in a thicket, or in a sink-box, for the goose, not-withstanding its supposed doltish intellect, is one of themost vigilant creatures that traverse the air, and isalmost sure to notice any unusual color on the ground,and to give it a wide berth. This is why experiencedhunters wear white clothing in winter, and drab or buffat other times of the year. Large numbers of geese arekilled near air holes in the early part of winter, bymaking blinds of ice blocks, but this system is so muchlike pot-hunting that few sportsmen care for it. Wh(!r

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