During the last decade it has been discovered that wild ducks can be so
managed as to give assured sport. Some people rate it a good deal higher
than pheasant shooting, and besides this the wild duck is very much more
easily bred than the pheasant, costs less than half, and if it does give
as good sport, or better, there is nothing more to be said. But the
artificially bred wild duck is very much more difficult to manage in
shooting than the pheasant. The latter is a shy, nervous bird; but the
duck considers things, and therein lies the trouble. If you treat him
affectionately, you cannot frighten him; if you keep him wild, you are
very likely to lose him altogether. You may so arrange, if you will,
that the wild duck is not the least bit scared at the firing of guns.
Probably this is the proper management, because, after all, when this
has been brought about, your duck only the closer imitates the game
birds that we love so well. You will send every pigeon clattering out of
the trees if you fire a gun in covert; but the pheasants take hardly any
notice, neither do partridges or grouse care for the sound of a gun,
although they care very much for the sight of a man, and shy at the
smoke but not at the sound made by a line of guns. The wild duck, unless
taught better manners, is as scared as the pigeon by the sound of
firing. Hence it is difficult to drive birds backwards and forwards over
a line of guns, because even if they will take that flight twice, they
will mount up five or ten times as high as a gun can reach. The more
shooting there is the higher they mount, and even if they want to come
down to a favourite pool they swing round and far above many times
before they venture to come near enough to the surface to afford a shot.
This is the nature of the really wild bird, which is nevertheless
partial to one home water, and is practically at home nowhere else.
Consequently, when duck are artificially reared, this wild and
pigeon-like habit must be eliminated in some way, otherwise a thousand
duck may show themselves only too well, and give no sport whatever. The
broad principle of getting shooting at hand-reared ducks is, therefore,
either to prevent guns from scaring them, or else to arrange that
instead of seeing the shooters constantly they only see them once, and
that once when the birds are going home. The first plan is very easily
arranged by constantly letting the ducks hear a shot or two about
feeding-time. It can even be brought about that the gun is the signal
for food, and when that has been accomplished the danger is not that the
birds will be scared away to sea or into the sky, but that they should
settle near the shooters and quack for food. But without making the gun
the actual signal for feeding-time, it is easy enough to let the young
birds hear enough of it to disregard it entirely. If this is not done,
the birds will not settle during shooting in the neighbourhood, and if
they will not alight they cannot be driven. Another difficulty is that
these birds love to associate in great numbers, and in a big flock what
one does they all do. It is clearly too mad for a moment and dull for an
hour when all the duck come over at once, and so end a morning’s
shooting.
Two plans have been adopted for getting over the difficulty, both of
which are based on calling the birds to feed away from home, and driving
them back over the shooters in small batches.
This is open to sentimental objections, of course, but there are two
ways of doing even this: one of them seems to bear lesser sentimental
objection than the other. The most effective plan is that one which it
is said was adopted at Netherby when and before the Prince of Wales shot
there. The statement has often been made, and has never been
contradicted in public, so probably it is true, that when the birds are
called to feed away from their home waters by the sound of a horn, they
are penned up, and then let out a few at a time to fly home over the
heads of the guns. The Prince has expressed the intention of never
shooting at trapped creatures, and probably he is unaware how the
Netherby duck were managed, because if it is done in the way described
above there is a sort of penning, but so managed as to give the duck all
the world before them if they elect to take chances before they come to
the guns. There is absolutely nothing to show that the duck have been
detained longer than just enough to divide them into small batches, but
what the Prince of Wales has said does nevertheless express the
sentiment of sportsmen generally. The best deer shooting in the world is
of no sporting account if it is in a park and not on open ground, and
consequently there is a sentiment which counts for a good deal in the
manner of driving duck to the gun.
The other plan to effect the same results without awakening any question
of the ethics of sport, is to be found in feeding the duck, not in pens,
but in a wide expanse of covert, and teaching them to hunt all over it
for their broadcast scattered grain. If this plan is adopted, it is
fairly easy with clever management to send the duck home in small
batches, provided the feeding-ground is widely enough scattered, so that
one party of ducks cannot see another when it is flushed or when in the
air making for home. Duck imitate each other to such an extent that if
they did see one lot disturbed and made to fly home, probably a great
many would rise at once and do the same. Obviously the better way to
avoid this is to start the duck out of covert at the end nearest home
first—“home” being here, as above, used in the sense of the duck’s
resting-place, which is generally, but not invariably, water. At
Netherby it is said that ducks are made to consider the coverts their
homes in some cases. It cannot be laid down to apply generally that any
one system is the best, because all depends upon the kind of place the
birds are to be reared in. However, this may be taken to apply
everywhere—that it is easier to rise duck in small batches out of covert
and from several miles of streams, than from sheets of water where every
bird can see all that happens. The driving from pool to pool is oftenest
resorted to, but in that case the artificially reared birds are more
easily employed as an additional sport to many days than for regular
duck days.
At Netherby there have been 10,000 hand-reared duck in a season, and
difficulty only arises when it is sought to kill a good proportion of
these in one day. Here there are three or four different rearing places
or “homes.” Most of the eggs have in the past been purchased, and placed
under domestic hens in the manner of pheasants’ eggs. At Tring Park the
eggs are procured by penning off a portion of marsh and water of about 4
acres, and the birds are caught up, wing clipped, and turned out in
this, in the proportion of three duck to a mallard. At Tring the young
duck are started with some hard-boiled egg, bread-crumbs, and boiled
rice, but at Netherby this is done with duck meal; later, they are fed
on maize porridge mixed dryish, and later with maize whole and dry. At
Netherby they are given a little pan of water to each coop from the
first. This has to serve until they are three weeks old, when puddles 30
feet in circumference are made for them; and although ten in a coop is
the rule, and they are shut in at nights along with the foster-mother,
they crowd in hundreds into these clay constructed puddles. The food is
also given in a small pan at each coop. Any method which drops sticky
food on the backs of the ducks is sure to lead to trouble. At six weeks
old the birds are taken to their permanent homes, which at Netherby are
mostly the brooks or burns flowing through the estate.
Wet is not bad for young ducks as long as they can get under the
brooding hen, but wet and cold as well is not their best weather, and
none of the most successful breeders allow the little ducks to have
their fling in large sheets of water, or even ponds or brooks, until
they are six weeks old. When quite small, the greatest enemies of the
duck are hot sun without shade, and cold wind. In the early stages they
are best fed four times in the day, as at Netherby, where over 1000
ducks have frequently been killed in one day. There they are penned out
exactly as pheasants generally are, in a field surrounded with wire
netting to keep out foxes.
Obviously in no manner ever discovered can true wild duck be killed in
such numbers as these. That they have been caught in numbers equally
large in decoys, and could be shot by taking them away from the decoys
and letting them out a few at a time in the neighbourhood of the guns,
is certain, but it never has been done, and a decoy is only used as a
neck-breaking trap to supply the markets with duck, widgeon, and teal.
There is nothing whatever to be said against the hand rearing of wild
duck. If they are properly managed, they give far harder and better
shooting than pheasants; especially is this the case if they are left
long enough to get their mature plumage.
Some difference of opinion has arisen on the best size of shot to use
for wild duck. Probably No. 4 is the best size, if the particular gun
will shoot it well. The size to be most objected to is No. 6, which has
not penetration enough for the body shots at any moderate range, and is
not thick enough to make sure of hitting head or neck. If the latter is
to be relied upon, No. 7 is better than No. 6, but not better than No.
8. But if this principle is adopted, only shots should be taken when the
head and neck is well in view, for from behind these sizes can only
wound. They wound a good deal in any case, but when duck are coming
anything like straight for the gun (which seldom happens) body striking
small pellets glance off like hail. No. 4 shot may not hit often enough
to please shooters; but duck cannot take this size away apparently
unharmed to die by slow torture. For that reason it is the sportsman’s
size. The neck and head shot please the shooter, because they alone
inflict sudden death in the air, and the work looks to be a clean hit
and a clean miss; but when this appearance is obtained by the use of
small shot things are not what they seem. Nothing can be said when the
game comes down, but every bird missed must be suspected of being
“tailored.”
All game birds cling to the ground or the tree tops when they are
flying, more or less, as the wind suits them. The real wild duck cling
to the water, and follow down the course of a stream in such a way that
two or three guns can be so posted as to command the whole lateral
extension of flighting duck or teal, except that both these birds are
easily scared by shooting to mount far out of gun-shot. When they are
mounted they do not necessarily follow the stream, for the reason that
they can probably see other water far ahead, and they make for it in a
direct line. But as the shots will mount them, so also a succession of
men posted in their line of flight will each send them a little higher,
and consequently the shooter should not only be invisible to the duck
before he has fired, but after also; otherwise he will spoil sport for
the next gun down stream, or up, as the case may be.