It seems curious that wild fowl that spend most of their time in the
water particularly dislike wind, but so it is, and in making teal pits
or improving them, or in attracting fowl to a river, the more artificial
shelter you can afford the fowl the more they will be attracted to your
water. Near the coast this is generally well understood, and there, too,
the roughness of the sea greatly influences the birds to seek peace and
shelter inland; so that there are naturally good days and bad ones for
shooting from the “gazes.” In a smooth sea and fine weather duck seem to
prefer to go to bed, which they do in the daytime, on the sea. But in
rough weather the majority will find out any quiet places on fresh water
where the presence of other duck prove to them that there is safety. For
this reason some half-tame wild duck are a great attraction to the
really wild ones, but the former can be only kept at home by good
feeding, for wing-clipped fowl are _no_ attraction to the really wild
birds. Home-bred birds appear not so much to attract as to go and fetch
the wild ones, and this is the reason that wing-clipped birds will not
do. On the “gaze” system 800 duck have been killed in four days’
shooting by a party. Mr. John Mills, of Bisterne, using an 8 and a 12
bore, has killed 130 fowl in a day from one “gaze,” and on one occasion
100 cartridges were shot away from one “gaze” in a few minutes, and the
shooter ran out of cartridges and had to stop and look at the fowl for
half an hour. He killed 60 duck, and thought he could have doubled his
bag with another 100 cartridges. This was at Lord Manners’ place, Avon
Tyrrell. In parts of Dorsetshire as well as Pembrokeshire a great deal
of attention has been given to the formation of teal pits and the
cultivation of wild wild-fowl, but the biggest bags made have fallen far
short of those mentioned above, possibly because the fowl are generally
taken in an ordinary day’s shooting of other game, and not in specially
arranged big days.