Shooting Times & Country Magazine
In pursuit of variety
Tower-bird recalls an October evening sitting out for duck on a small, insignificant pool, the sort of splash that we all too often overlook
Variety is the spice of life, and this sentiment I like to apply also to the larder. It is nice to know that one has, say, a brace of pheasants and/or partridges hanging, but how much nicer it is to know that there is also a plump mallard, with perhaps a couple of teal there as well.
I do not go in for organised shoots these days, preferring rough shooting and wildfowling. All my spare time is given up to dog and gun, and, though I am a pot-hunter in the sense of the word when it means shooting for the pot —in other words, for the larder — I consider that this is true wild sport, entirely free from artificiality. I am a hunter and not merely a Gun.
Every bird we shoot is worked for and we use our dogs the hard way.
But whether a man shoots in butt or stand as a member of a conventional shooting party, or whether he is, like myself, a pot-hunter, albeit adhering strictly to the unwritten code of sport, there is a common bond between us — a deep love and understanding of environment and wildlife.
The foregoing thoughts passed through my mind as I stood in the growing dusk among shoulder-high reeds, facing a small pond to which I discovered mallard were coming just before dark. To my right a steep bank towered, half bracken, half red heather with small clumps of silver birch dotted about it, and with a belt of low oaks between the foot of the slope and the swamp where I was now standing. There had been no duck coming to this sheltered pond during September. For two dusks I had stood there, watching the sky till blue turned to deep violet and finally to a backcloth of twinkling stars. Then, over the rim of the slope the harvest moon came up at astonishing speed — a golden-red mystery almost alarming in its size. There were no duck splashing down onto the water, however, and no duck voices in the void overhead.
Early October sunset
Tonight, in early October, matters were different. In less than a fortnight I might witness the ascent of a full hunter’s moon, but now the last colours of the evening sunset were draining out of the sky and I expected every minute to see the forms of duck appear like gnats away to the west; indeed, I watched solitary gnats that looked like distant duck, although, in reality, they were only a foot or two in front of my nose.
A few swallows and martins swished over the reed-bed snapping up flying insects, then vanished, leaving the dancing ‘sketers’ and other stingers to worry, annoy, tickle, and bite the lone gunner. A woodcock flew along the brow of the bank where it dipped low, allowing the bird’s silhouette to be seen clear-cut for a matter of seconds. A brown owl beat
along the line of oaks. A water-rail jabbered and shrieked some way behind me in the reed-jungle, where the last moorhen had croaked its way to roost in scrub.
Staring at the sky ahead, cursing the insects that hovered above the tops of the reeds, I became aware of the presence of duck only when a single mallard passed quickly over me from behind and as quickly vanished against the blackness ahead. Had I been fully on the alert I would probably have shot it. However, it was going so fast and came from such an unexpected direction, that my lively mind thought only that there must be another, or the plural, in close attendance behind it, and I waited, without turning, for imaginary duck to materialise. But none came, and I allowed the real bird to return, circle the reed-bed three times and drop with a splash 15 yards in front of me.
Reason dictated that other duck would shortly be coming in and would do so more quickly when they saw one on the water. Reason also said that, should the lone duck rise or be put up, it might be shot without much difficulty.
In spite of the fact that the duck had come in from behind me, I kept my eyes glued on the sky in front. Suddenly I saw 11 duck, with another five and a three coming straight at me and dropping at speed. I let the lot splash down and then took an easy right and left out of the five as they braked and seemed to hang over the pool.
I heard the two birds hit the water and the dog swimming out, but I was busy reloading with one cartridge, and, though I had time to shoot as the last of the 11 was vanishing into the blackness, somehow I muffed the shot. I waited by the pond for another 20 minutes, during which time several duck landed, but it was far too dark to see their arrival or their departure, and I do not like shooting at a splash and a fine ripple on the water unless I am very, very hungry.
Quick on the draw
Small, insignificant pools of this kind are often overlooked by shooting men. One must be quick on the draw, and that is probably why one kills the birds pretty regularly. I have never bothered to set out any decoys here. There is no point. The teal arrive and seldom circle, but splash straight in, and I never cease to wonder how they are able to brake so suddenly when going at such a speed.
With mallard dropping on to a pond, wings are outstretched and winnowing, and they seem to hover like kestrels for quite a time; even wigeon do this but teal, like the whistling bullets they can be, seem to have some secret method of stopping almost dead in mid-air.
I have always lifted my hat to myself when, after firing down a straight drain, shining like the dull blade of a sword in the dying light, the body of the single teal which has zipped over my head almost knocking my hat off, has fallen with a light splash. One knows the bird is shooting down the centre of the three to four-foot-wide drain and that the shot charge should connect, which sometimes it does. At others, I like to think that the departing teal was flying faster than the shot pellets.
“Reason dictated that other duck would be coming in”
This article was first published in the 19 October 1962 issue of Shooting Times.