Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1896 — Ten Acres of Ducks. [ARTICLE]

Ten Acres of Ducks.

If any of The Times readers have desire to enjoy duck and brant shooting such as was had in the ’6o’s, they can be suited at this time along the “Easten Shore,” anywhere between Hog Island and Cape Charles. It is not often in these times that one can see ten acres of ducks as close as the hairs on a brush, but this was really seen on Wednesday last from a blind on the east end of Hog Island, while further out were thousands of brant, and one could hear the hoarse “honk” of the cunado goose. So far all the ducks are butter-balls, hen bill divers, broad bills and sheldrake. Very few mallard or redheads. Every man along the shore has forty reasons for this sudden invasion of the birds, each one more absurd than the other, and naturalists are just as much astray; in fact, no one knows why, with the same conditions prevailing, ducks will be plenty oue season and scarce another. it is a big thing to get sixty brace or ducks in a day in these times, yet on this very ground Tom Bayard, of Delaware, and Harry Pintard, of Baltimore, got 166 on one tide with breechloaders in 1869. On the Jersey coast Mr. Belcher, of Philadelphia, killed 200 brant off Brigantine in the same year. On Tuesday last two Philadelphians got eighty ducks and brant in five hours and lost at least a third more. In old times the loading of the guns would have consumed nearly three hours, but conditions are easier, now that one has a gun that he can charge lying on his back. Michigan has 35,000,000,000 feet of pine standing.