Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1885-07-15

Wild Fowl That Could Make Loops Aroun,

Wild Fowl That Could Make Loops Around
the snokestaek of the Best Locomotive.
'lvc held my watch on about every
kind OF wild duck there is" said II. w.
Winans, an old time wild-fowl hunter,
''and L can tell just about to the sixty
third part of doth how much space any
OF 'em can get over in an hour. There's
no railroad train on the continent
that can hold a candle to one side of
the slowest duck that flies.
"The canvasback can distance the
whole duck family if it lays itself out
to do it, When the canvasback is out
taking things easy, enjoying little run
around the block, as it were, it joys
through the air at the rate of eighty
m les an hour. IL il has business some
whore and has to get there, it puts two
miles behind it every minute it keeps
lis wings Tapping. If you don't be-
lcye it fire square at the leader in
str.ng of canvasbacks out on business
cruise sometime when you get tho
chance. Duck shot travel pretty quick,
but if your charge brings down any at
all, I'll blow YOU off to pair of the
best there is in the market, with trim
mngs and all, if it isn't the fifth or
sixth one back from the leader that
drops. If you have the faintest idea
that you will bring the leader down;
you must aim at space not less than ten
feet ahead of him. Then he'll run
plumb against your shot. When he
drops you will find him quarter of
mile or so on.
1.-The mallard duck is slow coach.
It's all he wants to do ID go mile a
minute, but he can 20 it when it is
necessary. His ordinary everyday
style of getting along over the country
gets him from place 10 place at about
Observation-Disclosures. The black
duck is about an even match for the
mallard, and the pintail widgeon and
wood duck can't do much better. The
redhead can sail along with ease and
cover his ninety miles an hour as long
as he feels inclined to. The blue
winged teal and its handsome cousin,
the green-winged teal, could fly side by
side for hundred miles and make the
distance neck and neck, for one can fly
just as fast as the other, and to go
hundred miles an hour is no hard task
for either OF them. The gadwale-you
don't know what gadwale is, I'll bet!
| thought not. Well, it's duck that
doesn't get East very often, but is well
known in the West. 1t is something
like mallard, only harder to shoot,
because it's not so unsuspecting as the
mallard. The gadwale is something of
n daisy on the fly, too, and will win
money for you every time if you bet it
can make its ninety miles an hour.
"Maybe you wouldn't think that
goose could almost double discount the
fastest fast express train that runs on
our railroads, but it can every time. l
mean wild goose. 1t has big,
heavy body to carry, but it manages to
glide from one feeding ground to an
other with a suddenness that is eau
ton to wing shots. To see flock of
honkers moving along, so high up that
they seem to be scraping their backs
against the sky, you'd never believe
they were travelling between eighty and
one hundred miles an hour but they
are. The wild goose never has any
time to fool away, and his gait is al
ways business one.
"The broadbill duck is the only wild
fowl that can push the canvasback on
the wing Let a broadbill and can
vasback each do his best for an hour,
and the broadbill would only come out
about ten miles behind. A hundred
and ten miles an hour can be done by
the broadbill, and he, consequently,
makes mark for a shot gun that
grecnhorn wouldn't hit once in twen-
ty-scven years. IN Y. Sun.