The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-04
DUCKS ARE WARY NOW.
Hard to Get Good Shots at Those Leav-
 ing Southern Grounds.

Hard to Get Good Shots at Those Leav-
 ing Southern Grounds.
 The great annual migration of ducks from winter feeding grounds to summer breeding haunts has begun to the southward and sportsmen of the Mississippi valley are putting in a few days with fairly good results. On the whole however, the duck shooting has been indifferent this season in the Mis- sisfpp. valley. There has been to much water. The heavy rains have over flowed the lakes and put the rivers out of banks and flooded the low lying stretches of wood until the duck hunt ing has been quite spelled because of the vast area of water,
 This condition has made it possible for ducks to fird feeding grounds most anywhere and has prevented them from taking to tlle lakes to feed as they do in normal seasons and at normal stages of the water. In consequence of i the poor sport through out the fall and 1 winter the return flight of the spring has been awaited with a good bit cf anticipation on the part of sportsmen, i says the Kansas City Star, for it was 1 slce to give a few days of fair shooting if the water in the bottoms should have sufficiently receeded to make the real lakes and rivers the only places where the ducks could find resting place on their long flight from the Gulf coast to the breeding grounds of British North America ana Labrador.
 While the water is still at high stage on the Mississippi and Its tribu- taries and while many millions of acres are flooded which should not be, if the sport is to be of the best, there has been fairly good shooting on the return flight.
 This shooting is different from that of the fall and winter for the ducks are older and more experienced and know just exactly what to expect from man and a gun, They are veterans of many wars, so to speak and have often been under fire sn their long journey from the Canadian line to the lakes and bays and lagoons of Mexico and Texas and Central America and back again; they know the deceit of the painted decoys and the lurking danger which may be hid away in an inno- cent pile of Willows and reeds which marks blind They are larger and stronger and can fly faster and, vn the whole, are not in as good condition as to flesh and feathers as at the opening of the season in the fall.
 It is not possible, even with fine flight, to make as big bags as in tho fall for ofie will miss more shots, and the ducks do not decoy as well nor ap- proach as close to the decoys. They now have a habit of sweeping by the blind at extreme range to make an in- spection of the bobbing decays before dropping down among them with in- fantile confidence, as they do when young and inexperienced when they first appear on the fall migration.
 With two friends, gasolene boat and a substantial hamper of provend- CT, I had try at the ducks recently putting in the afternoon and early
 morning at a will bar which had al- ways been an excellent place for water fowls. We arrived at the shooting ground after o'clock and took stands One man shot from the launch ono waded out into an area of flooded woodland where we knew the game
 would expect to spend the night ant the remaining members put off in lit
 tie metal duckboat that had been towe( along aft like the tall to a comet.
 We were in good time and scarcely
 had we settled ourselves in our respec
 tive positions before the birds began tt
 come in They were of all kinds anC
 all sizes, from teals to mallards ant
 there was great profusion of them
 We had fast shooting, but small re
 suits for most of the shots were a . distance that were impossible to nego
 tiate with any degree of satisfaction and much of our ammunition wa
 burned with only the slimmest chanc of reward.
 It was exciting, however, to see tn droves of mallards sweeping over tn tree tops, quacking lustily, answered D, , those who had alread found restini . places for the night down among tn } trees They looked as big as geese fl the gathering gloom, magnified amaz ' irgly by the failing light, The tree : and undergrowth were thick as tn hairs on a dogs back and it was tryint r shooting. If I had killed as man, ) ducks as I shot off limbs and twigs W l would have had boatload in fey r minutes, and I was not alone in m, ? troubles.
 The man in the launch had the bes 3 of the sport, although his shots wer l all at great range. He knocked down r fairly good number before it became to !. dark to shoot, and we had q tediou 3 job of it finding them in the dark pad : ding about in the little tim boat. !. The fight set in about an hour sun r down, and it continued after it became t too dark to shoot, as we could tell b 7 the quacking of the birds as they fleN = over our boat.
 
 PRO BONO PUBLICO'S BREAK. . There lived in Detroit man wh ' was the original Pro Bono Publico H e was the champion letter writer to tn /: newspapers and to the heads of a | public enterprises. One of his fad