Identifier: floridagamewater00inroos (find matches)
Title: Florida and the game water-birds of the Atlantic coast and the lakes of the United States : with a full account of the sporting along our sea-shores and inland waters, and remarks on breech-loaders and hammerless guns
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Roosevelt, Robert Barnwell, 1829-1906
Subjects: Waterfowl shooting Shotguns
Publisher: New York : Orange Judd Company
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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ntly marked the sky in the nothwest, whilein the south the clouds grew blacker and denser.Then the rain fell in spits and flurries yiciously.The atmosphere intimated a decided change in theweather, which the ducks were the first to recognizeand regulate their proceedings by. Evidently avastmass of widgeons were bedded to the lee-ward of us.They commenced to fly not in their individual capac-ity, but as the part of a great movement, as if sud-denly they had made up their minds all to go. Inwhisps of threes, fours, tens, twenties, in large flocks,or solitary and alone, they came lieading towards medirectly across the marsh and visible for miles.Then it was that I learned that I was not in exactlythe right place, that the birds for some reason bestknown to themselves did not care to cross that spotin their migration. Most of them, especially thelargest flocks, passed outside of me and just beyondthe range of my gun. I was in the wrong place, Iknew it, but I had no time to move, the ducks
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CtJRRITUCK MAESHES. 125 were flying too fast and too many of them came with-in range as it was for me to lose the time necessaryfor a change. The rain that was falling, althoughnot heavy, interfered, and would have wet our gunsand clothes which were pretty well protected so longas we remained still. So we stayed where we were,and as it was the sport was sijlendid. The entiremass of widgeons had determined to change theirfeeding grounds, and that at once, there was no mo-ment when some of them were not visible in the air,they came from one quarter and flew in one direc-tion. I had learned to whistle for widgeon as wellas a professional, and did my best with the aid ofWilliam Foster to inveigle them Vvithin range. Veryoften we were succsssful, and it was an afternoon ofexcitement. Not a minute passed that we did nothave the prospect of a shot, and although thelarger flocks mostly kej^t on their course outsideof us, the smaller whisj^s and the single ones camein freely. Why is it that th

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