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GUILELESS BLUEBILL DUCKS Folly of the Birds Work to Their Own Destruction Cannot Be Kept Away from the Decoys in Any AVestern Are tiift Wuelillls going the way of the liznrrt birds of prehistoric times of the moa of five hundred years ago and the passenger pigeon of but yesterday writes E F Martin in Outing OutingRlnebllls Rlnebllls are foolish ducks in their relations with man They will decoy to anything I have seen flock after flock work to the corks of a seine In the old days a gunner shooting on a sheltered point particularly in a drizzle of rain could not keep them out of his decoys which was annoying if he was after better birds They would drift in swim in fly in when had they possessed any sense at all they must have known that in the blind of the decoys there was a man with a loaded gun gunAs As an illustration once for a week I shot from a shore blind to windward of which was a bed of bluebllislialf a mHe long1 aria twenty rods wide Some of the ducks were not a hundred yards away at any time I was killing bluebills really faster than I could go out and pick them up upThe The wind was blowing a gale carrying them with entirely top much speed into rough water where it wis all one could do to handle a boat and the tiine required to uet back to the blind was many times longer than that spent in waiting for a shot or more properly several shots for the rule was to let the first ducks killed drift as long as it was safe so as to make the trips out as far between as possible possibleThe The bluebills forming the near end of that bed swam slowly away when the boat appeared but before it was halfway back the bolder of th bunch had turned and some were among the de ¬ coys fraternizing with them or fighting as often one or the other only to swim away once more s the boat got close looking back and evidently wondering why the decoys didnt go with them in spite of their knowing of the danger they would return by the score if there was a few min ¬ utes quiet and they were not particular about its Jxiiifr so very quiet either When shot at they would fly a few rods and join the thousands of their own kind in the bed only to come back igaiu almost immediately immediatelyIt It was not only windy but cold and part of the time stormy which may have been why the ducks were unwilling to leave the sheltered shore for the open lake or they may have been birds just in from the Arctics unused to the ways of shooting and tired and hungry But whatever they may have been they even for bluebills showed little fear of what the wild creatures usually dread man and his gun VICTIMS TO THEIR OWN CREDULITY CREDULITYAlong Along the Texas bays and bayous it was some ¬ times possible to walk within shot of a flock of bluebills iio attempt at concealment being made On the Kankakee they would come to decoys and keep coining when the hope was for a better grade of ducks In California fifteen years ago they were the special spoils of the bay blind shooters and now there are none or nexr to none They have fallen victims to their own credulity to be ¬ lieving that things are what they seem to think ¬ ing that a wooden duck is flesh and blood or p blind only a harmless bunch of brush 1 do not know how it was elsewhere last winter but the plaint of those shooting in San Francisco Iay gunners using nearly a thousand blinds along miles of mud flats was No bluebills at all Ducks were so few and reports so bad that I did not venture on the bay at all during the winter an attack of the grip emphasizing the fact that I had better stay at home And the previous winter out of almost sixty ducks only three were bluebills Let us compare this with bay shooting in other years and see how the tally bears out my state ¬ ment that bluebills are far along the downward road leading to extinction extinctionJiy Jiy game book shows tliat during the last two months of the winter of 19012 shooting only at times that I could steal from business and using blinds close at hand I killed 550 ducks of which 310 were bluebills the winter of 19023 under like conditions 1107 almost half 539 being blue bills the next winter 14G7 ducks bluebills num ¬ bering 941 making a total in three winters of 3130 ducks of all varieties of which 1796 were bluebills Some difference between these figures and the measly 5 per cent of a year ago agoThen Then there came to be a lot of company on the hay blind builders grew too numerous They in ¬ sisted on playing in my back yard as it were shooting over my decoys and now and then pepper ¬ ing me and niy blind They also commandeered eviiry duck I killed that they could get to first firstSIMILAR SIMILAR EXPERIENCE IN CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIAConsequently Consequently I moved tried the sneak boats and saltwater ponds at Alviso the freshwater marshes and other open ground in the Sacramento River country I shot wherever there was a spot not preserved by a gun club but in no place where there was much chance of finding deep water ducks bluebills in particular Yet in two years out of 1523 killed 11 per cent or 167 were blue bills billsI I stuck it out until the season of 191314 a regu ¬ lar Wandering Jew of a shooter continually chang ¬ ing never finding a place I liked one winter even leaving the ducks and hunting quail Then I returned to my first love the bay but my how tilings had changed The surface of the water was at times covered with crude petroleum and the blinds the boats the decoys and even the ducks were gummed with it while little effort was made by those in authority to better conditions Even the great white divers of which there had been thousands ten years before were missing only a scattered few showing as a reminder of the past ami they not white but oilcovered oilcoveredDuring During the season of 191314 when I was shoot ¬ ing where previously four ducks out of every five were bluebills of 161 killed but fortyseven were of that variety many less the next year and then the bad season of 191017 when three was my total then the worse one of 191718 when except on occasional days there were not ducks enough of any kind on the bay to pay for going after afterIt It is a fact though that there were ducks on some of the highpriced ponds where the rich were using wheat barley or screenings to induce them to come This parctice of using good grain for duck bait must be stopped Why is there not a war tax put on the blinds and preserves as there is on every other kfnd of amusement the land over overOn On the rice fields during September and October the ducks raise Cain with the maturing drop but nowhere else except on the baited ponds and in the rice fields were they present in anywhere near the numbers expected They destroyed BO a grower has stated many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rice But a way may have been found to prevent this raiding of the farmers field in the future futureOne One inventive genius devised a means of protect ¬ ing his rice crop and no doubt others will make use of the same expedient the coming September Bombs of a kind used in exhibition of fireworks were fired among tlie ducks during the daytime after they had been flushed from the fields while rockets were used at night The noise and smoke of the bombs and the flare of the rockets fright ¬ ened them so that they and all their kin including geese and mud hens left in a hurry many with only halffilled stomachs DEVASTATING THE RICE FIELDS FIELDSA A few hungry ones returned to see what it was all about but a second or a third bombing kept them away for good So at an expense of less than a hundred dollars this man saved from tlie birds and retained in tlie countrys food supply thousands of bushels of rice of a value in the rough of two dollars to two dollars and a half a bushel bushelWhile While it is certain that many puddle ducks left the mud flats the unbaited ponds tlie sloughs and the rivers for the rice fields it is not true of the blnebills They are late comers and the rice is about all harvested before tliby are due from the north The past few years they have either hidden themselves or were so few that hiding was not necessary That this last was tlie case my own observation proved backed as it was by the report of hunters from up the bay and down the bay bayAlso Also I made half a dozen trips through the various fish and game markets of Oakland looking for in ¬ formation Said the dealers Bluebills They are a thing of the past We have had none this year except a few scattering ones There were spoon ¬ bills and teals sprigs and widgeons canvasbacks and mallards even a few scoters but if there was more than one lone bluebill the others were not visible to the naked eye on the days when I made the trips tripsAll All of which indicates that at least on the Pacific coast the bluebills are doomed that our children will only know of them by reading not by what they can see And the worst of it is that there seems no way of staying the hand of fate that the ducks are rapidly going along the trail made since the beginning by races of men by nations by beasts and by birds and that soon the places that knew them will know them no more
