A bit of hit and miss

Staying out till the wee small hours, Stanley Duncan contemplates whether foul weather is really better for going out wildfowling

- Stanley Duncan

It is not rough weather that makes good wildfowling, though weather does play its part, hot or cold, dry or wet, but it is more dependent on hardship caused through weather than the actual conditions. Duck are driven away by frost but they are more seriously driven away by drought. After frost they return, but after drought they may not return again in numbers for years.

Cold does not necessarily become inseparable from wildfowling. It is more pleasant to shoot without pain, though the fowler has become regarded as a sufferer from the elements. A real wildfowler enjoys his shooting in the heat of August just as well as in the frosts of January.

Summer wildfowl have different habits in winter. New-fledged, the broods of duck go less cautiously about under the cover of night. In remote parts, they move over expansive areas by day, gaining a boldness that is quite remarkable. But as soon as the shooting season arrives they resort to night feeding and exercise cautious tactics that defeat their arch-enemy, man.

With an August setting and evidence of a late harvest, duck attract attention. Laid wheat is the attractive food for these fowl at this season and they flock from near and far. And as I gazed on the scene memories sped back over scores of seasons to similar conditions when the same fields were cropped with wheat, a heavy yield and laid, and the great night that several Guns had enjoyed on the same adjacent marshes in the early 1890s. And now I have tried my hand again.

Delightful