WILDFOWL SHOOTING IN THE FENS.

PUNT, GUNS, &c., USED FOR THAT PURPOSE.

HAVING returned from France, and learnt the system of that country, we will now finish our wildfowl excursions with a few observations on the fens, and other fresh waters, where it is the most likely to answer. The punts in the fens are made low and all open, except having a little flat deck in front similar to what Buckle used, before he saw the proper decked ones, only much narrower than his, in order that the gunners may be able to pull them through the reeds, in places where they cannot use their paddles.

The guns here, instead of having any thing to check the recoil, are, like his, merely rested on a broad thwart, or gunning-bench, about the centre, and in a groove at the bow, to support the muzzle; so that the shooters here fire in the manner before stated, viz. they lean with the hollow of their shoulders hard against their fowling-pieces (as they here call punt guns); and, after thus checking the recoil themselves, allow the to run under their arms. The fen guns gun are built purposely to avoid a recoil, and to shoot very close, at a small bunch of birds; and, consequently, they are not on the very best proportion to make heavy shots in a flock. For, notwithstanding they are from

forty to seventy pounds weight, and from seven to ten feet in the barrel, yet they are only about an inch in the bore. Although, as an extraordinary circumstance, the fen-gunners sometimes kill from thirty to forty birds at a shot, yet they now-a-days consider it very good work to secure a dozen.

This is nothing great, in comparison with what has been formerly done on the coast; for instance, from thirty to forty wigeon, besides lost birds killed from the shoulder; and from seventy to eighty different wildfowl from a swivel gun. These, however, though shots extremely rare, are not to be set down as extravagant impossibilities, when we consider, that a shoulder gun of twenty pounds weight may be fired with half a pound, and a stanchion-gun with a pound and a half of such shot, that any one grain of it might stop a bird! and this shot (say even the large letter A) has fifty grains to an ounce.

The winter shooting in the fens is not what it was; as they have been much drained for cultivation, by which the wild parts are less extensive; and the use of large guns having of late years been the order of the day here, as well as everywhere else, the birds are now much wilder, and not so plentiful. Putting this aside, however, the fens have not so many advantages as people are led to suppose; for, should there be a hard frost, the whole of the reed beds and meres become one continued sheet of ice, and without a vestige of food for the birds; unless, by the way, you take the precaution to keep a place open for them, which plan answers most admirably, to get the very best shots that can be made. But should the weather be open, the greater part of the wildfowl remain in

the decoys during the day-time, and this marshy country is too much extended to select any particular spot for their evening-flights: consequently, save having a tolerable quantity of bitterns, occasionally most excellent snipe shooting, and in summer the flapper shooting, here is not much to be done till about the last fortnight in March, when the birds are distributed preparative to their breeding. Then it is that old ducks and teal may be put up and killed right and left with a double gun; and then it is that we have the greatest chance of catching the ague!

The fens from Holme to Ramsay were, at one time, the best I had seen: they lay to the right of the north road, when you are going down, within a stage of Huntingdon, and scarcely an hour's walk from Stilton. But afterwards, in 1816, I found those near Winterton, in Norfolk (the private property of I. B. Huntingdon*, and R. Rising, Esqs.), far superior; and the variety of wild birds here was such, that, in the breeding season, you might kill from twenty to thirty different sorts in a day. Some, by-the-by, I had never seen before, and, if I mistake not, I was favoured with a sight of two or three, that were not even in Bewick, by an excellent sportsman, the late C. Girdlestone, Esq., which he had in his private collection, at Yarmouth. In many parts you could scarcely walk without treading on the eggs of terns, plovers, redshanks, and almost every other kind of marsh-bird. At certain times, in the winter, the fowl, on their passage from Holland to the south, dropped in here, and literally blackened the centre part of

Now of Joseph Hume, Esq., M. P.

the lakes called Horsey-broad, and Heigham Sounds, where they fancied themselves protected by the surrounding ice. I was here shown by Rogers his plan of getting fowl on the ice. It was to cut four horses' leg bones, and after filing them smooth, like skates, to place them longitudinally under a very small punt; and then, lying on his breast, to shove over the frozen part, with two iron spikes. Any other means of passing a place that was partially frozen would be dangerous in the extreme.

I, however, went to this country again, in 1824, and found, that owing to the drains for cultivation, and increase of the decoys, the quantity of birds was, and has for some years been, so much reduced, that I was obliged to alter the MS. of this statement from the present to the past time. My account would otherwise have proved a gross exaggeration. This shows how few years will put a sporting book out of date!

The fens are famous for the ruffs and reeves: but these birds frequent such awkward places, and are so wild during the summer, when they come here to breed, that, as I before observed, they seldom afford much sport for the gun.

LL

SHOOTING WILDFOWL ON VIRGINIA WATER.

I was here shown an ingenious mode of sweeping down the wildfowl, in large quantities, by Mr. Turner, Her Majesty's keeper; who, in his younger days, was a great performer in the fens. His plan for killing the wildfowl here was to fix a great many large guns parallel to the edge of the lake and to cover them over with grass. He planted them about a hundred yards apart; and had a long wire from the trigger of the foremost gun to the but of the next one behind it; and so on. By this means he had only to plant, and then cock, all his guns; and, by pulling off the first with some hundred yards of line, he opened on the fowl an almost instantaneous running fire, which swept the whole edge of the lake, where, after their nightly feed, the birds generally came to take shelter; or to sun themselves on a fine frosty day.

I think Mr. Turner told me that he had, by this means, once brought down seventy wild ducks, by one discharge of his battery.