Wildfowl Captured in Nets

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 17 April 1914, Page 2

Wildfowl Captured in Nets

Netting wildfowl is still carried on to some extent in England and Ireland. ( At a celebrated decoy at Ashby, in Lincolnshire, as many as 113 ducks have been taken at one time, and 248 in one day. The decoy is a very simple contrivance, made by erecting a series of semicircular hoops, gradually diminishing in size for some seventy or eighty yards. These hoops are covered with a wire netting, so that when the fowl are once in the mouth they cannot get out. Under the arches is dug a canal, or channel, also gradually diminishing as the hoops get less, and at the far end is attached a movable tail, or "codpiece/" from which the fowler may take the birds as they are scared to their doom. It is necessary that the decoy be erected in a secluded spot, as ducks and other acquatic fowl are very shy. It is usual, therefore, to provide a nice green bank" near the mouth of the pipe, as the entrance to the decoy is called, where they fraternise with the decoy duck, and then, presently, when all is quiet, a dog is seen trotting from screen to screen (placed to hide the decoy-man), gradually working t o the tail end. The ducks swim up to the pipe after the dog, and are so caught.