“At the end of one hour’s shooting we had 218 birds to our credit and were out of ammunition.

“On finding that no more shells were in our pits we took our dead geese to the camp and returned with a new supply of ammunition.  We remained in the pits during the entire day.  When the sun had gone behind the mountains we summed up our kill and it amounted to 450 geese!

“The picture shown with this article gives a view of the first hour’s shoot.  A photograph would have been taken of the remainder of the shoot, but it being warm weather the birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling.

[Illustration:  SLAUGHTERED ACCORDING TO LAW A Result of a Faulty System.  Such Pictures as this are Very Common in Sportsmen’s Magazines Note the Automatic Gun]

“Supper was then eaten, after which we were driven back to Willows; both agreeing that it was one of the greatest days of sport we ever had, and wishing that we might, through the courtesy of the Glenn County Goose Club, have another such day.  C.H.B.”

Another picture was published in a Canadian magazine, illustrating a story from which I quote: 

“I fixed the decoys, hid my boat and took my position in the blind.  My man started his work with a will and hustled the ducks out of every cove, inlet or piece of marsh for two miles around.  I had barely time to slip the cartridges into my guns—­one a double and the other a five shot automatic—­when I saw a brace of birds coming toward me.  They sailed in over my decoys.  I rose to the occasion, and the leader up-ended and tumbled in among the decoys.  The other bird, unable to stop quick enough, came directly over me.  He closed his wings and struck the ground in the rear of the blind.

“More and more followed.  Sometimes they came singly, and then in twos and threes.  I kept busy and attended to each bird as quickly as possible.  Whenever there was a lull in the flight I went out in the boat and picked up the dead, leaving the wounded to take chances with any gunner lucky enough to catch them in open and smooth water.  A bird handy in the air is worth two wounded ones in the water. Twice I took six dead birds out of the water for seven shots, and both guns empty.

“The ball thus opened, the birds commenced to move in all directions.  Until the morning’s flight was over I was kept busy pumping lead, first with the 10, then with the automatic, reloading, picking up the dead, etc.”

And the reader will observe that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive automatic shot gun, that “don’t matter if you enforce the bag limit,” figures prominently in both stories and both photographs.

A Story of Two Pump Guns and Geese:—­It comes from Aberdeen, S.D.  (Sand Lake), in the spring of 1911.  Mr. J.J.  Humphrey tells it, in Outdoor Life magazine for July, 1911.