Often and often, like good strategic generals, we were induced by circumstances to change our plans or our method of attack at the last moment.  On several occasions, while shooting in the fields of Egyptian corn, I have killed a quail with my right barrel and a duck with my left!  Continually one was crouching in hopes, when some unexpected flock stooped toward him as he walked across country.  These hasty concealments were in general quite futile, for it is a fairly accurate generalization that, in the open, game will see you before you see it.  This is not always true.  I have on several occasions stood stock still in the open plain until a low-flying mallard came within easy range.  Invariably the bird was flying toward the setting sun, so I do not doubt his vision was more or less blinded.

The most ridiculous effort of this sort was put into execution by the Captain and myself.

Be it premised that while, in the season, the wildfowl myriads were always present, it by no means followed that the sportsman was always sure of a bag.  The ducks followed the irrigation water.  One week they might be here in countless hordes; the next week might see only a few coots and hell divers left, while the game was reported twenty miles away.  Furthermore, although fair shooting—­of the pleasantest sort, in my opinion—­was always to be had by jumping small bands and singles from the “holes” and ditches, the big flocks were quite apt to feed and loaf in the wide spaces discouragingly free of cover.  Irrigation was done on a large scale.  A section of land might be submerged from three inches to a foot in depth.  In the middle of this temporary pond and a half dozen others like it fed the huge bands of ducks.  What could you do?  There was no cover by which to sneak them.  You might build a blind, but before the ducks could get used to its strange presence in a flat and featureless landscape the water would be withdrawn from that piece of land.  Only occasionally, when a high wind drove them from the open, or when the irrigation water happened to be turned in to a brushy country, did the sportsman get a chance at the great swarms.  Since a man could get all the ducks he could reasonably require, there was no real reason why he should look with longing on these inaccessible packs, but we all did.  It was not that we wanted more ducks; for we held strictly within limits, but we wanted to get in the thick of it.

On the occasion of which I started to tell, the Captain and I were returning from somewhere.  Near the Lakeside ranch we came across a big tract of land overflowed by not deeper than two or three inches of water.  The ducks were everywhere on it.  They sat around fat and solemn in flocks; they swirled and stooped and lit and rose again; they fed busily; they streamed in from all points of the compass, cleaving the air with a whistling of wings.

Cover there was none.  It was exactly like a big, flat cow pasture without any fences.  We pulled up the Invigorator and eyed the scene with speculative eyes.  Finally, we did as follows: