Page 4 THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

Full particulars of this Decoy will be found under its name, including the cost of the nets, reeds, poles, etc. used in its construction, and which, by the way, closely resemble the requirements of a Decoy of the present day.
    I consider this the most valuable historical allusion to a Decoy extant. It is spoken of as a small Decoy in an island, and it is evident that it was a Decoy for catching ducks by alluring them into pipes or cages, and that reed screens were used as now. All published descriptions of Decoys previous to this date, except the somewhat vague allusions by Spelman, speak of Decoys into which ducks were driven and not enticed.
    In former times vast hosts of wildfowl bred in England, especially in the fens that covered so much of our eastern counties, and which, though flooded in winter, partially dried during the summer. The guns of those days were powerless to thin their numbers, or to supply the markets. It is only natural that the peasantry should have set to work as best they could to obtain the birds for food and sale. We have, however, no reliable evidence that Decoys, as now known, were, even in a primitive form, in use before the middle of the seventeenth century. Doubtless Decoys were generally established in the East of England soon after the first drainage of the Fens by the Bedford Level scheme in 1653. Before that date the annual winter floods would by necessity have destroyed any chance of constructing Decoys in the Fen lands, though the said floods would favour the driving of Ducks as after described. This is quite borne out by Ray, who, writing in 1678, speaks of a Decoy at that date as a "new artifice" lately introduced by the Dutch, and he then proceeds to describe a Decoy for enticing wildfowl (much the same as now used). He also alludes to the great number of fowl caught in a Decoy in the winter.
    It is true Decoys (so named) were said to have existed in the time of King John; mention is also made of them as having given rise to litigation as early as 1280, and again in 1415 and 1432. At the last-named date a mob armed with swords and sticks took 600 wildfowl out of the Abbot's Decoy at Crowland monastery, infringing the rights of private property. Daniel, in his "Rural Sports," speaks of near 3,000 mallards being taken at one drive at Spalding. Willughby writes that sometimes as many as 400 boats were used in this driving of the ducks, and that he knew of as many as 4,000 birds being taken at one drive at Deeping Fen.