HISTORY OF DECOYS. | |
| It is the custom here to entice the fowl down wind into the pipes, and the Decoymen will not venture near an up-wind pipe, however thick the birds may be gathered round its mouth, and consequently does not capture nearly as many fowl as if the Decoy was properly worked in the usual way. The real fact is these pools are so very small that even with burning turf it is hazardous to go to their windward side or approach the up-wind pipes. The pipes being so tiny, they are but narrow ditches, and are besides too closely surrounded by trees and brushwood. The Sedgemoor Decoys are all three exactly the same in shape as, and were originally planned from, the ancient pool at Sharpham Park (see plan 6 facing page 93), as were most of, if not all the other Decoys in the county of Somerset. The Sedgemoor Decoys are nearly in line with one another, and appear as clumps of trees on the plain. The east-or as it is called, from a farm near it, the Ivythorn Decoy-pool, that is the one farthest from Bridgewater and nearest Compton Dundon, has proved the most successful one of the three: the west pool has never done well. The east pool was made in 1825, the others shortly after, all three by Joseph Everdell who is now living (1886) at Walton village near the Decoys. He is still hale and hearty, though some eighty years of age. In his younger days he blew off one of his hands with a fowling piece that burst in use, and the arm that suffered is adorned with a bright steel hook. Old Joe, as he is locally called, is a fine specimen of a stout, though weather-beaten Decoyman, and the manner in which he can still rush behind the screens, drive the birds, and hook them out of the tunnel net and twist their necks, is astonishing, to say the least, as I can testify from experience. Admiral Hickley, who during his occupation of the Sedgemoor Decoys kept a careful record of their doings, has kindly supplied me with the following facts in regard to them:- "From 1868 to 1882, the combined average total resulting from the three Decoys was 1,200 fowl chiefly Mallard and Teal. The best season was 1868-69, when near 3,000 birds were caught. The worst 1874-75, when only 157 were taken. In 1881-82, 2,000 fowl were accounted for." The Admiral remarks: "Undoubtedly my best years were those with most variations from frost to coarse southerly weather; the more changeable, and I may say generally detestable, the better." | |
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