Page 25 DECOYING WITH A DOG.

DECOYING WITH A DOG.

The fox made several futile attempts at a capture, only to get an absurd sprawling fall every time he tried to spring.
Finally, he left the ice looking sulky and supperless, the ducks following him to the bank as he retired. This very fox my friend once caught in the tunnel net of a pipe, whither he unadvisably let himself be driven. He had just previously been seen sneaking about the inside of the pipe after the Decoy ducks. He was caught and well whipped with a light twig, as a warning to him to leave the Decoy and its ducks alone. This was at a time when the pond was covered with ice. By the next morning the fox had well avenged the insult to his person, for at daylight not one out of seventeen Decoy ducks was left alive. Heads in one direction, bodies in another, and blood and feathers all over the ice of the Decoy. I need scarcely add that the fox-hunting folk, when they heard of the affair, were greatly amused, and hinted at a "just retribution."

    I have said a good deal about why the ducks follow the dog, I will now explain how they are induced to do so, and describe the part the dog takes in the pantomime of decoying the ducks.
    His master, the Decoyman, whom he knows well and obeys implicitly, whether the order be given by a whisper or by a move of the hand, signals him to the mouth of the pipe and bids him by a sign lie down behind a screen.
    The Decoyman next cautiously reconnoitres, through the peep-in the screens, the ducks swimming about the pond; and near the mouth of the pipe he has decided, owing to favourable circumstances, to work. He has, of course, selected a pipe that suits the wind, about the mouth of which, and on the banks near, the birds are gathered.
    After noting the position of the fowl, he, by a sign, directs his dog to bound over one of the dog-jumps near the mouth of the pipe. Lie takes that the dog has no birds above him up the pipe, but that they are on the pond side of him, so as to follow, not to meet him, In the case they would not Decoy.