Page 41 CONSTRUCTION OF A DECOY - LANDINGS AND BANKS.

CONSTRUCTION OF A DECOY - LANDINGS AND BANKS.

    Even a small current will serve to carry down the food much farther and quicker than is the case in still water, and so set the fowl on the feed well out into the pond, and perhaps cause a capture when not otherwise expected.
    A strong flow through a pipe, by means of storage water and a sluice, that can be kept for emergencies, such as during a hard frost, is invaluable. It will prevent ice forming at the pipes' mouths.
    On and near open water, with hard frost all round, the fowl invariably crowd and gather, and when this occurs, as it should, near the entrance to a pipe, the birds are handy to the Decoyman and his enticements. Ducks, too, will invariably swim more freely against even a slight stream in a pipe, than if in still water.
    A Decoy pond is, if well made, so shaped that whatever part of it the ducks frequent from time to time, or day to day, they are more or less 'within the "embouchure" of a pipe's mouth.
    This of course would not be the case if they remained always in the middle of the pond in open water. But such is not their habit, as they prefer the banks and sheltered corners.

    THE LANDINGS AND BANKS of the Decoy pond require considerable care in their arrangement. All Decoys require landings, or, as the Decoy-men term it, "chairs for the ducks to sit down on."
    The birds cannot pass all their time swimming, and it may be said they frequent the Decoy almost as much for the accommodation of its landings, on which they plume and sleep, as for the use of its waters to drink and wash in.
    In a Decoy with some half a dozen pipes, the distance from the entrance of one pipe to that of the next is comparatively short, so that the fowl happen to rest between the two pipes they are in work-distance of one or the other; but if there be but three or four pipes, of the pond will require to be more shut off from the fowl, so as to oblige them to land only near the pipes.
    It will be seen in the plans that the shores of a Decoy are formed so slide or incline towards either one pipe or another.