Page 51 THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

CHAPTER IV.

SOME FINAL AND GENERAL DIRECTIONS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF A DECOY

AND IN CATCHING THE DUCKS.

I WILL first speak of the wind as being the most important subject connected with the working of a Decoy.
    Never try to work a pipe straight down and out of the entrance of which, or from the screens to the entrance, or from yourself when walking behind the screens, to the ducks about its entrance, the wind blows.
    If luck is very much in your favour, this rule may at a pinch some-times be discarded, though always at a risk.
    It is never safe to act thus, for a failure is courted if you stand or move in a Decoy with such keen-scented birds as wild ducks dead to leeward of you.
    This rule applies whether you have or have not a piece of smouldering turf in use to conceal the smell of the breath or clothes.^*
    The diagram afterwards given shows the only winds with which to work a pipe really successfully (see p.57). The arrows are drawn on the folding plan of the Decoy pipe to point up wind, and so show the direction it should blow from to work the pipe.
    Outside every Decoy, on a mast, or else on the top of some tall tree hard by, should be fixed a weathercock, to indicate the true direction of the wind at the time it is wished to make a catch.
    Remember the ducks when they rise invariably face the wind, and at all times incline to fly against it when first they are flushed.
    Therefore, when you appear at the show place in order to drive the birds up the pipe, and the wind is blowing from the ducks to you, much is in your favour.

^* In the fens of Lincolnshire turf was largely burnt before coal came into use, and it was supposed the wildfowl, being accustomed to its smell, did not mind it when used by the Decoymen to hide "their natural odour."