the birds were soaring around and in a short time were
within fifteen or twenty feet of us. At that moment we heard the
command, 'Punch 'em!' and the bombardment that followed was beyond
imagining. _We had fired five shots apiece and found we had bagged ten
geese from this one flock_.

"At the end of one hour's shooting we had 218 birds to our credit and
were out of ammunition.

"On finding that no more shells were in our pits we took our dead geese
to the camp and returned with a new supply of ammunition. We remained in
the pits during the entire day. When the sun had gone behind the
mountains we summed up our kill and _it amounted to 450 geese_!

"The picture shown with this article gives a view of _the first hour's
shoot_. A photograph would have been taken of the remainder of the
shoot, but it being warm weather the birds had to be shipped at once in
order to keep them from spoiling.

[Illustration: SLAUGHTERED ACCORDING TO LAW
A Result of a Faulty System. Such Pictures as this are Very Common in
Sportsmen's Magazines Note the Automatic Gun]

"Supper was then eaten, after which we were driven back to Willows; both
agreeing that it was one of the greatest days of sport we ever had, and
wishing that we might, through the courtesy of the Glenn County Goose
Club, have another such day. C.H.B."

Another picture was published in a Canadian magazine, illustrating a
story from which I quote:

"I fixed the decoys, hid my boat and took my position in the blind. My
man started his work with a will and hustled the ducks out of every
cove, inlet or piece of marsh for two miles around. I had barely time to
slip the cartridges into my guns--_one a double and the other a five
shot automatic_--when I saw a brace of birds coming toward me. They
sailed in over my decoys. I rose to the occasion, and the leader
up-ended and tumbled in among the decoys. The other bird, unable to stop
quick enough, came directly over me. He closed his wings and struck the
ground in the rear of the blind.

"More and more followed. Sometimes they came singly, and then in twos
and threes. I kept busy and attended to each bird as quickly as
possible. Whenever there was a lull in the flight I went out in the boat
and picked up the dead, leaving the wounded to take chances with any
gunner lucky enough to catch them in open and smooth water. A bird handy
in the air is worth two wounded ones in the water. _Twice I took six
dead birds out of the water fo