2-889-463 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Wild Duck Shooting on the Potomac, 1850. American invention for duck-shooting: '...one device attracted my notice especially [and] succeeds admirably. The hunter builds him a small skiff with very low sides; this he surmounts with a platform of boards, and paints the whole so as scarcely to be distinguished from the water: on this platform and around it he places his wooden decoy ducks, and hides himself at the bottom of the skiff. In the meantime he has a confederate, who, in the boat in the distance, sails around and scares up the ducks; they alight or hover around the decoy ducks, and our fortunate sportsman rising, deals death amongst them. He sometimes kills at one shot fifteen or sixteen...The gun used is one made expressly for this sport, and bears the name of "Potomac duck gun".' From "Illustrated London News", 1850.