Once they have learned to trust their wings, they give up hiding for
swift flight. But they never forget their early training, and when
wounded hide with a cunning that is remarkable. Unless one has a good
dog it is almost useless to look for a wounded duck, if there is any
cover to be reached. Hiding under a bank, crawling into a muskrat
hole, worming a way under a bunch of dead grass or pile of leaves,
swimming around and around a clump of bushes just out of sight of his
pursuer, diving and coming up behind a tuft of grass,--these are some
of the ways by which I have known a black duck try to escape. Twice I
have heard from old hunters of their finding a bird clinging to a
bunch of grass under water, though I have never seen it. Once, from a
blind, I saw a black duck swim ashore and disappear into a small clump
of berry bushes. Karl, who was with me, ran over to get him, but after
a half-hour's search gave it up. Then I tried, and gave it up also. An
hour later we saw the bird come out of the very place where we had
been searching, and enter the water. Karl ran out, shouting, and the
bird hid in the bushes again. Again we hunted the clump over and over,
but no duck could be seen. We were turning away a second time when
Karl cried: "Look!"--and there, in plain sight, by the very white
stone where I had seen him disappear, was the duck, or rather the red
leg of a duck, sticking out of a tangle of black roots.
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