GUNNERS PARADISE: WILDFOWLING AND DECOYS ON LONG ISLAND. By E. Jane Townsend, History Researcher, The Museums at Stony Brook.

1979 1st edition. Oblong 8vo paperback (260 x 176mm). Pp152. Colour and b/w photographs, map, bibliography. Grey card covers with duck silhouette and blind-stamped circles representing shot.

An illustrated catalogue of decoys in the Museums at Stoney Brook, Long Island, containing much anecdote and history of the days of commercial waterfowling, as well as sporting wildfowling and snipe shooting. Chapters include: The sporting life; The working life; Duck hunting on Long Island - battery shooting, whistler hunting, how to cook a coot, black duck country yields to mallard drives; Snipe hunting on Long Island; Getting geese and Brant; Paradise lost - banning spring hunting..., ...and feather hunting, ending the commercial sale of wildfowl in New York, The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, against the law; Decoys - a short history; Long Island decoy carvers - Gelston, Bowman, Verity, Lemuel Ackerly, John H.B. Boyle, Wilbur R. and Wilbur A. Corwin, George Eberhardt, Frank Kellum, William H. 'Will' Smith, William J. Southard, Eugene 'Gene' Wells; Map of Long Island; Catalog of The Museums Decoy Collection - key to the Catalog, marsh duck, diving duck, sea duck, merganser, goose, brant and swan, shorebird, miscellaneous. Appendices are: William Bowman; Obediah Verity.