Word: belchen
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Hard by the Swiss-German border, 50 green-coated hunters crouched in the bulrushes and cocked their scatter-guns. The hunters were edgy. It was 7:27 a.m.-three minutes left before they could start banging away legally at the flock of plump, brown-black Belchen (coots) paddling peacefully across the nippy surface of Lake Constance. Suddenly, a single shot sounded-then a rapid fusillade. Out of the reeds raced a Swiss patrol boat. "Wrho fired those shots?" roared an angry official. "Not us," answered a sullen German hunter. "It was those damned Tierschutzverein [i.e., S.P.C.A.] people trying to warn...
...Stupid to Worry. If so, the warning was wasted. Too dim-witted to be alarmed, the waterborne Belchen paid no attention to the eager marksmen closing in for the kill. At a range of less than 20 yds., the hunters opened fire. The few Belchen that tried to escape were blasted out of the sky or cut down before they could finish their flailing, loonlike takeoff. The rest of the birds were slaughtered where they sat. Boat oars were used to administer the coup de grâce. Explained one hunter: "If we waited for them to get into...
Most German sportsmen would trade a boatload of Belchen for a single Auerhahn (European grouse), a bird so wily that one stuffed carcass is often all a man can show for a lifetime of shooting (TIME, April 28). The duckbilled, chicken-bodied coots that the gunmen slaughter in their annual Belchenjagd (Belchen hunt) are worthless as trophies, and dead birds are usually given to the nearest garbage collector. Some hunters claim that a Belchen is edible-if it is marinated for two weeks in buttermilk and roasted with chestnuts...
...Form. Indignant bird fanciers conjure up new plans each year for halting the Belchenschlacht (Belchen slaughter) that stretches from November through February. But each year the hunters return. When Swiss and German S.P.C.A. members staged a protest meeting, angry hunters bombarded them with birdshot. So far, the hapless Belchen's only hope is fog. On both the Swiss and German sides of Lake Constance, Belchen hunting in the fog is prohibited: a stray shot might nick a hunter, and this would be considered bad form, even for a Belchenjagd...
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