Word: mallard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Paris, where cynical politicians have heard everything, even the most unsurprisable wore the slightly dazed air of men who have just heard a mallard endorse a shotgun. After years of unwavering hostility to Charles de Gaulle, French Communists abruptly abandoned their denunciations of his Algerian policy and made it known that they were eager to shake his hand...
...With indifferent conservation, the duck population plummeted to about 30 million in the 1930s, threatening an end to the sport. Today's bags are carefully limited and so is the season, which lasts about 2½ months in each area. No hunter comes home with a wagonload of mallard, but most everybody gets a duck dinner, and leaves plenty of birds for next year...
Animated Decoy. A battery-powered plastic duck that simulates feeding movements of a mallard is being marketed by Riley Decoy Corp., Eugene, Ore. Later this year the firm will also offer hunters an animated mallard hen. Price: $17.95, with battery...
...game birds are a tricky breed. As old Hunter Hemingway says, they all fly different ways. A man who can plug a teal zigzagging upward out of marsh grass may have a tough time sighting in on a flight of mallard drumming toward him. Learning to lead a speedy pintail is another trick entirely from following a wood duck through trees. For all the instruction a hunter may have had, all the trapshooting he may have done, lining up a wing shot, says one expert, "is something like learning how to balance peas on the edge of your knife...
Fortunately for the duck hunter's friends, they seldom have to listen for long to the fat glories of "the one that got away." Most of the time, a beaten, bone-weary gunman will simply explain: "That big mallard I missed had most likely been stuffing himself with fish. He would have tasted terrible anyway...