Scorecard

Says Burfoot, "I considered it a personal affront that they thought they could escape from my house on foot."

ANIMAL QUACKERS

Ogden Nash, deciding that man must look pretty strange to a hippopotamus, once concluded:

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.

Now we have Charley Rosheger of Beaumont, Texas deciding that man's view of the duck is decidedly not a duck's view of a duck. Decoys, he feels, are absurd, at least from a duck's point of view, which is flying over them. The problem is there are no feet showing.

"The hunter is looking at them from the wrong angle," says Rosheger. "From a duck's-eye view, it's amazing how well you see the feet. Feet on decoys will take a little bit of the wariness away from the naturally wild duck."

Rosheger has tested his theory. He made some feet out of rubber, attached them to decoys and lent decoys to a number of friends.

"One group put a dozen decoys with feet on one side of a blind and decoys without feet on the other," he says. "Every duck killed was on the feet side."

And so Rosheger has gone into business—he calls it "Fowl Feet"—producing duck feet that cost $13 for two dozen. When he gets into full production, he expects business to boom, but so far sales have been modest. Presumably too many hunters feel he's a quack.

GYP