Old Timers recollection of 'Tolling'

In Nova Scotia our best game ducks are the Blue Winged Duck (or Black Duck) and the Blue Bill (or Broad Bill) and both these birds will toll to the antics of the Tolling Dog. The Butter Ball and Meganser ducks will also toll, but the Whistler will jump into the air at the sight of him, as if a gun was discharged into their midst. Sea ducks and fish ducks such as Coot etc. seem to take no notice of the dog, and he has no attraction for them. The idea of this tolling ducks came from the fact that the fox has been known for many years to posses the power to attract wild fowl by reason of his colour and his movements along the shore, and many a fat black duck has paid the penalty of his curiosity and furnished a meal for foxy old raynard on the shores of inland lakes.


It was my privilege and delight to see a fox at work on one occasion. We were moose hunting near the "Boundary Road" in Nova Scotia and as our canoe turned a bend in the Coufang River I saw directly ahead of us and in plain sight four black ducks. Wondering why they did not fly at the sight of us I glanced ahead of them, and there on top of a flat rock which projected into the water, lay a fox with his nose between his paws. Every second or so he would raise his brush and give it a flip from side to side. The ducks were swimming directly toward him intently watching that white tipped tail and not more than fifteen yards away from his waiting hungry jaws. Just then my hunting companion coming down from the river in the canoe behind us and catching sight of the fox shot him. The bullet from his winchester hit the rocks beneath him and spoiled what otherwise would have without a doubt ended in the bitter tragedy, and have been a sight which vary few have ever witnessed. I have always felt perfectly certain that the fox would have carried away with him one of those four birds, a victim of curiosity. But what a transformation that bullet worked. Into, the air went fox, ducks, and pieces of granite boulder, and as my hunting companion recounted as he lowered the rifle between his knees, "I guess that rock was red hot, the way that fox took to the air."