Almost incredible as are the results occasionally obtained under favouring conditions, yet the duck-shooting at Daimiel is nevertheless subject to considerable variation in accordance with the sequence of the season. The biggest totals are usually recorded during the months of September, October, and November in dry years. The bags secured at such periods are apt to run into extraordinary numbers, but with this proviso, that quality is then sometimes inferior to quantity. For the chief item at these earlier shoots consists of teal, with only a sprinkling of mallard, wigeon, and shoveler, and, in some years, a few coots. But at the later _tiradas_ (shootings), although game is usually rather less abundant, it is then entirely composed of the bigger ducks--beyond all in numbers being the mallard, pintail, wigeon, and red-crested pochard, while an almost equal number of shovelers and common pochards are also bagged.
At these earlier _tiradas_ a good gun should be able, with ease, to bring down, say, 400 ducks, although this number dwindles sadly in the pick-up, since but few of those birds will be recovered that fall outside the narrow space of open water around each "hide." One may say roughly that at least one-fourth are lost. For, although each post be surrounded by open water, yet many ducks must fall within the encircling canes, while even those that fall in the open, if winged and beyond the reach of a second barrel, will inevitably gain the shelter of the covert, and all these are irrecoverable. Others, again, carrying on a few yards, may fall dead in open water, but at a distance the precise position of which is difficult to fix by reason of intervening cane-brakes. Thus between those that are lost in the above ways and others that may be carried away by the wind or the current (besides many that are devoured by hawks and eagles under the fowler's eye but beyond the range of his piece) it is no exaggerated estimate that barely three-fourths of the fallen are ever recovered.
To the above description another Spanish friend, Don Isidoro Urzáiz, adds the following:--
In the year 1892 I fired at ducks in a single morning at Daimiel one thousand and ten cartridges. This was between 6.30 and 10.30 A.M. I gathered rather over two hundred, losing upwards of a hundred more. I shot badly; it being my first experience with duck, I had not learnt to let them come well in, and often fired too soon.