Day before yesterday

Résumé

Day before yesterday by W. C. Tuttle is a humorous outdoor short story written in the early 20th century. The piece satirizes duck-club culture and the credulity of eager sportsmen, skewering the perennial alibi that the best shooting was always “day before yesterday.” Told by a wry first-person narrator, the story opens with a mock-scriptural preface about “Dukklubbers” who profit from “Dukhunters” by promising yesterday’s abundance. The narrator then recounts costly, exhausting trips to famed clubs where keepers insist the birds were thick two days prior, while claim agents steal credit (and ducks), high shooters ruin flights with sky-busting, and even a staged “limit” photo is built from many hunters’ meager bags. In one farcical episode a stranger claims a spoonbill the narrator clearly dropped; in another, the choicest mallards vanish overnight—blamed on a preternatural cat. The culmination is an ultra-exclusive club with strict standards and a super-gun in hand, yet opening day brings no ducks at all, and the keeper falls back on a fresh dodge—pointing to last year’s opening—sealing the joke that for Dukhunters, the best shooting forever lives in the day before yesterday. (This is an automatically generated summary.)