Cats have had only limited success in duck hunting, certainly in part due to the attitude that hunters using fire arms have toward flingists. In general, the shotgun toting hunter is totally insensitive to the difficulties of the sport. It is indeed hard to remain unseen and unheard in ones blind with a sack full of American Shorthairs, and the need to retrieve ones stock from the lake after each unsuccessful fling is a serious disadvantage. These factors are seldom taken into account when assessing flingery as a valid means of duck hunting. The shotgun hunters contention that all flingists are moronic lunatics out to spoil the hunt for others is only partially justified. It is true that no flingist on record has ever brought down an airborne duck with a cat but this is not to say that the endeavor is pointless -- for the following remarkable reason. Duck hunting flingists have noted a strange behavior in ducks, one hitherto unrecorded by naturalists. It seems that some ducks, upon having been the target of a fling, collapse into a state of distraction characterized by hysteria during which they float on their backs helplessly, rolling back and forth and uttering peals of uncontrollable honking. It is entirely due to this behavior that flingists do not always return from the hunt empty handed. It has even been reported that some ducks have drowned during particularly fitful attacks.
It is now generally recognized that flingery is the only truly sporting way to hunt owls. Owl hunting has received far less criticism than duck hunting though the success rate is less due very probably to the fact that owls in general have a very limited sense of humor. (There is only one successful catch on record and in that case the charge was levied that the owl had been dead for some weeks.) Owling has in fact been thoroughly ignored by all but the flinging community to whom downing or even striking an owl is of no importance in contrast to startling one. The subtlety of this attitude escapes many students of the art but clearly to the avid flingist, its not so much the impact as the element of surprise.