WOODCOCK: 25 
in Louisiana, their denunciation would be just, but 
I opine if these same critics could be transported to 
Louisiana in the woodcock season they would be sur- 
prised to find in how short a time they would become 
lovers of the night pothunt. 
“T know from personal experience. I was born a 
sportsman and I can recall, some thirty-five years ago, 
when I scorned to shoot a woodcock on the ground, 
but then I was new in the State. It did not take me 
long to get broken in to the method. The great deli- 
cacy of the bird and the almost impossibility of getting 
him by daylight hunting begets the habit of night pot- 
hunting, and, like other bad habits, it grows apace. 
“This section of the State is rather out of the wood- 
cock country, and I have not hunted them for twenty- 
five years. They are here every year, but not plentiful 
enough to warrant night hunting, but well do I re- 
member a noted hunt of about thirty-five years ago. 
I was a visitor to Louisiana then. One dark, drizzly 
night my brother-in-law was lamp-carrier for me, and 
I killed seventy-two from 9 until I a.m. with a muzzle- 
loading gun. No, it was seventy-one that I killed with 
the gun, but when my ammunition became exhausted 
on the way home we found a bird on the side of the 
path. I drew the ramrod and killed it with a blow on 
the head, making an even six dozen. 
“T cannot refrain from telling of my last woodcock 
hunt. It was in January, 1885, just twenty-five years 
ago. On a starlight night three of us started out for 
a hunt, one gunner on each side of the light. The 
