324 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
ous in the life of the snipe is really in harmony with 
the needs of its nature. As it is nocturnal in habit, 
it is difficult to study, and it is specially difficult for 
the resident of one locality to observe its general habits 
with any degree of precision. Seeing it in but one 
small corner of its habitat, the local sportsman can 
gain, at best, but a fragmentary knowledge of its needs 
and its habits. 
Being swift of wing and enduring of flight, the 
snipe undoubtedly feeds over vast areas of ground 
many miles apart, twenty or thirty miles of flight being 
of no more effort to it when in search of food than 
twenty or thirty rods are to the prairie chicken. When 
snipe invade feeding grounds in vast numbers, as is 
frequently the case, the grounds are soon thoroughly 
bored, and all the food within reach is consumed; 
thus it may be a necessity for them to seek food else- 
where till the exhausted grounds have time to replen- 
ish themselves. 
Many writers lay great stress on the difficulties of 
snipe shooting. They treat it as a bird of phenomenal 
swiftness and erratic flight, and the shooting of it as 
requiring something extraordinary in the matter of 
skill. As a matter of fact, snipe shooting, at certain 
times, is the easiest of shooting. On warm days, when 
the birds are fat and lazy, flying slowly and tamely, 
with pendulous bills, as is often the case in the fall, in 
the South, no bird a-wing is more easily killed. They 
are then disinclined to fly. They indolently lie to the 
dog’s points till the shooter walks them up, 
