GALLINAGO (59 



foothold. A snipe dodging tlirough straggling patches of reeds until 

 he gets high enough to feel the wind, only to again start twisting, 

 makes this, in my opinion, the most difficult form of snipe shooting 

 I know of. However, the birds make up in numbers for the numerous 

 and disheartening misses one makes on a ground of this sort, and, 

 having been told by my men to expect a bag of 100 couple, I came 

 well supplied with ammunition. 



" Unfortunately snipe on this particular jheel do not sit well till 

 after 12 o'clock, so I began operations about 8 a.m. on another stretch 

 of equally soft and stagnant ' ponk,' in which I pounded about till 

 10.30, getting fourteen couple and tiring myself a good deal with 

 the heavy going. By 11.30 I was compelled to take another breather, 

 by which time the bag had increased to twenty-four couple, and 

 as I was now thoroughly disgusted with three and a half hours' 

 floundering about in the abominable mud, I insisted on being taken 

 on to the good ground. Good, indeed, it was, not swarms of birds 

 rising in wisps of twenty and thirty as one sometimes sees, but evenly 

 distributed in ones and twos all over the place. There were also a 

 considerable number of jack and painted snipe about, but these I 

 tried to avoid shooting, though in the end I got two jacks. These 

 were the result of snapshots taken at birds disappearing over the tall 

 reeds when there was no time to discover one's mistake till after the 

 trigger had been pulled. 



" Many dead birds fell amongst the tall hoogola, where retrieving 

 them was most troublesome and tiring work for the coolies, and 

 though I had three of my best men out that day, I would not like to 

 say how many birds were lost. 



" In spite of these drawbacks, the excellence of the sport and the 

 difficulty of the shooting kept my keenness up till 5 p.m., when I 

 found the men were so used up as to be practically useless, and as 

 I was beginning to go a bit off my shooting myself, I decided to give 

 up. On counting over the birds on the sticks I found 259 common 

 or fantail snipe, one pintail snipe, two jack and a quail. What the 

 latter was doing in such an uninviting spot it is hard to say, unless 

 it had been driven into the tall hoogola by hawks. I only once got two 

 birds at a shot that day, and was using an ordinary hammerless gun, 

 Schultze powder, No. 8 shot, and last, but not least, a hand protector. 



" Though I have on six other occasions shot bags of over 100 

 couple on that particular ground, this was the last and best. Since 

 then a dense growth of green rushes has spread itself all over the 

 jheel, and so covered up the feeding that birds are comparatively 

 scarce, though from thirty to forty couple might still be got in a day. 

 Taking into consideration, however, the long railway journey, the 

 hard work and heavy going, I have never considered the place worth 

 visiting of recent years." 



