136 FIELD SHOOTING. 



in flesh. They are able to indulge their sharp and 

 almost insatiable appetite, and soon grow fat. I 

 shot snipe several spring seasons in company with 

 R. M. Patchen, of Atlanta, Logan County, Illinois. 

 Our favorite ground was the Salt Creek bottoms 

 on the Sangamon, and I doubt whether there is 

 any better ground in the world. We have killed 

 as many as three hundred and forty in a day, 

 and our bag was seldom as small as seventy-five 

 couple at the right time. The ground we shot 

 over was the grassy, sedgy bottoms along Salt 

 Creek, near where it falls into Sangamon River, 

 and across the latter stream along the bottoms 

 in Mason County. The shooting there begins 

 about the first of April. In many places the bot- 

 toms at that time of the year have been recently 

 overflowed, and a scum of mud and slop is 

 left, in which the snipe seem to delight. Snipe 

 are vastly more abundant in the West, in the 

 proper snipe-ground, than they are in the East. 

 I find that in New Jersey and Pennsylvania 

 snipe-shooters think they have had an average fair 

 day's sport if they have killed about eight 

 couple. Now, we should not think we had been 

 shooting at all if we killed no more than that 

 number. 



