BAY-SNIPE, COOT, AND OTHER WILD FOWL 

 SHOOTING ON THE ATLANTIC COAST. 



BY ISAAC MCLELLAN, 

 Author of "Poems of Rod and Gun," Etc. 



'UTUMN is the sportsman's carnival. He 

 then explores the woods, marshes, and 

 meadows in pursuit of game, or lies in his 

 ambush blind, with his fleet of decoys, set 

 out around him, awaiting the approach of 

 hovering flocks of bay- snipe or soaring 

 legions of wild fowl. October is brilliant 

 with its autumnal scenes, and November is 

 often attractive with panoramic glories of the 

 declining year. In this fair season is com- 

 mingled all the gorgeous combinations of the " Flowery 

 Bow." The sky itself then seems to lose its heavenly 

 azure, and the smoky vapor that then ascends its domes 

 and reposes in its cerulean chambers seems to have 

 caught the variegated hues "of the emblazoned earth 

 beneath. Every mountain pool and lonely pond, every 

 brimming river and lapping brook, seem tinged with hues 

 borrowed from reflected wood or sailing cloud. In the 

 dim depths of forests, the pine, flr, spruce, and other ever- 

 greens may still retain their verdure, the wild grape-vines 

 and ivies have but partially lost their greenness, but else- 

 where the eye is dazzled with the tintings of scarlet and 

 purple, of orange and of gold. And these rich blendings 

 of color in the thick drapery of the woodlands is very 



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