SPORT OF SORTS WITH THE PRINCE 287 



and down wing movement in full going order, or wait 

 for the even flight which usually — alas ! all rules have 

 their exceptions, and those of the snipe world are all 

 exception and no rule — succeeds the maze of twists 

 — Ah, there's the rub ! 



The Prince laid it down in his book on Sport in the 

 Caucasus that you must always walk down wind on 

 snipe, because snipe always rise against the wind 

 and for a hair's-breadth second seem to poise above 

 the just-left ground. Ours never did any of this 

 " poising." They darted away with unerring accuracy 

 every time. 



I like to go down wind on snipe myself, and should 

 always stalk them so were it possible. How often will 

 the lie of the land permit of this ? One must take one's 

 ground as one finds it. My experience has been that 

 snipe invariably frequent the sort of country in which 

 it is impossible to walk in every direction for even 

 a quarter of a mile down wind without being brought 

 up short. More often than not one must shoot against 

 wind. 



In the days of my youth I tried to teach myself from 

 books how to kill snipe, and slaughtered, in fancy, 

 countless hundreds, as my author bade me. In the 

 days of my experience, I won't say age, I know that 

 cut-and-dried theories go to pieces before the marvel- 

 lous mechanism of a snipe's erratic flight. 



Most writers call the successful shooting of the little 

 bird " a knack." Well, there's a lot of knack about it, 

 but it's a kind of an art with some people, and in the 

 composition of the greatest big-game hunter the art is 



