144 REMIXISCEXCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



ings in tlie avenues or openings of the forests or woods, 

 at which time these birds are on their flight seeking for 

 their food in marshy or swampy places. If spaniels are 

 well trained and under good command, I prefer shoot- 

 ing with them, but if this is not the case, men or boys 

 to beat the cover, who keep close, are preferable, but 

 there is certainly something exhilarating in shooting 

 with spaniels. 



During two years that I was on service in the south 

 of Ireland as inspecting field officer of Yeomanry, with 

 the rank of lieutenant-colonel, in 1805, 1 had some ex- 

 cellent cock shooting in the county of Carlow, in the 

 woods of Mr. Kavanagh of Burris, whose extensive 

 covers lay on the left bank of the river Barrow with a 

 south-west aspect. In these woods the arbutus, holly, 

 and other evergreens flourished luxuriantly, and in those 

 covers I am confident I have seen thirty or forty couples 

 of woodcocks in a day ; but Mr. Kavanagh was not much 

 of a sportsman, had seldom shooting parties, and went 

 out late, but I managed sometimes to bag my ten or 

 twelve couples of woodcocks ; three or four good shots 

 would have brought home three times as many.* On 

 these occasions beaters, or boys as they are called in 

 Ireland, though some of them may be sixty years of 

 age, are employed. Mr. Kavanagh possessed large 

 landed property in the counties of Carlow and Wex- 



* Tlie celebrated sculptor, Sir Francis Cliantrey, when shooting ^rith 

 Mr. Coke, at Holkham, 1829, killed two woodcocks at one shot, and 

 Chantrey made it remarkable by sciilpturing the birds in a graceful 

 tablet, which he presented to his host. A nobleman shooting, in De- 

 cember 1857, at Kinmount, killed a woodcock and bagged it; shot 

 immediately at a rabbit, and on going to it found a second woodcock 

 had been killed by the shot taken at the rabbit. The bird must hare 

 been on the ground in the line of the shot. 



