BAY SHOOTING. 117 



comes well over your decoys, which are not usually set above 

 ten or fifteen yards distant, you should with prompt delibera- 

 tion be generally enabled, after getting in your two first bar- 

 rels faii-ly, to catch up your second gun and do more or less 

 execution with it also. 



Occasionally single birds, or wary flights, will skate past your 

 decoys without noticing them, or giving any heed to your 

 imitation of their cries, at a long distance, and at a very great 

 rate, and in that case you must shoot far ahead of the foremost 

 bird, or you will have no chance whatever of killing. 



Written instructions can avail nothing to teach you what are 

 the peculiar calls of the various species, much less how to imi- 

 tate them, or how to distinguish what species it is that is ap 

 proaehing, by the order of its flight and the peculiarity of its 

 motion, so soon as your eye can descry it against the clear blue 

 sky, and long before you can discern its colors ; yet this you 

 must be able to do with certainty, before you can yourself be- 

 come a proficient at Bay Snipe shooting. Long practice alone, 

 and experience, can make you perfect in this. En attendant, 

 without knowing anything at all about it, having a good bay- 

 man, you may have great sport. Me judice, however, whatever 

 is worth doing at all, is worth doing well ; and if I thought it 

 paid to shoot Bay Snipe at all, which I do not, I should deci- 

 dedly qualify myself to recognize and wliistle all, as I can now 

 some four or five of the commoner species. After all, it is less 

 difficult with a good tutor, than it would at first be considered. 



The greatest diflSculty, I think, that will be experienced by a 

 beginner in this sport, is that of correctly judging distances, the 

 surface of smooth water being singularly deceptive, and the size 

 of the birds, as it seems to me, being frequently augmented to the 

 unpractised eye, by s me sort of refraction, or optical delusion, 

 so that you would suppose them nearer than they really are. 



It is not easy to give any general rule for measuring the dis- 

 tance of a bird on the wing, so greatly does the range of vision 

 vary in various individuals ; but with a person neither extraor- 

 dinarily far-sighted, nor on the other hand at all short-sighted. 



