UPLAND SHOOTING. 153 



bothered, and to lie hard ; and even if your setter or pointer do 

 run in upon two or three, in a day's shooting, the odds are, as 

 Snipe-sliooting is always more or less snaj) shooting, that you 

 will get a long cross shot at these, and pcrliaps bag them ; and, 

 at all events, for every bird you lose thus, you will Icjse four 

 which will whistle away unshut at, dead in the wind's eye, if 

 you beat up-wind. 



I had once an actual trial of this kind accidentally, and on my 

 part unconsciously, with a rather famous English dog-breaker 

 and market shooter, on the Big Piece, a superb and very exten- 

 sive tract of Snipe-meadow, just abf)ve the Little Falls, on the 

 Passaic, the result of which 1 will mention as tending to exem- 

 plify the fact I have been insisting on. 



I did not at the time know this fellow, though subsetjueiitly I 

 have known him to my cost ; though I afterwards heard that he 

 was acquainted with my person, and had made some small bet, 

 or other, on beating my bag ; which, but for his want of know- 

 iedge on this point, he would have done, for I believe he is a 

 better shot, and he had decidedly better dogs than I on that day; 

 the best of which became mine in consequence. 



It was a very wild morning, indeed, early in April, the wind 

 blowing almost a gale from the westward ; and immediately ou 

 entering the meadow, I perceived a man in a black velveteen 

 jacket, with three veiy fine dogs, one the red setter I have 

 named before, beating up-wind at some three hundred yards 

 distant. I set to work after my own way, and so we perse- 

 vered all day long, he beating up, and I doxon wind, often within 

 a hundred yards' distance. There were a great many birds on 

 the ground, and I had very fair shooting, getting at least three 

 shots to his two, and those much fairer shots ; in proof of which 

 I may obsen^e, that I killed three or four double shots during 

 the day, while he did not fire one. At about four in the after- 

 noon we parted company, not having interchanged speech, and 

 I thought no more about him until I retunied to mine inn, when I 



learned that D had called to inquire how many birds I had 



killed, and expressed his wonder that a person who, as he was 



