UPLAND SHOOTING. 193 



labor, as to render the pursuit of them toilsome, and productive 

 only of weariness and disappointment. 



I have, however, killed them repeatedly, while endeavoring 

 to satisfy myself of the facts which I now assert, so deep in the 

 moult that their bodies have been almost naked, and that they 

 have fluttered up feebly, and with a heavy whirrintr, on wings 

 divested of one-half the quill feathers ; and, in that state, I 

 have observed that the dogs stood as staunchly, and at as great 

 a distance from their game, as usual ; and that the birds took 

 wing as freely, though, in truth, half impotent to fly. 



Beyond this, it is scarce necessary to point out to an intelli- 

 gent reader, that if the birds still lay in swarms on their old 

 ground, however scentless, they must, when that ground is 

 hunted closely by true-beating and industrious dogs, l)e either 

 run up, or turned out of the grass, and caught in the mouth 

 sometimes ; Avhich I have never known to happen in all my 

 experience of the field. 



The other theory was this, which I have heard insisted on as 

 strenuously as the former, " That the Woodcock, on beginning 

 to moult, betakes himself to the maize or Indian corn fields, 

 and remains there unsuspected until the crops have been hous- 

 ed, and the cold weather has set in." That a few scattered 

 Woodcock may be found in wet, low maize-fields, along the 

 edge of woods, is true ; and it is true, also, that they feed in 

 such situations in great numbers, during the night, previous to 

 their removal ; but that they are ever to be found generally, or 

 for any number of consecutive days or weeks in such ground, 

 is an utterly incorrect surmise, disproved by long experience. 



I have applied myself carefully to the investigation of this 

 circumstance ; and in the last ten years, have certainly beaten a 

 thousand maize-fields thoroughly, with a brace of as good Set- 

 ters as any private gentleman possessed, at the very period 

 when fanners would tell me " they were as thick as fowls in the 

 corn-fields ; " and I have not on any occasion flushed more 

 tlian three birds, in any one field ; nor have I killed twenty-five 

 on such ground altogether. ^ 



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