WILD-GOOSE SHOOTING 153 



other conditions are favourable, the local punt-gunners 

 have been able to obtain a shot at them after night- 

 fall. The best time for seeking them at their marine 

 resorts is on dark nights at the top of a high spring 

 tide, when the punter may sometimes steal up within 

 range of their position. When roosting, however, 

 they usually sit far away in the middle of some, long, 

 wide spit of sand, near which the tide scarcely ever 

 flows, and where they can remain quite safe from 

 harm. 



The risks they run are calculated to a nicety, and 

 so artful do they become that if the water reaches a 

 point which would enable an enemy -to float within 

 range of them, they at once quit the spot, and fly to 

 safer quarters. A mass of geese, when rising into the 

 air, is usually discernible even on a dark night for a 

 few seconds against the sky-line ; but it is more or less 

 an affair of guesswork to make anything like a really 

 successful shot. 



In his ' Fowler in Ireland,' Sir R. Payne-Gallwey, 

 Bart., says there are several parts of the Irish coasts 

 where grey geese may be killed in the tidal estuaries, 

 and he relates an occasion in 1880, when forty-three 

 of the bean species were obtained by a Limerick 

 punter at the mouth of the river Maigue. The local 

 fowlers sometimes use a wounded goose which has 



