WOODCOCK-SHOOTING. 227 



In Mayo ten to thirty couple is a fair day's sport 

 for a party of six guns. About ten years since forty 

 couple were killed in a day in Lord Sligo's wood, 

 Brackloon, in the above county. Woodcock very 

 rarely nest in Mayo. In severe weather they leave 

 the interior of the country and fly down to the sea- 

 shore, particularly to those parts that project farthest 

 into the Atlantic (Lord J. Brown). In the co. Sligo, 

 Sir H. Gore Booth, who lives on the coast, tells me 

 that during frost and snow they find Cock in large 

 numbers. Some years since, a hundred and fifty 

 couple were killed in three days by a party of eight 

 guns, close round the house at Lissadel. During 

 the last few days of January and the beginning of 

 February, 1867, three hundred and thirty-eight Cock 

 were killed in six days, at the same place, by a party 

 averaging seven guns. The winter of 1878-79, Sir 

 Henry tells me, was a fairly good one in Sligo. 

 Two guns at Lissadel in that year obtained twenty 

 couple in a day ; four guns, thirty-two couple, and the 

 next day, thirty couple. The best bag in 1 880-81 

 was thirty-three couple to four guns. 



Cork was a very good Woodcock county some 

 years since. Captain A. Morgan says that he was 

 one of a party of four guns that killed one hundred 

 and forty-one Woodcock in four days in 1879, in 

 South Cork. He adds that in 1 880-81 he was 

 at the shooting of at least four hundred Cock. 

 He states regretfully that the numbers killed along 

 the coast of Cork by poachers during the great 

 frost of January, 1881, was "incredible." 



This profusion of Woodcock on the coast was 

 universal during that month. Near Kilcredan, on the 

 south-west shore of Clare, one fowler, to my own 



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