250 THE GUN: AFIELD AND AFLOAT 



shooting of snipe as one of the most diverting forms of 

 sport with the shot-gun. At one time the title (i good 

 snipe- shot " was looked upon as the M.A. degree of 

 shooting, the highest degree attainable with regard to 

 proficiency in the handling of the shot-gun in fact, a 

 first-class certificate in the art of shooting. Now, per- 

 haps, this scarcely holds good under modern conditions 

 of game-shooting. With wind-borne grouse or partridges 

 flashing past his stand at express-train speed, the game- 

 shooter of to-day has even less time for a leisurely 

 display of skill than has the snipe-shot when bringing 

 to earth his fast-rising quarry. Comparisons apart, 

 snipe-shooting is a sport that must ever deservedly 

 rank high in the estimation of all true lovers of the 

 gun, for, most assuredly, it taxes the energy, resource- 

 fulness, and skill of the gunner to an exceptionally high 

 degree. 



Although snipe are distributed, here and there, through- 

 out the length and breadth of Great Britain and Ireland 

 during the nesting season, it is the foreign-bred birds 

 that are the mainstay of the snipe-shooter in these 

 islands. These migratory snipe, similarly to the wood- 

 cock, arrive in their thousands during the three or four 

 weeks following onward from mid-October. Partridge- 

 shooters plodding laboriously through the dripping 

 swedes or other turnip-fields in Eastern England on 

 rainy days about the second or third week in October 

 occasionally flush a snipe. Such incident is invariably 

 accepted as a tolerably certain indication that the 

 foreign snipe have landed on our shores. This annual 

 migration of the snipe is perhaps the most certain of all 

 features connected with their movements whilst visiting 

 this country. The fact is, these birds are so erratic in 



