The Wizard of the Wetlands 41 



a moonlit journey is necessary, or at least preferred, 

 my experience has taught otherwise. More times 

 than can now be recalled I have catnapped through 

 the black monotony of a steamy spring night so as 

 to be on precisely the proper spot when the first 

 flight of geese came in to feed at gray dawn. And 

 at intervals throughout such nights I have heard 

 the wings and voices of myriad snipe hissing and 

 rasping across the black mystery as the first comers 

 of the year sped to the fat muck of thousands of 

 acres of wetlands. Moreover, I have toiled till dusk 

 over fenceless fields of black tenacity and seen never 

 a bird, nor a boring, nor a chalking, nor anything 

 that is his ; have turned in dead beat at some farm- 

 house, been literally hauled out, against the grain 

 but in accordance with positive instructions, before 

 dawn, and have later found the birdless ground of 

 the previous evening to be swarming with silent, 

 skulking snipe, which if not weary from a long flight 

 certainly acted like resting new arrivals. 



I have heard snipe moving by moonlight, and that 

 many times ; but the night of nights to bring the 

 northward-bound birds is dark and damp with a 

 puff of warm breeze from the south and a dash of 

 warm rain. Upon such a night I have known the 

 snipe pour in so that wings or voices were audible 

 nearly every moment. Pretty good snipe grounds ? 

 Indeed they were. When "Frank Forester" first 

 tramped them, he could, with a muzzleloader, bag 

 twenty, thirty, and forty brace in a day; and not many 

 seasons ago the keen men who worked those grounds 

 took each one hundred shells for one day's sport. 

 And this did not mean that each bird required a 



