44 Sporting Sketches 



ies a bit and he darts away in something more like 

 a straight line. As a general rule, a flushed bird 

 springs a few feet into the air, hangs for the fraction 

 of a second, then begins to twist and dodge as 

 though the Old Boy was at his tail. It would be 

 very interesting could we discover the original cause 

 of the dodging. Possibly some ancient foe, now 

 long extinct, was best baffled by that mode of flight, 

 for there usually is some such explanation for 

 peculiar actions by wild things. Because the flight 

 happens to be puzzling to a gunner is no guarantee 

 that the bird dodges for that purpose such an 

 explanation would imply a deal more intelligence 

 than the entire tribe of snipe is possessed of. Snipe, 

 of course, dodged on the wing long prior to the 

 appearance of firearms, and it is extremely unlikely 

 that the erratic flight has anything in the nature of 

 protective tactics against the devices of human foes. 



The fame of the bird as an object of the sports- 

 man's pursuit has been fairly earned. Swift, small, 

 erratic, he presents the most difficult mark of all our 

 game of shore and upland. In my opinion only teal 

 and canvasback are harder propositions, and with 

 them the real difficulty is apt to be more of weather 

 conditions and the methods usually employed rather 

 than the speed of the fowl, great though it be. The 

 shooting of the snipe is unlike that of any other 

 bird. Some men attain truly wonderful skill at it, 

 and as a rule such men are referred to as " crack 

 snipe shots," instead of the broader term "crack 

 shots." 



To me there is a trifle too much of sameness 

 about it. I am no shirker in the field, yet there is 



