46 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



escape your aim now darting, like a flash, in 

 zigzag lines, and now soaring sky-high, as if to 

 top the range of your piece. 



Woodcock shooting in " the cripple" always 

 reminds us of a party of madmen shouting and 

 banging away at vampire bats, in the eternal twi- 

 light of some equatorial forests. Rail shooting, if 

 practiced more than once or twice in a season, 

 becomes too tiresome and monotonous to possess 

 much interest, except for the sum total boated. 

 Duck shooting is a noble diversion; but what 

 thrill of expectation is equal to that which the 

 sportsman feels, when, after a fruitless hunt over 

 acres and acres of heavy ground, he beholds in 

 the distance the trusty and indefatigable compa- 

 nion of his toil, standing steadily to his point at 

 last or what a more game sight than the grey, 

 phantom-like look of the wandering snipe, as 

 uttering its peculiar cry, it flits over a wild marsh, 

 on a March or November day? 



Being all open shooting, the shooter, of course, 

 has an opportunity of observing all the move- 

 ments of his dogs, and also of the bird after it has 

 sprung ; and on this account alone many shoot- 

 ers declare that they had rather have two days of 

 good sport at snipe, than a whole season at part- 

 ridges or rail. 



