24 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



Really good Snipe shooting in Great Britain is now difficult to 

 find, and the bags of some thirty years ago or more are difficult to 

 make. Drainage has, no doubt, had much to do with this, and 

 the man who now kills his twenty couples of Snipe looks on the 

 achievement as a great one ; and yet there are places where such 

 bags, and even better ones, may still be made. 



Two or three couples of Snipe make a very agreeable addition 

 to any bag and there are, I fancy, few men who, when it is 

 suggested during a day's shooting that, " we will just try a field or 

 two for Snipe," do not feel their blood warm, and experience a 

 sensation that the probability of any number of shots at pheasants 

 and partridges will have failed to arouse. How anxiously on such 

 occasions we scan every little patch of rushes in a badly drained 

 field ! How cautiously we approach the spot, and then, when the 

 Snipe rises with his strange, familiar cry and twisting flight, how 

 pleased we feel when we artistically cut him down ! 



Snipe shooting has certainly great charms, and if, after a day 

 devoted to it, you return home wet and cold, you will not return 

 dissatisfied, for even though your bag be a modest one, you will 

 know that you have had a difficult bird to shoot, and a very wide- 

 awake one ; and, if you be a gourmet, you will look forward to a 

 bonne bouche in the shape of Snipe trail on toast. 



