A GOOD DAY'S SPORT. 235 



cially if your feet are wet, may be found sufficiently cold 

 to chill the warmest blood. 



In our opinion, there is no kind of field sport in 

 which the breech-loader so plainly shows its superiority 

 over the old muzzle-gun as in snipe shooting. The 

 rapidity with which they can both be loaded and 

 cleaned, dispensing with the ramrod, which is always 

 difficult to handle in cold weather, being able to load 

 without placing the butt on the ground or in the mud, 

 and the non-necessity of using caps, are advantages in 

 all sporting, but in none more decided than in snipe 

 shooting. 



As an estimate of what may be considered a good 

 day's sport in the spring of the year on these grounds, 

 we will recur to our own experience, and state them. 

 An acquaintance, who was a good shot, killed, to 

 my certain knowledge, nine dozen snipe in seven 

 hours, and I myself have frequently killed from seven 

 to eight dozen in the same time. The first day's 

 shooting of my last season, over indifferent ground, and 

 very difficult to walk upon from its inequality of sur- 

 face, in five hours I to my own gun bagged four dozen, 

 and but that the birds were extremely wild would pos- 

 sibly have knocked over fifty per cent. more. 



Where we should advise the sportsman commencing 

 snipe shooting in spring would be at Vincennes, on 

 the Ohio and Mississippi railroad. From here you 

 can have sport in every direction, and when you feel 

 desirous of change of scene, the prairies, which begin 

 here and continue north almost uninterruptedly to the 

 great lakes, will be found abundantly stocked from the 

 date of the arrival of the first flight of the migratory 

 hordes. Of one thing we should like to caution the 



