THE COMING OF THE WOODCOCK 



sport with these handsome and most delicious birds. 

 The finest woodcock coverts of the Emerald Isle are, 

 undoubtedly, those at Ashford, near Cong, county 

 Galway, belonging to Lord Ardilaun. Here phenomenal 

 bags are made. In 1899 the score of woodcock for 

 six days of January shooting was 400 birds, besides 

 pheasants and other game ; 168 cock were bagged by 

 seven guns in a single day. In January, 1880, six guns 

 shot in the same coverts 360 cock in four days, killing 

 in a single day 165 birds. In 1884 six guns bagged 

 172 cock in one day's shooting, while in 1886 the same 

 number of guns secured no fewer than 177 woodcock in 

 the course of one short winter's day.^ 



One of the best season's bags in Ireland of late years 

 must be that on the Duke of Abercorn's estate of Baron's 

 Court, county Tyrone, in the winter of 1894-5, when 

 no less than 646 cock were shot. 



Muckross, near Killarney, is a very favourite resort 

 of woodcock. Here, in ten days' shooting, Lord Elcho 

 and his party, averaging five guns, secured in ten days' 

 sport 840 cock, an extraordinary bag. Woodcock were, 

 in modern times, never so numerous on the west coast 

 of Ireland as in the tremendous frost of January, 1881. 

 Driven apparently to this milder region from almost 

 every other portion of the United Kingdom, they were 

 slain in holocausts. "Every hedgeway, every ditch 

 and bunch of furze," says Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey 

 [The Fowler in Ireland), "held its couple or more of 

 cock. About the cliffs near the sea a dozen might often 

 be seen on the wing at once." Every peasant went 



^ Cock-shooting in these coverts seems to have steadily improved. In 

 1895 the week's bag at Ashford amounted to 508 head of these birds, 

 while in January and February of the present year (1904) no less than 544 

 woodcock were bagged by eight guns in the six days' shooting. This is 

 a wonderful record, which, I believe, has never been surpassed. In one 

 day of this great week, February ist, 211 cock were slain. 



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