THE COMING OF THE WOODCOCK 



are known at times to be found. Who can ever forget 

 the first cock which, wavering shadow-like through the 

 trees and thicket, fell one hardly knew how, to his snap 

 shot? Who can, even after years of shooting, hear 

 without a thrill the cry of '' Mark cock ! " as it resounds 

 amid the copses? 



I am inclined to think that the actual difficulty of 

 killing cock has been overrated. The thick covert 

 amid which the bird so often rises, and the impossibility 

 of getting anything like a fair shot at him, is, I think, 

 chiefly answerable for the number of misses with this 

 game. Over-anxiety, too, or flurry, have much to do 

 with the want of success. On the west coast of 

 Scotland, where cock are shot much more frequently 

 upon open ground, the percentage of misses is not 

 extravagant. But in covert you never know when or 

 where the long-billed bird will rise. He may be 

 flushed from the gnarled roots of old trees, or be beaten 

 from a bit of wild holly — a very favourite sitting-place, 

 by the way — or he may rise under your very feet in the 

 bracken, or in fifty other ways. If you mean to kill 

 your woodcock you must snap him — if you can — the 

 moment you set eyes upon him. In covert, the man 

 who hesitates and dallies is lost — or rather the bird is. 

 And it is to be remembered that in cock-shooting you 

 cannot beat your ground too closely. In hard weather, 

 if there are cock about, you may be pretty sure to find 

 them by the soft ditches and streamlets that intersect 

 parts of the covert. It is astonshing how quickly these 

 birds will put on fat. The woodcock has with one 

 exception — the locust-bird of South Africa (Nordmann's 

 Pratincole) — perhaps the quickest digestion and the 

 most extraordinary power of assimilating food of any 

 living creature. A cock that alights starved and 

 exhausted from its long passage will in a very few days 



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