NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



the sister isle. Ireland, with its bogs, its vast areas 

 of waste and undrained land, and its scant population, 

 is the true British home of this bird. Of course there 

 are even yet many parts of England and Scotland 

 where fair snipe-shooting is to be obtained. But to 

 secure with certainty a good bag of these feathered 

 dainties the gunner will undoubtedly be wise if he 

 betakes himself to the bogs of Erin. Within recent 

 years excellent bags have been made in Ireland, and 

 the sport in favourable localities and in good weather 

 may still be classed as first-rate. In the summer of 

 1820 a gunner of the old school, shooting in that 

 favoured island with a flint gun of the period, bagged 

 no less than 1,310 snipe to his own gun. In more 

 recent times — 1880 — a single gunner, Captain R. Denny, 

 shot 681 to his own gun during nine weeks' sport, a 

 great record. The birds breed still in many parts of 

 England. You may find them, for instance, even in 

 the driest summers, along the drains and rivulets upon 

 the grassy slopes of the Derbyshire hills ; but the 

 great migration of snipe which annually replenishes 

 our shooting supply comes to us from North Europe 

 in November and December. 



If you possess snipe-shooting over the water meadows 

 of some flat, sluggish river, in the quieter and less 

 highly drained parts of England, you may on a mild 

 morning of December, when rain is in the air, be 

 pretty sure to find the birds lying closely. As you 

 expected, you have gone no very great way along the 

 stream before you have flushed and brought down your 

 first couple, which Donna, the spaniel, now helps you 

 to secure. A right and left at snipe is, by the way, no 

 mean feat. Pursuing the winter's walk, quite a fair 

 show of birds rise out of shot in some long wet grass 

 ahead. They fly no great way, and now as you watch 



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