SNIPE 



you note with pleasure these snipe alighting by the 

 corner of a woodland, where you can approach them 

 down wind. Of all our English sporting birds the 

 snipe, unquestionably, is the most bothering to the 

 gunner. Some men, capital shots at partridge, grouse, 

 pheasant, and wild duck, can never successfully acquire 

 the trick of hitting them. Perhaps the best suggestion 

 one can make to the unaccustomed gunner is to take 

 an Irish shooting and spend a winter in following these 

 perplexing birds over the swamps and fens of ''bog- 

 land." Practice, which a man cannot always get in 

 England, is the only means of overcoming the pre- 

 liminary difficulty in hitting snipe. In India, South 

 Africa, China, Japan, and the Mediterranean excellent 

 snipe-shooting is to be obtained with little expense. 

 There snipe-shooting is pursued under warmer and 

 more cheerful conditions than at home. 



The little jack-snipe is reckoned by many sportsmen 

 the most difficult shooting of the three species found 

 in Britain, and it is an odd fact that this diminutive 

 bird will, instead of flying right away, pitch again in 

 the same bog or field within easy distance of the shooter 

 and suffer itself to be fired at time after time. There 

 is a ludicrous tale in an old sporting work concerning 

 a former quartermaster of the 64th Regiment, who was 

 stationed in Ireland, and a certain jack-snipe, which he 

 had flushed and fired at many times without success. 

 This gentleman — a Mr. Molloy — was an enthusiastic 

 gunner, but by no means a good shot. " Regularly 

 after his duty was done," says my authority, "or if he 

 could possibly obtain leave for a day, he used to equip 

 himself for shooting, and always sprung this jack-snipe, 

 at which he fired and followed ; and the bird used to 

 pitch so close to him at times that he was confident he 

 had shot it, and used to run to take it up, when, to his 



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