WILSON'S SNIPE, 183 



bird spring from behind a bush just thin enough 

 to give a glimpse of gray, and then twist so 

 quickly that your finger could not resist in time 

 the impulse to pull off the gun on the old line? 

 And what did you think when the next one rose 

 on open ground and in a twinkling whipped be- 

 hind such a bush, with the flame streaming, as 

 you thought, across its path, yet over the top of 

 the bush it rose triumphant against the blue sky 

 at a rate of speed that left the shot from your 

 second barrel behind it? 



The best shooting I have ever seen on this 

 bird was in 1864 on the shores of Senachwine 

 Lake in Illinois. The water was slowly receding 

 after an early autumn rise, leaving along the 

 water's edge a strip some twenty feet wide, in the 

 right stage of moisture to make plenty of worms 

 for this ravenous little feeder, while the grass that 

 followed the falling water made him the best of 

 cover. On the upper edge of this the ground 

 was dry enough for good walking. The numbers 

 of snipe concentrated on that strip, which was 

 several miles long, seem now quite incredible. 

 But there was then only one person in Marshall 

 County who ever shot at them, and he but little. 



