THE SNIPE 273 



would have been larger had I not run out of ammu- 

 nition. 



On one occasion, in Ohio, I killed twenty-eight birds 

 in a little over an hour's shooting before breakfast. It 

 was seriously urged some years ago in Ohio that the 

 snipe needed no legal protection, since they came in 

 such abundance it would be impossible to exterminate 

 them. 



The snipe are, however, nowhere as abundant to- 

 day as formerly, and it is fortunate that they have in 

 Ohio and elsewhere comparatively safe retreats on 

 the club preserves, where they are not shot in the 

 spring, and where they are often unmolested in Sep- 

 tember, for the reason that the teal and wood-duck 

 shooting is then good on the same grounds. 



There is a reason for the absolute disappearance of 

 these birds from many places to be found in the drain- 

 ing of the lands. The feeding grounds being de- 

 stroyed, the snipe were forced to go elsewhere. Some 

 of the most famous snipe-grounds in Indiana (one of 

 the best snipe States in the Union), the prairies about 

 Vincennes and in the vicinity of Lafayette, Chalmers, 

 Reynolds and other places farther north were thus 

 closed to sportsmen. And so it has been throughout 

 the West where the soil was rich and fertile, and there 

 was not too much water. As an offset to this destruc- 

 tion of good shooting ground, some new grounds 

 have been made by turning in cattle upon the lands 

 adjacent to sloughs and ponds, where the wild grasses 

 grow too tall and heavy ^or the snipe, and where only 

 the rails were found. While reducing the grass to the 

 proper height for snipe, the cattle improved the feed- 



