334 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



upon the behaviour of snipe ; this is on the ground that they 

 cannot feed in the dark. But what is dark to a night bird? 

 Probably there is no such thing ; certainly the fly-by-nights do 

 not kill themselves by flying against trees, and more than that, 

 the snipe never does feed by sight. He bores in the ground to 

 feel for the worm ; when he has felt its position, he brings out 

 his bill and thrusts it in again in the right spot, and out comes 

 the worm. Then he repeats the process. If these birds are 

 not always hungry, they must stand guard over their favourite 

 boring patches until they get so, for they rarely go away from 

 them to rest upon foodless ground unless they are disturbed 

 either by men, dogs, or weather. 



Very few men ever excel in snipe shooting. The actual 

 aiming at a snipe is the difficulty. He may be there when 

 you aim, but is not there when the shot arrives. If you wait 

 until he has done his zigzag flight, he is almost sure to be too 

 far off. If you can shoot just above him, when his wing goes 

 up for a twist, and at a distance of 40 or 45 yards, with No. 8 

 shot, you will probably kill him. That, however, is not very 

 helpful advice, and the only thing that the author can say 

 that is likely to be so is that the snipe becomes easy, by 

 comparison, when he rises against the wind and shows his white 

 breast to the gunner. The author has killed fourteen August 

 snipe in as many consecutive shots, but he has done no such 

 thing with November snipe on a crisp day, and it would 

 therefore ill become him to say how it can be done, for the 

 very good reason that he does not know. 



The snipe is credited with great pace, but in shooting 

 driven snipe it soon becomes evident that they do not require 

 half as much allowance as a partridge. It is the twist that 

 makes pretence that they are actually fast. They are particularly 

 smart and quick, but distinctly not fast in the sense that a 

 driven grouse down wind is speedy. 



