WOODCOCK 25 



in Louisiana, their denunciation would be just, but 

 I opine if these same critics could be transported to 

 Louisiana in the woodcock season they would be sur- 

 prised to find in how short a time they would become 

 lovers of the night pothunt. 



"I know from personal experience. I was born a 

 sportsman and I can recall, some thirty-five years ago, 

 when I scorned to shoot a woodcock on the ground, 

 but then I was new in the State. It did not take me 

 long to get broken in to the method. The great deli- 

 cacy of the bird and the almost impossibility of getting 

 him by daylight hunting begets the habit of night pot- 

 hunting, and, like other bad habits, it grows apace. 



"This section of the State is rather out of the wood- 

 cock country, and I have not hunted them for twenty- 

 five years. They are here every year, but not plentiful 

 enough to warrant night hunting, but well do I re- 

 member a noted hunt of about thirty-five years ago. 

 I was a visitor to Louisiana then. One dark, drizzly 

 night my brother-in-law was lamp-carrier for me, and 

 I killed seventy-two from 9 until i A.M. with a muzzle- 

 loading gun. No, it was seventy-one that I killed with 

 the gun, but when my ammunition became exhausted 

 on the way home we found a bird on the side of the 

 path. I drew the ramrod and killed it with a blow on 

 the head, making an even six dozen. 



"I cannot refrain from telling of my last woodcock 

 hunt. It was in January, 1885, just twenty-five years 

 ago. On a starlight night three of us started out for 

 a hunt, one gunner on each side of the light The 



