DETER 10 R A TION OF IRISH SNIPES HO O TING 1 9 7 



the instant it settles in the air, firing well over it ; the 

 chances are that one or two grains of shot may strike 

 it, if careful allowance is made, for the shot describes 

 a somewhat wide pattern at such a distance. Of 

 course, it does not do to fire such long shots at 

 partridges or other birds, as they take more killing, 

 and I have invariably found that when I have 

 dropped a snipe by a long shot it has generally been 

 struck in the head or the pinion. It takes very 

 little to pierce the fragile skull or to destroy the 

 delicate mechanism of the exquisitely-formed wing. 

 Even a few feathers of the latter being broken by a 

 grain or two of shot will oblige a snipe to alight in 

 the nearest rush, and it may thus be easily finished off 

 on rising agfain. 



Years ago the snipe-shooting on some of the Irish 

 bogs was wonderfully good, but recently, owing to 

 their having been drained, many of them have become 

 but indifferent feedinor-orounds for these birds. I 

 have known as many as seventy-five couple of full, 

 and five or six couple of jack snipe bagged by two 

 guns in a day's shooting. Snipe-shooting is a very 

 decided test of a gunner's ability, and anyone who has 

 been used to shoot only at other game requires some 

 little practice to get into the way of it. For my own 

 part, I prefer snipe-shooting to any other, especially if 

 the bog is a safe one to walk, but I have been on bogs 

 which were so unsafe that they rendered good shooting 

 impossible, and it was indeed nervous work ; and that 

 such was the case is hardly to be wondered at, when 

 now and again one of the guns disappeared from view 

 — that is to say, all but his head and shoulders. 



Some, now many, years ago, a party of three of us — 



