220 NER VES AND NO IS Y BE A TERS 



calm and quiet, and not to allow one's nerves to be 

 flurried when a bird is flushed and its appearance 

 hailed with a roar of ' mark cock,' for pleasant to hear 

 though the well-known sound may be, it causes more 

 men to miss than shoot straight. When a youngster, 

 I could generally manage to account fairly well for a 

 woodcock or a snipe, if I were shooting alone ; but it 

 took me a long time to learn to shoot even decently 

 when out in company of a crew of noisy beaters ; 

 and I invariably found myself breaking every rule the 

 instant I put up my gun to fire ; and what with the 

 flutter of the rising bird and the yelling of the excited 

 ' gossoon,' my nerves were somewhat overtaxed for 

 me to make good shooting. If an elephant had risen, 

 the shouting could hardly have been more vociferous. 

 However, nowadays, that style of thing is less common; 

 but in former years it was absolutely impossible to 

 prevent an excited Irish beater shouting at the top of 

 his voice, whether he saw a woodcock or a fox, or 

 indeed anything. 



The Irish are a truly sporting people, and when 

 young it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to keep 

 them within bounds, and, strange to say, men who can 

 be as quiet as mice when on a snipe bog, are frequently 

 the most noisy in covert when a woodcock chances to 

 get up near them. 



In frosty weather we could generally make fairly 

 sure of a good bag of cock, if they were ' in,' and could 

 nearly always be certain of finding them. As, for in- 

 stance, they generally frequent the same springs during 

 the daytime in frosty weather, as they do at night when 

 the weather is more open ; and where the ground is 



