Shooting Herons. 363 
no one could possibly miss: yet, with an ordinary 
gun,and snipe-shot, I have had a heron get away 
safely like this more than once. You can hear the 
shot rattle up against him, and he utters a strange, 
harsh, screeching ‘quaack,’ and works his wings in 
mortal fright, but presently gets half way up to the 
clouds and sails away in calm security. His neck 
then seems to drop down in a bend, the head being 
brought back as he settles to his flight, so that the 
country people say the heron often carries a snake. 
The mark he offers to shot is much less than would 
be supposed ; he is all length and no breadth ; the 
body is very much smaller than it looks. But if you 
can stalk him in the brook till within thirty or forty 
yards, and can draw ‘a bead’ on his head as he lifts 
it up every now and then to glance over the banks, 
then you have him easily ; a very small knock in the 
head being sufficient to stop him. 
The tenacity of life exhibited by the heron is 
something wonderful: though shot in the head, and 
hung up as dead, a heron will sometimes raise his 
neck several hours afterwards. To wring the neck 
is impossible—it is like leather or a strong spiral 
spring : you cannot break it, so that the only way to 
put the creature out of pain is to cut the artery ; and 
even then there are signs of muscular contraction for 
some time. A labourer once asked me for a heron 
that I had shot ; I gave it to him, and he cooked it. 
He said -he boiled it eight hours, and that it was 
