BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 247 



to kill more than one Snipe at one shot, but the record shows 

 that in twenty years he killed sixty-nine thousand and eighty- 

 seven Snipe and two thousand seven hundred and seventy-two 

 other birds which were shot incidentally. At the end of the 

 twenty years, 1867-68 to 1886-87, the shooting began to fail. 

 On March 2, 1869, he killed sixty-nine Snipe in seventy-five 

 minutes. In November, 1874, he killed one thousand foiu- 

 hundred and fourteen Snipe in six shooting days. In Decem- 

 ber, 1877, he killed one thousand nine hundred and forty-five 

 in seven shooting days. His maximum days' score was three 

 hundred and sixty-six Snipe in six hours. ^ Very likely no 

 gentleman sportsman ever killed so many Snipe in twenty 

 years as did Mr. Pringle, but others have exceeded many of 

 his daily scores. Market hunters followed the sport as a 

 business, day after day, wherever Snipe were numerous. I 

 talked with one such expert, who had killed scores in one day 

 in Massachusetts, who stated that he had yet to find the man 

 who was willing to stop shooting while the "birds were plenty." 



Mr. Edmund Blood of East Groton, Mass., says that the 

 Snipe bred commonly there fifty years ago. Undoubtedly 

 they once bred in some numbers in Massachusetts. Nuttall 

 states that his friend Mr. Ives of Salem told him that a few 

 pairs bred in that vicinity. Samuels (1870) says the Snipe 

 has been known to breed here. There are now several instances 

 on record where young Snipe have been shot here or old birds 

 taken in the breeding season. Mr. A. W. Sugden of Hartford 

 writes me that when he was a boy Fairfield swamp and its 

 vicinity and the meadows in Weathersfield and Rocky Hill, 

 Conn., were alive with Snipe, and many nested there. "Since 

 the prohibition of spring shooting in this State," he says, "a 

 few Snipe remain here in summer and probably breed in some 

 of our meadows." 



Mr. George M. Bubier of Lynn saw a Snipe on a telegraph 

 pole in Lynnfield on May 22, 1907, evidently apprehensive 

 for the safety of her eggs or young, for she continued to 

 utter cries of alarm. The habit of alighting, during the 

 nesting season, on trees, fences and other objects above 



1 Pringle, James J.: Twenty Years of Snipe Shooting, 1899, p. 301. 



