260 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



thing which disqualifies him who excels in it from killing 

 any other sort of game that flies fast and strong. 



Most men who shoot much, have some game on which 

 they most excel, probably, because at some period in their 

 lives they have had more continuous practice on it. To 

 many persons the snipe is a very hard bird ; to myself it 

 is the easiest of all ; undoubtedly, because, when I first 

 began to learn to shoot as a schoolboy, I used to have a 

 few shots at snipe almost every day of the season, and 

 could knock a long-bill over pretty cleverly before I had 

 ever been allowed to fire at the much slower and easier 

 bird — to the general — the partridge ; the snipe in Eng- 

 land not being game by law, nor as such prohibited to the 

 unlicensed shooter. 



Between snipe-shooting in the spring and fall of the 

 year, so far as the mode of hunting, there is no difference, 

 nor is there much in the habits of the birds, except that 

 they never perform the antics described above at page 248, 

 nor are they usually so wild, or so whimsical as to their 

 choice and changes of ground. 



They return from the north, where they breed, in dif- 

 ferent localities, graduating from the north southward, 

 from July until cold weather sets in, not wholly deserting 

 the Northern States and Canada until ice is thick and the 

 marshes impenetrable to their bills. 



I have killed them myself in Canada "West, so late as 

 the end of November, and have known them shot by a 

 friend and fellow-sportsman, now, alas ! no more, on the 

 edges of a perennial streamlet as far into December as the 

 20th, when all the country round was thick with ice. In 



