328 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



oerning the lying of ■woodcock in autumn, except that thej 

 aro never, so far as I am aware, found, as they are in some 

 districts during the summer, in perfectly open meadow- 

 land. Generally they seem to frequent drier and higher 

 ■woodlands on the hill-sides and slopes in autumn, among 

 second growth and saplings, or what the country people 

 usually call sprouts. Still, I think, on the whole, the finest 

 autumn woodcock shooting I have ever had, has been in 

 maple swamps, and wet brakes adjacent to bog meadows, 

 identical in fact with their summer feeding ground. I 

 should say, that the only sure rule is to beat every various 

 sort of ground until you do find them ; the later in the 

 season the more they affect warm, well-sheltered coverts, 

 where there are living springs and streamlets which never 

 freeze. In such places they frequently linger till sharp 

 frosts set in, and in these I have found them, on more than 

 one occasion, in countless swarms, evidently congregated 

 for the purpose of emigration. I have observed that this 

 was always near the full of the moon, and that, on the day 

 following the occurrence of these assemblages, there was 

 not a bird left in the country. 



Hare-shooting with regular sportsmen, is little regarded 

 as a separate sport, though it well deserves to be so ; it is 

 in fact, for the most part, shot by such only, when it is now 

 and then kicked up out of a brier bush over a dead point, 

 in the course of a day's autumn shooting. 



In many parts of the country, however, where either 

 of the varieties, the little American hare or rabbit, and 

 the great northern hare, which turns white in winter, are 

 abundant, the farmers are in the habit of turning out in 



