THE AMERICAN SNIPE. 101 
out a dog, or with a slow dog, as you will; any man who 
can pull a trigger must fill his bag. 
If there be a hundred birds scattered, wild, over five 
hundred acres of ground, where are you with your slow 
dog, or your no dog? Just no where. While you are 
painfully picking up your three or four birds with your 
slow pointer, your true sportsman, and slashing walker, 
with his racing up-head and down-stern setters, will have 
found fifty, and bagged twenty-five or thirty. 
There are ten days in a season when birds are wild 
and sparse, for one when they are congregated and lie 
hard; andthe argument comes to this, that when birds 
can be killed with ease, even without a dog at all, a slow 
pointer is the best ; when they are difficult to find, and 
hard to kill, even by a crack shot, the slow pointer is no 
where, and of no use, while the racing setters will fill 
the bag to a certainty. 
For my own part, I can say to a certainty, that Ihave 
had more sport, and killed more birds, by many, many 
times, when birds have been widely scattered, and diffi- 
cult to find, and when I have walked half or a quarter of 
a mile between every shot fired, than I ever have when 
birds have lain close, and jumped up at every pace under 
my feet; and for a simple reason, that the places in 
which birds so rise and lie, are rare and of small extent, 
and the days on which they do so few and far apart. 
Therefore I say, friend—tfor all true sportsmen I hold 
friends—choose well thy day, when the air is soft and 
