THE FIELD.—SNIPE-SHOOTING. 259 
a single ball, miss him clean, the best time to take him. 
The old notion of waiting till he has done twisting, and 
then downing him, is—like that other notion of pulling out 
your box and taking a pinch of snuff, after the bird rises, 
and before raising your gun at him—very good to talk 
about. In nine cases out of-ten, to wait until a wild, 
sharp-flying snipe on a windy day has done twisting, is to 
wait until he is out of shot. 
If he rise above fifteen yards from the shooter, and he 
will scldom rise closer, he cannot in my opinion be shot 
too quickly. But it is worthy to be remembered, that 
with No. 8 shot, the right size, the distance at which the 
charge covers the greatest circle within which the bird 
must be hit, is thirty yards. 
The snipe is a very quick-flying bird except at the instant 
I have mentioned, or in the case of his being tame and lazy 
on hot days; it will be necessary, therefore, when he is once 
under way, to make allowance for him. At fifteen or twen- 
ty yards, if he be crossing at speed, the gun should be 
levelled at least one foot ahead of him; at forty—a full 
yard. If he be going straight away, the aim should be 
taken something over him, probably about half the allow- 
ance given above; and if he be zigzagging, nearly the 
same allowance must be made, on whichever tack he may 
be, as for a cross shot; but to kill, the aim must be taken 
and the gun fired, almost with the speed of light. 
Snipe-shooting, by those who cannot do it, is sometimes 
called a knack. It is so—for it is emphatically the 
knack of shooting well. In no other respect is it a 
knack; for it has nothing in it peculiar to itself, nor any 
