290 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
I therefore advise all young shooters, who desire to 
become good shots and good sportsmen, always to go into 
covert, even the worst covert, with their dogs; to keep as 
close to their dogs, and make the dogs keep as close to 
them, as possible; never to allow their dogs to flush, but 
always to put up their game for themselves; never to let 
their dogs do wrongly, without rebuke ; and above all, never 
to do wrongly themselves, for the sake of bagging a bird 
or two the more. 
For every easy shot that the beginner will lose, he will 
be the gainer by so much as he learns to kill a difficult 
shot; and as the American woodcock, in the open, flushed 
over dogs, is as easy a shot as any that flies, so even 
thick covert cannot make him a very difficult shot. 
The only advantage that I can perceive in summer 
woodcock-shooting is, that it does unquestionably teach one 
how to kill snap shots, and to bring down birds, firing at 
them unseen, by calculation, in a style which can hardly 
be acquired in any other school. 
Summer woodcock almost invariably fly straight, rising 
gradually till they have topped the bushes, if in close 
covert, and then go away nearly in a horizontal line, until 
they choose to alight. Their method of doing this is 
peculiar; they never gradually decline, lowering and lower- 
ing their flight as they near the earth, like the quail, nor 
pitch down at an acuter angle from their original line of 
flight, like the snipe; but invariably make a short, quick 
zigzag turn to right or left, and then dart downward in an 
instant, and run off swiftly five or six yards, before they 
settle either to feeding or to lie up. 
