828 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
cerning the lying of woodcock in autumn, except that they 
are 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 
