266 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



white belly shows ; and so a good retriever is a real help in snipe shooting, for he will 

 find many birds that would otherwise be lost. Most men, unless they are in constant 

 practice, grow careless about marking down their birds, a matter which at first requires 

 keen attention and close observation. If these are applied intelligently for a time, the 

 marking of the birds becomes at length more or less automatic and is not a matter that 

 one need think much about. As I said in the article above referred to, "without con- 

 siderable practice it is not easy to mark down a dead bird so accurately that you can 

 walk direct to it. This becomes especially difficult when several of the birds rise 

 together, or nearly so, and you shoot first one and then another, and then perhaps try 

 to mark down the remainder of the whisp. You have a general idea of the direction 

 in which the first one fell, and are sure that the second dropped close by a certain little 

 bunch of grass; but when, after having strained your eyes after the living and marked 

 them down, you turn your attention to the dead, you are likely to find yourself some- 

 what perplexed. You see now that there are a dozen little bunches of grass near 

 where the second bird fell, any one of which may be that by which you marked him; 

 and as for the first, you feel very hopeless about being able to go within twenty yards 

 of where it dropped. So you may lose half an hour of valuable time in searching for 

 the dead. Practice in marking and a quick eye will after a while enable you to 

 retrieve your own birds successfully. As a matter of fact, there is always something 

 — a bunch of grass, a bit of drift stuff, a flower, a leaf, or a weed stalk — near your bird 

 which is unlike anything else close to it ; and you must see this object, whatever it is, 

 and remember it, in the instant's glance that you have." 



During the winter the southern States offer good snipe shooting. Many of the 

 marshes lying along the bays and sounds which extend from North Carolina to 

 Florida are favorite feeding grounds for these birds, and here they can usually be 

 found in numbers. Perhaps the marshes of North Carolina, along Currituck Sound, 

 are the most northern points where snipe winter in considerable numbers, and even 

 here they are not altogether permanent winter residents, for they oscillate back and 

 forth with the weather, appearing on the marshes when it is warm, and moving south 

 again if a cold snap or freeze comes, only to reappear as the marshes grow soft once 

 more. On such marshes it is possible still to have fairly good snipe shooting now and 

 then, though even there the birds are not nearly so plentiful as they were a few years 

 ago; and here the northern gunner who has gone south for the duck shooting, tramps 

 for snipe on the lay days which a wise legislature has provided by a statute for the 

 enforcement of which it furnishes neither ,men or money. 



There is no prettier sport than snipe shooting, when the birds lie well, and none 

 more tantalizing than when they act as they often do, giving you at rare intervals a 

 long shot and then disappearing no one knows where. 



