20 



THE GAME BREEDER 



seen that whisp of snipe ; and as my dogs 

 seemed anxious to range over it, I let 

 them go. 



You can perhaps, imagine how sur- 

 prised I was at seeing Monk come to 

 a stiff point right by a lone old willow 

 tree, standing in a little pool of water, 

 after those seven untrained dogs, had 

 only so short a time previously, been 

 racing over that meadow. But neither 

 he, or his companion Nellie, ever false 

 pointed. 



I stepped up to him, and up went a 

 snipe; but, I certainly was in good form 

 on that day, for as the pin-fire spoke, the 

 bird stopped, to fly no more. What 

 puzzled me was, how those other dogs 

 had failed to find him; and I looked 

 upon it as a little piece of good luck for 

 me. 



After Monk had retrieved the bird, 

 and I had reloaded, I let the dogs go on, 

 and I followed, and now comes the mys- 

 tery. Before I had reached the farther 

 end of that meadow, the dogs had found, 

 and pK>inted, every one of the eight re- 

 maining birds. 



Now it would be Monk, next Nellie, 

 to make the find, and I did not miss a 

 shot. I remember the last point was 

 made by Nellie, quite near to where I 

 had found the birds at first. As I stepped 

 up to her, two birds, (the last of the 

 lot), flushed close to me; one of them 

 quartering to the right, the other an 

 incomer, passing over my head, and be- 

 hind me. With a quick shot I dropped 

 the first one and then turned to get the 

 other if I could. 



Well, I did not get him; but it was 

 no fault of mine, or the gun, or a bad 

 cartridge. After the bird had passed 

 behind me, he had lowered in his flight ; 

 and just as I was bringing my gun to 

 the shoulder, I saw right in line with the 

 bird, and not forty yards away, a boy 

 walking across the meadow. That snipe 

 got off all right, for "the boy was in the 

 way." There's luck in odd numbers, 

 says Rory O'Moore" ; and I had nine 

 birds, and certainly had been lucky. But 

 where had those birds been, and why 

 did they not flush when those other ill- 

 behaved dogs had almost run over them ? 

 No one has ever been able to explain it 



to me, and I can swear to the truth of 

 the incidents above related. 



I have in my sixty years of experience 

 afield with dogs and gun, seen many 

 strange things happen ; things for which 

 I could never arrive at a satisfactory 

 explanation. Most often these have oc- 

 curred when I was after snipe, and 

 woodcock; (the latter, I am sorry to be 

 compelled to admit, now a fast disap- 

 pearing game-bird) ; but this probably 

 is due to the fact that they are and have 

 |)een my two favorite kinds of game. It 

 is now thirty-two years. since I killed a 

 woodcock, and this not because I had no- 

 opportunities ; but, because I believe that 

 for some years to come, they should ab- 

 solutely, and rigidly be protected. 

 Summer-shooting has for some time 

 been forbidden in New Jersey; and that 

 may help some. But it is a thing that 

 should never have been practiced, or per- 

 mitted. Shooting of the snipe during 

 the Spring flight should end at once ; the 

 birds being allowed to pass on to their 

 breeding-grounds, to return in increased 

 numbers for our benefit in the Autumn. 



It is, and has been for years, my belief 

 that no state laws will ever be effective. 

 We should have a Federal-law forbid- 

 ing the killing of all migratory birds 

 during the seasons of mating and breed- 

 ing; and the penalty for violation of the 

 law should be so severe, and the law 

 should be so persistently and rigidly en- 

 forced, that there would be small chance 

 for the guilty ones to escape punishment. 



Importing foreign varieties of game, 

 and stocking our fields, meadows, and 

 forests with them, may produce some- 

 thing for the sportsman to look for ; but 

 it will not give the sport of our native 

 game as heretofore given us by the 

 snipe; or his equally cute, and larger 

 cousin, the woodcock. 



We are glad to learn that Mr. H. K.. 

 Job will continue his experiments in 

 quail breeding at the Storrs Experiment 

 Station in Connecticut. We hope he 

 succeeded in getting his stock birds. At 

 the time he wrote us it was almost im- 

 possible to get any birds excepting in 

 places where the game laws and game 

 officers still are hostile to enterprise. - 



