348 THE PINTAIL SNIPE. 
such heavy bags as the Common Snipe. I know a good many 
places in the North-West Provinces where a good shot could, 
to this day, easily, with a breech-loader and light charges, bag 
his seventy-five couple between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M., and a good 
many places where he could go on doing this for several 
successive days, and yet not exhaust the ground. In my time 
I have visited all the best grounds within twenty miles of 
Calcutta. When Mr. Russell was Collector of Jessore, (and 
India has seen few better or more persevering Snipe-shots) 
I visited, under his guidance, most of the best Snipe grounds 
in that neighbourhood ; and in Dacca, too, I shot for nearly a 
month in the best Snipe swamps, but I have never anywhere 
seen anything like the masses of Pintail gathered into one 
neighbourhood that I have of Common Snipe in parts of the 
Doab. 
A recent writer gave a diary of the results of eighteen days’ 
Snipe-shooting about Calcutta between the 14th of September 
and the 21st of March, showing a daily average of 33 couple 
to two guns. There is a single locality in the Meerut, two in 
the Bulandshahr, two in the Aligarh district, &c., where two 
good shots, shooting thus once a week through the best part of 
the season, would certainly average eighty, and probably more, 
nearly one hundred couple per diem. Of course these are 
out-of-the-way places, far from the head-quarters of the district, 
and unlikely to be visited by other sportsmen ; but in one single 
spot in the Meerut district, on the Boorha Gunga, in the 
neighbourhood of Hastinapur, to my certain knowledge, over 
700 couple of Common Snipe were bagged during December 
1850 by different parties who visited the place. Of course, 
there were many guns out—some good, some bad, some days 
as few as two, some days as many as seven. And there was 
shooting on ten different days, and the average per gun per 
diem was considerably less than twenty couple. But I have 
never even heard of any one place in Bengal, Burma or 
Southern India* where anything like this bag of Pintail could 
have been made by any number of guns. And I think I am 
correct in saying that the Pintail never masses in such enor- 
mous numbers as the Common Snipe not unfrequently does 
in favorable situations in Upper India. 
It is not much use giving sportsmen in India advice as 
to how to wind and work Snipe; here where every one shoots 
Snipe, and where Snipe afford so often the chief available 
sport, every man has his own opinion as to the vexed ques- 
* For instance Major C. McInroy writes: ‘‘ The largest bags I know of in the 
Mysore Province within the last 25 years have not exceeded 60 couple to two guns ; 
but I do not give this as necessarily correct, for many bags may have been made 
of which I have not heard. I once, shooting badly, bagged 20 couple in about 
three and a half or four hours, but was unable to go on for I had to move camp.” 
Again Mr. Oates says: ‘‘ The largest bag made in Lower Pegu does not often 
exceed 20 couple.” 
