FOREST AND STREAM, 
'[Nov. 14, 1903. 
The Lmnaean Society of New York. 
A REGULAR meeting of the Society will be held at the 
American Museum of Natural History, Seventy-seventli 
street and Eighth avenue, on Tuesday evening, November 
27, at 8 o'clock. The lecture will be by Geo. K. Cherrie. 
■'Impressions of Bird Life in French Guiana." Illustrated 
ty specimens. 
Walter W. Gr-A-NGEr, Secretary. 
04///4? mid 0ttiu 
— # — - 
All communications intended ior Forsst and Stkbam should 
always be addressed to the forest and biream Publishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individual connected with the paper. 
The Game Laws in Brief 
is the 5tandE.rd authority oi fish and game laws of the United 
States and Canada. It tells everything and gives it correctly. 
Sec in advertising pages list of some oi the dealers who handle 
the Brief. ^ 
American Game Birds. 
IV. — The Soipe. 
According to the writings of ornithologists, the 
breeding grounds of the snipe begin on their southern 
boundary at about 42° of latitude, a parallel through 
the northern part of Nebraska, Iowa, etc. The grounds 
extend therefrom north to the Arctic Circle. The snipe 
migrate leisurely southward as the winter season ap- 
proaches, tarrying on the available feeding grounds, 
ultimately going as far south as the West Indies and 
northern South America. 
It is a bird of the wet lands, and, as mentioned con- 
cerning the woodcock, the available area affording its 
food supply is small as compared with the earth's sur- 
face. Relatively the places which are soft enough to be 
bored with its sensitive bill, which contain food to its 
liking and enough to supply its needs, are exceedingly 
limited in number and area. 
Soft and wet land may also be gravelly, or sandy, or 
clayey, etc., therefore, unfit to sustain the animal and 
vegetable life on which the snipe subsists; or from its 
refractory nature it may be impervious to the delicate 
weapon with which nature has provided the snipe for 
the capturing of its food. It, therefore, is apparent that 
of all the wet lands, there are only certain parts which 
contain snipe food. 
Of the places which afford snipe food, some are 
permanently good throughout the whole season, as, for 
instance, the sloughs and marshes and parts of river 
valleys of the prairie country wherein it makes its sum- 
mer habitat. Other places are but temporarily avail- 
able, as lands made soft and wet by heavy rains. Such 
places may serve it well for many weeks, as in Louisi- 
ana and Texas in the fall and winter months, during 
the rainy season, which in those States is largely the 
equivalent of winter. Again, the snipe may seek its 
food in places which are quite wet, as in some of the 
large wet marshes, and again in some other sections 
it may make its haunts on upland so firm that the 
hunter may walk thereon pleasantly and dry shod. 
While the woodcock, its long-billed confrere, is a 
bird of the covert, the snipe is a bird of the open. On 
these birds nature lays a inore severe restriction con- 
cerning a late stay in the North than she does on any 
other game bird, for a snipe or woodcock attempting 
to gain a subsistence in a frozen country is in a pathetic 
situation indeed. 
Its food is said to be larvae, tender roots of plants 
and worms, which it secures by boring, and also such 
insects and other similar edible food as it can secure 
on top of the ground. 
To the local sportsman the snipe's habits in the 
shooting season — which is mostly the migratory sea- 
son — seem erratic and unknowable, if its unstable char- 
acteristics may be called habits at all. It is in one place 
to-day, another place to-morrow. To-day there may be 
an abundance, to-morrow a dearth. Or it may go con- 
trary to its erratic reputation and remain a number of 
days about the same grounds. Still, the shooter is 
largely in ignorance of what the snipe will do next. 
The weather and food conditions may be the same so 
far as observation can determine them, and yet the birds 
come and go in their own whimsical way regardless 
of conditions. 
Apparently some mysterious impulse seems to impel 
the birds of a certain locality either to come or go, 
though not in the manner of birds which flock. 
Snipe fiy mostly in ones or twos or threes, some- 
times more, but always in small numbers. Being in- 
dependent in flight, it is difficult to understand how 
the common impulse to seek other grounds is at the 
same time felt and acted on by all the snipe of a cer- 
tain neighborhood, or at least most of them. There 
are many exceptions as a matter of course, as for in- 
stance in a section where there are snipe in abundance 
on a certain day, a part only may leave at the same time. 
Indeed, a few snipe may be found on certain grounds 
throughout the whole season. Yet, however much the 
exception may affect the rule, the greater part of the 
birds are erratic and lawless most of the time. 
No doubt that which seems whimsical and mysteri- 
ous in the life of the snipe is really in harmony with 
the needs of its nature. It being largely nocturnal in 
habit, is difficult to study. • It is specially difficult for 
the resident of one locality to observe its general habits 
with any degree of precision. Seeing it in but one small 
corner of its habitat, the local sportsman can at best 
gain but a fragmentary knowledge of its needs and its 
habits. 
Being swift of wing and enduring of flight, the snipe 
undoubtedly feeds over vast areas of grounds many 
miles apart, twenty or thirty miles of flight being of 
no more effort to it when in search of food than twenty 
or thirty rods are to the prairie chicken. When snipe 
invade feeding grounds in vast numbers, as is frequent- 
ly the case, the grounds are soon thoroughly bored, and 
all the food within reach is consumed, thus it may be 
a necessity for them to seek food elsewhere till the 
exhausted grounds have time to replenish. 
Many writers lay great stress on the difficulties of 
snipe shooting. They treat it as a bird of phenomenal 
swiftness and erratic flight, and the shooting of it as 
requiring something extraordinary in the matter of 
skill. As a matter of fact, snipe shooting at certain 
times is the easiest of shooting. On warm days, when 
the birds are fat and lazy, flying slowly and tamely, 
with pendulous bills, as is often the case in the fall in 
the South, no bird awing is more easily killed. They 
are then disinclined to fiy. They indolently lie to the 
dog's points till the shooter walks them up. 
The books teach that the snipe rises with a zigzag 
flight against the wind, darting to right and left with 
such rapid flashes of speed that the best of skillful 
sportsmen are puzzled, and consequently make naany 
a miss. 
The snipe, it is true, goes against the wind when 
there is a wind, and zigzags a few times to rise upward 
before taking a straight course. Many writers on 
snipe shooting lay it down as correct that the shooter, 
to take advantage of this peculiarity in rismg, should 
walk down wind, or advance to the dog's point down 
wind, so that when the snipe is flushed it will fly toward 
him. All such teachings savor ol the novice, or of a 
skill which needs nursing. All the difficulties are 
greatly exaggerated, zigzag, swift flight and all. The 
zigzag of the snipe awing is in the beginning of its 
flight, and nothing is easier than to wait a moment 
till it straightens out on a straight flight. Then the 
killing is a matter of shooting on the wing, similar to 
other wing shooting. 
As to walking down wind to secure a better shot, 
the sportsman need not concern himself about it in the 
least, excepting perhaps on such days as are cold, 
and days when the birds are very wild and rise 
at the extreme range of the gun. As with pigeon 
shooting, the really good shot does not let his birds 
get hard if they rise within range. Whether they zig- 
zag or not, he snaps them as soon as they are on the 
wing; or being well on the wing, he permits them to 
get into steady flight and then delivers his fire. There 
is on the part of the experienced shot no particular at- 
tempt to reach the bird from a weak quarter. He takes 
the shooting as it comes. 
On windy days, or when the weather is cold, the 
snipe may be very wild and rise at extreme ranges. 
Shooting then is quite as much a test of the gun as it 
is a test of the shooter's skill. Few writers, however, 
pay any heed to the distinction, and consider it all, be 
the rise far or near, as a matter of skill alone. At best, 
walking down wind on snipe is an uncertain advantage, 
for they can fly down or across wind with a swiftness 
and ease which dispose very quickly of any trifling 
advantage of a few yards taken up wind for a start. 
The habits of snipe, as oftenest described, are their 
habits when they are lean and wild, or wild from a 
change from warm to cold, or from calm to windy 
weather. But to teach that such is their regular man- 
ner of flight, would be on a par with teaching that 
quail live in the tree tops because they sometimes take 
refuge therein. 
Even when lean and wild, on a calm day the snipe 
does not strain the skill of a good shot. But on a 
windy day it is a different proposition. The wild, lean 
snipe can dart very swiftly across or down wind, and 
if to this be added rises at long range, the shooting is 
then really diificult, though then, as mentioned before, 
it is also a test of the gun. 
When wildest, the snipe is exceedingly restless and 
moves fitfully from place to place. It then takes alarm 
quickly, flying high out of range, with its bill extended 
straight ahead. It can pitch to the ground from its 
highest flight, darting downward with stiffened wings 
and lighting with the greatest ease. 
In the course of migration the birds sftop in favor- 
ite places where food is abundant, and oftentimes -there 
remain till the weather becomes unpleasant. As a 
rule, they arrive in the South in a lean condition. When 
lean they are also wilder, regardless of weather condi- 
tions. 
Shooting them, if limited to times when they are 
wild, is shooting in its most difficult phases. But as 
mentioned before, such difficulties of sifipe shooting 
are not the average of snipe shooting. 
Snipe shooting as to possible quantity varies widely 
one locality with another. One locality may contain 
but a few snipe to reward the shooter's efforts, while 
in other nearby localities they may fairly swarm, as in 
parts of Louisiana and Texas in the fall and spring- 
months, when the birds are migrating. In those States 
they generally remain several weeks to enjoy the food 
abundance. Some scattered ones in the South may be 
found all through the winter. The heavy rains of fall 
and spring, frequently a downpour of days in the far 
South, soften the fat alluvial prairie lands, thereby 
fitting hundreds of square miles for the snipe's habitat. 
In particularly favorable sections of the prairie, cot- 
ton, corn and sugar fields, they may at times be found 
in thousands. A dog in such shooting is an incum- 
brance except to act as a retriever. There is no wood- 
craft necessary in such shooting. The sportsman walks 
along till the birds are walked up. So rapidly will he 
sometimes flush them that, at every few steps, it is 
fire and load, and fire and load again. At such times 
the gun becomes too hot to hold, and the shooter 
must perforce stop till it is cool enough to handle. 
Enormous bags of snipe have been made, particu- 
larly in Louisiana and Texas, where the greater part of 
the flight of North America congregates tor a few 
weeks in the period of snipe migration. One of the 
greatest, and i believe that it is referred to now as 
the greatest bag, was made many years ago by Mr. 
Pringle, a wealtliy sugar planter ol Louisiana, who had 
great fame as a sportsman oi rare skill. He bagged 
400 and some odd snipe in one day. This is a large bag 
indeed. It is but one of thousands of large bagSj but 
so common as to excite no special comment 111 that 
section. 
i have told of these matters to shooters in the North 
whose success was measured by a dozen snipe, more or 
less, as the result of a day's shooting. Sucii large bags 
being outside of their personal experience, they have 
been pleased to consider it an idle tale. They seemed 
to think that their narrow experience in shooting a 
few birds over a few acres of ground each year, was 
the measure the world over. 
In regard to the big bag made by Mr. Pringle, it 
may be added by way of explanation that he liad 
negroes to assist liim, some to carry the spare guns, 
others to carry the ammunition, and to retrieve the 
dead birds. 
I have been told by men who have hunted with him 
that he is a most indefatigable walker, and possesses 
extraordinary quickness and accuracy in the use oi the 
shotgun, snapping the birds almost on the instant that 
they take wing. 
In that land of game abundance at that day, it was 
not considered unsportsmanlike to kill all that the 
sportsman pleased to kill, foi-, however great the bags, 
there was no apparent diminution in tiie numbers ot 
the birds. If the sportsman killed many, their neigh- 
bors derived the benefit of it. The killing, too, was at 
irregular intervals, differing from the steady drain made 
on the bird supply day after day by those who shoot 
for market. 
This circumstance of the record bag was a happen- 
ing of many years ago, when the sentiment concerning 
game preservation was different everywhere North and 
South from what it is to-day. 
As to snipe shooting and the way of it, the proper 
manner to shoot them is to go forth and shoot them 
— in other words, the set manner of doing this thing 
and that thing as taught by some writers is all very 
well if one can do no better. 
There is no rule whereby snipe shooting can be made 
soft and easy, and there is no sportsman with proper 
ambition who will care to have his . skill less than the 
best test that the bird can offer. If the sportsman's 
skill is unequal to the test, practice will improve it. 
In any event there is at least the pleasure of trying to 
cope with the conditions. The proper skill is that 
which takes the shooting as it comes, instead of pick- 
ing out the easy shots, or easy combinations to secure 
them. 
The best snipe gun is moderately choked or an im- 
proved cylinder bore. As in all open shooting, good 
work may be done with a full choke, since the shooter 
can pick his distance to shoot his birds. However, it 
is not every man who can wait on his bird, or who 
can estimate distances at a glance, therefore it is bet- 
ter to have a scatter gun which will be available for in- 
stant use when the bird rises. A 12-bore is most com- 
monly used, and as for the size of shot. No. 8s or 9s 
or los are good, the latter being quite large enough, 
when the birds are fat and lazy. 
As a bird to shoot over dogs, the snipe is inferior*- 
