342 
graham’s magazine. 
found indiscriminately on the sea-shore, and in upiatid 
marshes; I have shot it from Lake Huron to the Penobscot, 
and the Capes of the Delaware; it lies well before dogs, 
which will point it, and is a good bird on the table. It is 
known in Long Island as the “Meadow Snipe” and the 
“ Short Neck,” in New Jersey, and thence westward, as 
the “ Fat Bird,” or “ Jack Snipe” indiscriminately. It is 
not a snipe at all, but a Sandpiper, Tringa Pectoralis. 
The only other true snipe ascertained to exist in Ame¬ 
rica, is the Red Breasted Snipe, Scolopax Novebora- 
censis, better knownas the “ Dowitcher,” an unmeaning 
name, adopted and persevered in by the Baymen, or as 
the “ Quail Snipe.” At Egg Harbor the gunners call it 
the “ Brown-back.” It is found only on the salt marshes, 
and is never hunted with dogs but shot from ambush over 
decoys. 
It appears, then, that the coming and stay of the common 
snipe in our districts, in spring, is very uncertain, and de¬ 
pendent on the state and steadiness of the weather. Some 
seasons, they will stay for weeks on the moist, muddy 
flats among the young and succulent herbage, growing fat 
and lazy, lying well to the dog, and affording great sport. 
Sometimes they will merely alight, feed, rest, and resume 
their flight, never giving the sportsman a chance even of 
knowing that they have been, and are gone, except by 
their chalkings and borings where they have fed. Again, 
at other seasons, they will lie singly, or in scattered 
whispson the uplands, in fallow fields, even among stunted 
brushwood, lurking perdu all day, and resorting to the 
marshes by night, leaving the traces of their presence in 
multitudes, to perplex the sportsman, who, perhaps, beats 
the ground for them, day after day, only to find that they 
were, but are not. 
This variance in the habit of the snipe it is, which 
makes him so hard a bird to kill; for, although he is per¬ 
plexing from his rapid and twisting flight to a novice, I 
consider him, to a cool old hand, as easy a bird to kill as 
any that flies. The snipe invariably rises against or 
across wind, and in doing so hangs for an instant on the 
air before he can gather his way ; that instant is the time 
in which to shoot him, and that trick of rising against 
wind is his bane with the accomplished shot and sports¬ 
man, for by beating dotcu the wind , keeping his brace of 
dogs quartering the ground before him, across the. ivind, so 
that they will still have the air in their noses, he compels 
the bird to rise before him, and cross to the right on the 
left hand, affording him a clear and close shot, instead of 
whistling straight away up wind, dead ahead of him, ex¬ 
posing the smallest surface to his aim, and frequently 
getting off without a shot, as it will constantly do, if the 
shooter beats up wind, even with the best and steadiest 
dogs in the world. The knack of shooting snipe, as some 
people who can’t do it choose to call it, is no other than 
the knack of shooting quick, shooting straight, and shoot¬ 
ing well ahead of cross shots—this done with a gun that 
will throw its charge close at 40 to 50 yards, with It oz. 
of No. 8 shot, equal measures of shot and of Brough’s 
diamond-grain powder will fetch three snipe out of every 
five, which is great work, in spite of what the cockneys 
say, who pick their shots, never firing at a hard bird, or 
one over twenty paces away, and then boast of killing 
twenty shots in succession. Verbum sap. 
The great difference of the grounds to be beaten in 
different weathers ; the difficulty in determining which 
ground to assign to which day ; the immense extent of 
country to be traversed, if birds are scarce or wild, or if 
there are many varieties of soil, covert, and feeding in one 
range, and the sportsman fail in his two or three first beats 
in finding game, and therefore have to persevere till he do 
find them, these, and the hardness of the walking in rotten 
quagmires and deep morasses, affording no sure foot-hold, 
and often knee-deep in water, these it is which make suc¬ 
cessful snipe-shooting one of the greatest feats in the art, 
and the crack snipe-finder and snipe-killer—for the two are 
one, or rather the second depends mainly on the first—one 
of the first, if not the first artist in the line. 
It is from this necessity of beating, oftentimes, very 
extensive tracts of land before finding birds, and therefore 
of beating very rapidly if you would find birds betimes, 
that I so greatly prefer and recommend the use of very fast, 
very highly-bred, and very far-ranging setters, to that of 
any pointer in the world, for snipe-shooting in the open— 
apart from their great superiority over the pointer in hardi¬ 
hood, endurance of cold, powers of retrieving, beauty and 
good-nature. 
Of course, speaking of dogs, whether setter, pointer, 
dropper, or cocking-spaniel, it is understood that we speak 
of dogs of equal qualities of nose, staunchness to the point, 
and steadiness at coming to the charge the instant a shot 
is fired. No dog which does not do all these things habi¬ 
tually, and of course, is worth the rope that should hang 
him ; and no man is worthy the name of a shot or a sports¬ 
man, who cannot, and does not, keep his dogs, whelher 
setters, pointers, or cockers, under such command that he 
can turn them to the right or left, bring them to heel, stop 
them, or down charge them, at two hundred yards dis¬ 
tance if it be needful. 
If these things, then, be equal, as they can be made 
equal, though I admit a setter to be more difficultly kept 
in discipline than a pointer—the fastest setter you can get, 
is the best dog for snipe-shooting; his superiority, in other 
points, infinitely counterbalancing the greater trouble it 
requires to break and control him. I am well aware that 
it has been said, and that by authorities, that the best dog 
over which to shoot snipe, is an old, slow, broken-down, 
staunch pointer, who crawls along at a foot’s pace, and 
never misses, overruns, or flushes a bird. 
And so, in two cases, he is; but in one case, no dog is 
just as good as he is, and in the other, the argument is one 
of incapacity to use what is best, mid therefore is no 
argument. 
Ifbirdsareso thick on the grounds, and so tame that 
you can fill your bag in walking over one or two acres at 
a foot’s pace, a very slow pointer is better than fast setters 
—but no dog at all, your walking up your birds yourself, 
which you can do just as quickly as the dog can, is better 
than the slow pointer. Indeed, on very small grounds, 
very thickly stocked, it is by far the most killing way to 
use no dog, but to walk up the birds. 
I f a man is so weak and infirm of purpose, or so ignorant 
of the first principles of his art, as to be unable to control 
his setters, he must. I suppose, use a slow pointer; but it 
cannot matter what dog such a man uses, he never can be 
a sportsman. 
If there be a hundred birds lying, and lying well on one 
acre of feeding-ground, the birds can be killed without a 
dog, or with a slow dog, as you will; any man who can 
pull a trigger must fill his bag. 
If there be a hundred birds scattered, wild, over five 
hundred acres of ground, where are you with your slow 
dog, or your no dog? Just no where. While you are 
painfully picking up your three or four birds with your 
slow pointer, your true sportsman, and slashing walker, 
with his racing up-head and down-stern setters, will have 
found fifty, and bagged twenty-five or thirty. 
There are ten days in a season when birds are wild and 
sparse, for one when they are congregated and lie hard ; 
and the argument comes to this, that when birds can be 
killed with ease, even without a dog at all, a slow pointer 
is the best; when they are difficult to find, and hard to kill, 
