UPLAND SHOOTING. 
155 
a good chance, and lie to a point. But blaze at him, and per¬ 
haps sting him with a stray shot, and he shall fly you a mile at a 
stretch ; besides that, your shot has disturbed the meadow, and 
perhaps flushed half-a-dozen others. Let it not be supposed, 
however, that I would inculcate slow and poking shooting; on 
the contrary I abhor it. 
The most unsportsmanlike thing that a man can do, in this 
line, is not to fire at a bird, when there is a reasonable chance of 
killing it ; the next, is to fire at a bird when there is not a rea¬ 
sonable chance of killing it. 
Snipe-shooting being practised ninety-nine times out of a 
hundred in perfectly open ground, the birds can be marked by 
an experienced hand at the work, to a great distance, and to a 
great nicety. But there is a good deal of knack in it ; and I 
hardly ever saw a countryman, who did not shoot, who did mark 
even decently. An ordinary observer, when he loses sight of a 
bird flying low, is apt to suppose he has stopped at the point 
where he last saw him, a conclusion than which nothing can be 
more erroneous. 
Every bird has his own fashion of alighting from the wing, 
and that of the Snipe and Woodcock is very peculiar; they both 
jerk themselves a little way up into the air, make a short turn, 
and pitch down backward. Once noticed, this motion cannot 
be mistaken ; and once made, you may be sure that the bird 
has dropped. All that remains to be done is to mark the place, 
so as to find it again, which in an expanse of open pasture or 
meadow-land, waving with even grass, or covered with tufts of 
rushes, each one precisely like its neighbor, is far from an easy 
matter. The better way is to raise the eye slowly from the spot 
toward the horizon—in case the ground is quite devoid of any 
near landmark of stump, bush, pool, or the like—where you will 
be nearly sure to find some tree, building, hill-top, or other emi¬ 
nent object, which you may bring into one line with your bird, 
after which you will have no difficulty in finding him. 
In marking dead birds within a near range, you should ever 
endeavor to fix the very leaf, or branch, or bunch of grass, on 
