UPLAND SHOOTING. 
193 
labor, as to render the pursuit of them toilsome, and productive 
only of weariness and disappointment. 
I have, however, killed them repeatedly, while endeavoring 
to satisfy myself of the facts which I now assert, so deep in the 
moult that their bodies have been almost naked, and that they 
have fluttered up feebly, and with a heavy whirring, on wings 
divested of one-half the quill feathers; and, in that state, I 
have observed that the dogs stood as staunchly, and at as great 
a distance from their game, as usual; and that the birds took 
wing as freely, though, in truth, half impotent to fly. 
Beyond this, it is scarce necessary to point out to an intelli¬ 
gent reader, that if the birds still lay in swarms on their old 
ground, however scentless, they must, when that ground is 
hunted closely by true-beating and industrious dogs, be either 
run up, or turned out of the grass, and caught in the mouth 
sometimes; which I have never known to happen in all my 
experience of the field. 
The other theory was this, which I have heard insisted on as 
strenuously as the former, “ That the Woodcock, on beginning 
to moult, betakes himself to the maize or Indian com fields, 
and remains there unsuspected until the crops have been hous¬ 
ed, and the cold weather has set in.” That a few scattered 
Woodcock may be found in wet, low maize-fields, along the 
edge of woods, is true ; and it is true, also, that they feed in 
such situations in great numbers, during the night, previous to 
their removal; but that they are ever to be found generally, or 
for any number of consecutive days or weeks in such ground, 
is an utterly incorrect surmise, disproved by long experience. 
I have applied myself carefully to the investigation of this 
circumstance ; and in the last ten years, have certainly beaten a 
thousand maize-fields thoroughly, with a brace of as good Set¬ 
ters as any private gentleman possessed, at the very period 
when fanners would tell me “ they were as thick as fowls in the 
corn-fields ; ” and I have not on any occasion flushed more 
than three birds, in any one field ; nor have I killed twenty-fivo 
on such ground altogether. 
