April 30, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
693 
man who does no shooting, suspended by a strap 
around his shoulders and about waist high. 
Walking through the fields as the light is veered 
around so as to cover the ground within its 
range, Bee can be seen squatting in his feed¬ 
ing place. 
The darker the night the better; a drizzly night 
is the best of all. On starlight nights it is not 
easy to get close enough to kill them with a long 
cane, which the darkeys frequently use, or even 
to shoot them with squib loads, but on dark, 
drizzly nights one can almost cafch them with 
the hands before they become accustomed to 
the light which temporarily dazzles them. The 
birds are usually found in pairs—unless one has 
been killed—and squatting from three to six 
feet apart, and not infrequently, if the night be 
very dark, the hunter can kill both before flight. 
A muzzleloader is preferred on account of the 
cheapness of the ammunition. The birds are 
rarely ever shot more than thirty feet and fre¬ 
quently under ten feet. For this reason squib 
loads are used. An ordinary charge of black 
powder is divided into two loads, a wad run 
down on it, and the charge of No. 8 shot is 
about what a man can hold between his thumb 
and fore finger, say fifteen or twenty pellets; 
more would tear the birds. 
The woodcock rarely spends over sixty to 
seventy days in Louisiana, but during this period 
many thousands were killed before the enact¬ 
ment of prohibitory laws, not only by the colored 
man, but by the whites as well in the manner 
mentioned. No doubt your sportsmen critics will 
denounce the method and under any circum¬ 
stances other than those which actually exist in 
Louisiana, their denunciation would be just, but 
I opine if these same critics could be transported 
to Louisiana in the woodcock season they would 
be surprised to find in how short a time they 
would become lovers of the night pot-hunt. 
I know from personal experience. I was born 
a sportsman and I can recall some thirty-five 
years ago, when I scorned to shoot a woodcock 
on the ground, but then I was new in the State. 
It did not take me long to get broken into the 
method. The great delicacy of the bird and the 
almost impossibility of getting him by daylight 
hunting begets the habit of night pot-hunting, 
and like other bad habits it grows apace. 
This section of the State is rather out of the 
woodcock country, and I have not hunted them 
for twenty-five years. They are here every year, 
but not plentiful enough to warrant night hunt¬ 
ing, but well do I remember a noted hunt of 
about thirty-five years ago. I was a visitor to 
Louisiana then. One dark, drizzly night my 
brother-in-law was lamp carrier for me and I 
killed seventy-two from 9 until 1 a. m. with a 
muzzleloading gun. No, it was seventy-one that 
I killed with the gun, but when my ammunition 
became exhausted on the way home we found 
a bird on the side of the path. I drew the ram¬ 
rod and killed it with a blow oh the head, mak¬ 
ing an even six dozen. 
At the risk of making my letter too long I 
will add something about the preparation of the 
bird for the table that I suppose few of your 
readers know. By the connoisseur the woodcock 
is never eaten in Louisiana until from five to 
seven days have elapsed after he is killed. 
Neither 'is the bird picked or drawn until it is 
ready to be cooked. They are generally hung 
up in a cool shady place, or put in a refrigera¬ 
tor for the time mentioned, and strange to say 
even hanging up in the air they do not taint a 
particle, but it relieves them of an earthy taste 
which they have if eaten fresh. In dressing 
them they are never split open, but are drawn 
after the manner of dressing a turkey. In pre¬ 
paring them for the oven the inside of the bird 
is filled with fat bacon and they are baked. This 
bacon juice permeates them and they are basted 
with it while baking. 
Any of your readers who have not eaten a 
woodcock prepared after this method has yet to 
taste the most delicious of all game birds. 
I cannot refrain from telling of my last wood¬ 
cock hunt. It was in January, 1885, just twenty- 
five years ago. On a starlight night three of us 
started out for a hunt, one gunner on each side 
of the light. The birds were plentiful, but were 
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so wild that we could not get shots at half of 
those we found. The two of us killed fourteen. 
The next night was bright also and I sug¬ 
gested a new scheme. I being a crack wing 
shot was to load my gun with the ordinary bird 
load, while my companion was to use the squib; 
he to shoot them on the ground and I to shoot 
those on the wing when flushed. 
I instructed the light carrier that when a bird 
rose for flight he should keep the rays of light 
on him as he flew. This was easily done by 
tilting the lamp with the hands. The results of 
the hunt were twenty-nine; my companion killed 
fourteen and I killed fifteen, all flying. I do 
not now recall that I missed a single shot. Sev¬ 
eral times my companion, shooting at too long 
range for his squib load, missed and I killed the 
bird in the air. But it was not remarkable shoot¬ 
ing at all, for when the light was thrown on him 
he seemed practically to stop in the air. I could 
almost have killed them with a rifle. 
As this letter contains the admission of pot¬ 
hunting from an avowed sportsman, it is likely 
to bring anathemas on my head from sportsmen 
who will not admit that there is any excuse, 
therefore I will take their criticisms over the 
pseudonym of Bec. 
The vast alluvial region of Southern Louisiana 
has many large areas peculiarly favorable to 
woodcock life. Years ago, before the pot-hunter 
had effected so much destruction in November 
and December, the woodcock, as “Bec’’ accu¬ 
rately recounts, congregated in those regions in 
vast numbers. The heavy tropical rains, of whose 
volume and persistency the Northern resident 
has little conception, softened vast areas of land, 
cultivated and uncultivated, and others fitted them 
for the feeding grounds of the woodcock. At 
the same season snipe abounded in enormous 
numbers, and for the same reason. This favor¬ 
able condition as to abundant food supply and 
climate explains why the woodcock tarried long 
in Louisiana on their winter sojourn, and also 
why they were so numerous in many parts of 
the uplands—conditions quite unknown to North¬ 
ern woodcock shooting. 
Switch cane is not always all in one solid 
mass. In many places small patches grow here 
and there in timber in certain places, fringes 
grow along ditches and bayous, etc., and in such 
cane the finding of woodcock is not at all un¬ 
usual. In such cover the woodcock shooting was 
often much less difficult than the average wood¬ 
cock shooting of the North. 
Twenty-five years ago in some of the Southern 
parishes of Louisiana the practice of capturing 
woodcock as described by “Bec,” was not at all 
uncommon. There it was not unusual to see a 
negro boy offer for sale a string of woodcock 
at five or ten cents apiece. These birds were 
captured by firelight, and this method was a 
matter of common knowledge. It, however, was 
considered strictly a pot-hunting method. When 
he fired a gun the average resident was looking 
to results and he hunted woodcock in the night 
for the same reason that he used a trained boeuf 
to stalk ducks—so that a raking pot shot could 
be obtained; that is to say, he was after meat. 
Audubon in his “Ornithological Biographies” 
says that in Louisiana the negroes commonly 
killed woodcock at night by firelighting and 
striking the birds with a pole or long- stick. 
Narrows Island Club. 
The annual meeting of the Narrows Island 
Club was held at the Hoffman House, New York 
city, on the evening of April 11. The following 
officers were elected to serve during the ensuing 
year: President, John Burling Lawrence; Vice- 
President, R. H. Robertson; Secretary-Treasurer, 
F. B. Austin; Executive Committee, Frederick 
Jones, William H. Wheelock and George Bird 
Grinnell. 
The president reported that the past shooting 
season had been the most successful in the club’s 
career. At its grounds on Currituck Sound, 
birds were more abundant than for many years, 
and the number of black ducks and mallards 
occurring there was astonishing. There was no 
canvasback weather and comparatively few of 
these birds were secured. On the other hand 
geese were very abundant and were killed in 
large numbers. 
Proposed Plumage Law in New Jersey. 
A bill making it a misdemeanor for women to 
wear feathers, wings or bodies of birds for per¬ 
sonal adornment passed the lower House of the 
New Jersey Legislature by a vote of thirty-three 
to eleven on March 23, but did not reach con¬ 
sideration in the Senate before adjournment. 
