460 
FOREST AND STREAM 
OCTOBER, 1917 
JUMPING THE LONGBILLS IN MISSOURI 
THE LONG BILLED FELLOWS HAVE NO USE FOR THE COLD AND 
HIT IT UP FOR THE SOUTH AT THE FIRST APPROACH OF WINTER 
W E were positive before we ever trod 
those marshes that the flight of 
Jacks had arrived. All night long 
between the short showers that pounded 
malevolently on the loose clapboard roof 
I heard the “Scaip! Scaip! Scaip” as the 
snipe dipped for the railroad light nearby, 
Toward morning the wind had changed 
to the north; the weather turned much 
colder; and the first thing I observed, when 
I stepped shivering off the rickety porch 
floor for heating wood, was that the 
ground was frozen. 
“Mac,” I asked of the foreman of the 
ranch, “you know this country better than 
I do; will the jacks stay, or have they 
already turned their noses South?” 
“ X T O, most of them will stay over,” 
promised Mac. “But it will be 
perhaps some time before we can 
locate them. Ten to one they will be 
bunched up in a thicket close to the woods 
until the sun thaws out the ground—which 
won’t take very long. The sky is clear, and 
the sun is now peeping over those water- 
oaks’ tops,” he added, after he had glanced 
out of the window, turning on me a radiant 
face. “That freeze won’t hurt,” he reiterated. 
We were in the flat swamp lands between 
Black River and Little Black River in 
Southeast Missouri. The Ranch Company 
controlled an immense body of land, and 
the wild, open meadows between the for¬ 
ests of inundated timber in proper seasons 
afforded unparalleled jacksnipe shooting. 
At the best the going was none too easy. 
There had been considerable rain. The 
drainage ditches were quite deep, promising 
a plunge over our waders at an incautious 
step, and the half-frozen ground with its 
thin coating of ice was anything but ideal 
for walking. Each of us carried for the 
shoot our twenty gauge guns. Our shells 
were loaded with 1 /% of an ounce of num¬ 
ber 8 soft shot and drams of smoke¬ 
less powder. „ 
F OR a mile we slipped and slid 
the sedge grass marshes without 
ting up a single jack. 
“Don’t look like your pre¬ 
diction is going to come out 
true, Mac,” I remarked. 
“These long billed fellows 
have no love for the cold; 
and they just hit it up for 
the South as fast as they 
could.” 
The short, ruddy-faced 
man could stand any amount 
of teasing, except when it 
bordered on a question about 
his knowledge of snipe 
lore. 
“Can’t you wait—” 
At that instant a wild jack 
jumped up with a startled 
“Scaip!” far out of range, 
over 
put- 
By JAY RIPLEY 
proceeding at once into a gymnastic flight, 
as soaring upward it became a mere speck 
against the sky. Time and time again it 
circled, gradually approaching nearer, until 
finally it pitched to the earth not many feet 
from where it had been flushed. 
“There, what did I tell you?” said Mac, 
as I walked up for a shot at the bird. 
I kicked Mister Jack out of the sedge— 
a nice straightaway—but missed with both 
barrels. 
“If there was anybody that could hit 
them,” laughed Mac, “it might be wise to 
wait until the sun gets higher, and then 
work that elbow brush near the woods.” 
Mac could not stand for my missing such 
an easy shot without some raillery, and it 
was too early in the day to consider his 
knowledge of snipe lore to be due some 
criticism. 
N OW the sun began to shine ardently, 
and on approaching the elbow brush 
at the east end of the big pasture the 
jacksnipe began to pour out. They flew up 
first in dozens, then hundreds, followed by 
thousands. In all my days of tramping the 
marshes I had never witnessed such a gath¬ 
ering of the long-billed gentlemen. In fact, 
barring when they were in flight, my expe¬ 
rience had been limited to putting them up 
only in singles and doubles. Never before 
had I beheld such flocks. One flock flushed 
another, and I could see the feeling of sat¬ 
isfaction on the features of my companion. 
“Goodness! Did you ever seen anything 
like that?” he enthused as they poured out 
of the brush literally in clouds, emitting 
their weird, perpetual “Scaip!” “I have 
seen them gather in cold days, but they 
never approached this gang in numbers.” 
“And the strangest thing, too,” I ejacu¬ 
lated, “there isn’t one of those thousand 
snipe within range.” 
“But that’s usually the case under such 
circumstances; the cold wind was from the 
northeast, and they all beat it to this cover,” 
he offered in explanation. “But just think 
of the shooting after they are all scattered 
over the meadows!” 
A FTER we had put in fifteen minutes 
clearing the elbow brush of its ex¬ 
tremely wild tribe of gallinago deli- 
catas, we took a seat on a board fence and 
surveyed them working into the fields. For 
three miles we had a clear view of their 
flight, and marked the particular pastures 
into which they alighted. 
“There!” said Mac, “let’s start. After 
they are once scattered and feeding they 
will be easy to get within shooting range. 
Then just think, Jay, of the Bloat Field, 
Nigger Field, Second and Third Nigger 
Field! My, just watch them working down 
into Second and Third Nigger Field!” 
The fields were large pastures in the 
swales, and the scattered elevations were 
fenced off for the negroes in cultivated 
areas of cotton. And that enormous flight 
was finding its way into the long flat swales 
with amazing regularity. 
Mac picked seven straight snipe in the 
Bloat Field. I had as many opportunities, 
but so far had been unable to solve the 
twisting, impossible-angle flight of the 
jacks. It seemed to me that every long 
bill that I put up had been trained for 
years for that particular burst of speed, 
and those of Mac’s for a slow race. At 
least I judged it that way from the ease of 
performance on his part, and the difficulty 
I experienced in hitting them. 
After a time Mac missed one, and by 
some miracle of fate I put down a “scaip- 
ing” fellow at long range. 
“Some shooting, Mac!” I declared; and 
then as fate would have it this time I 
missed an easy, close, left quartering bird, 
that waited almost until I had stepped on it 
before starting in flight. 
And it was here while in the extended 
throes of a missing streak that I contem¬ 
plated humorously on some of the state¬ 
ments of acknowledged authorities on the 
subject of jacksnipe shooting. The advice 
they offer to beginners is to hunt always 
with the wind at their back, as the birds 
have to get up against wind, and in this 
manner invariably afford easy crossing 
shots. Another piece of advice originating 
from the same source is, not 
to shoot at the birds until 
they settle into straight flight, 
as then their corkscrews have 
become exhausted, and they 
proceed into common sense, 
straightaway flying. 
With such irrefutable 
knowledge in my mind I im¬ 
mediately discovered that the 
jacks of the Missouri swamps 
did not play fair—they vio¬ 
lated every rule set down by 
the authorities. It was a fact 
that they got up in any man¬ 
ner they wanted to—up wind, 
down wind, just according to 
how they had conceived 
their plans. As for waiting 
