Wildfowling in the West of Ireland. 
Waterford was reached in the gray dawn, and 
a four hours’ run in a northwesterly direction 
brought me within twelve Irish miles of my des¬ 
tination. This last lap of the journey was covered 
in a trap sent to meet me by my considerate host. 
The evening was spent making preparation 
for the morrow—guns and ammunition got ready 
and boatmen engaged — for we were to spend a 
long day on a large lough close by in pursuit of 
duck and snipe on its islands, and among the 
bogs along its shores. Accordingly at 4:15 next 
morning I was awakened by a feverish buzzing 
of an overwrought alarm clock, and I crept down 
the staircase which creaked its loudest at that 
hour of the morning, and made my way to the 
kitchen, where a roaring fire, banked up over 
night, and a hearty breakfast soon made us 
cheerful. With the aid of a sleepy henchman 
we conveyed our gear some quarter of a mile 
down to the lough, where the striking of a match 
kindling a pipe told us that our boatmen were 
faithful to their appointment. 
Having stowed the cargo, we started on a 
three-mile pull against a fresh northerly wind, 
our destination being an island on which to in¬ 
tercept the early morning flight of duck. This 
island was about half an acre in extent and - 
wooded in the center. Several pigeons blustered 
out of the trees as we landed and one fell to a 
nice overhead shot. 
Rough stone saugees, or ‘‘batteries,” as they 
are expressively termed locally, were built for us 
on the leeward side of the island, and in these 
we made ourselves as snug "as possible, for it 
was still too dark to see any birds. Suddenly 
loud, alarmed quackings came from the darkness 
ahead of my stand. A bird must have dropped 
into the water unobserved, and winding my to¬ 
bacco, was now retiring. 
Unfortunately the north wind, which would 
have favored us, had now practically died down 
entirely, and all the ducks, which should have 
come into the shelter of the island after their 
long flight from tidal waters, remained out in 
the open v'ater preening themselves. As it grew 
lighter I could see under the brightening dawn 
several batches, and these kept us occupied for 
some time. We soon realized, however, that, 
owing to the dropping of .the wind, the flight 
was going to be a failure. Just as this convic¬ 
tion was forced upon me, three black objects 
growing ever bigger caught my eye. They were 
coming straight for the island and I flattened 
myself down behind my saugar. Would they 
pass over A. or over me? With a selfish delight 
I saw’ they w'ere favoring me. Straight over me 
they came; an easy chance of a right and left. 
But crouching behind limited cover on a cold 
November morning is not conducive to good 
shooting, and only one of them, a mallard, fell 
to my left barrel. 
We waited in our hides a little longer, for 
there were plenty of ducks about, but all passed 
on either side of the island or else pitched in 
the open water. If the morning had only been 
rough, they would almost all have passed with¬ 
in range. A fire w'as now started by the boat¬ 
men, and a pot of hot soup proved very accept¬ 
able after our cold wait. The boatmen revived 
our spirits by a tale of a “great” bog on the 
mainland some two miles aw'ay and about a mile 
THE SMILE THAT WON’T COME OFF. 
in’and. They said that this bog “was paved w r ith 
snipe, but you’d go up to your neck in it.” 
We pulled to the mainland, and after some 
time found the bog hidden away in a hollow of 
the hills. It looked uncommonly good spread 
out below us, but was only about two acres in 
extent. We were soon on the ground to find 
that the boatman’s remarks about the number 
of snipe and the nature of the bog’s bottom w’ere 
fairly correct. Snipe there were in plen'y, but 
very wild, most of them getting up in wij'is. A. 
drew first blood by killing a single snipe which 
rose close to him, and at the report another 
dashed away from almost under my feet to be 
saluted and to pass on. We had some pretty 
shooting w’hile walking that bog and bagged 
three couple off it—not many, considering the 
noise we made, but as snipe were wild and most 
of our time was taken up in jumping from tus¬ 
sock to tussock over unknown depths of quaking 
bog holes, it was little wonder that our shooting 
was not so deadly as it might have been. A 
dozen tame ducks, aroused from their usual 
apathy by our fusillade, took wing from the 
bog where they had been feeding and circled 
temptingly over our heads much to the excite¬ 
ment of one of our boatmen, who was standing 
on the edge of the bog, and being ignorant of 
the domestic origin of these birds, was gesticu¬ 
lating wildly to us to shoot. 
After returning to the boat a long strip of 
weeds along the edge of the lough was then 
tried, A. walking along the shore, I pulling a'ong 
the outer edge of the reed bed in the boat. I 
saw A. fire and drop a snipe—a fine long shot 
with the right barrel—and hit a teal very hard 
with the left, but though the latter fell into the 
reeds, we never gathered him. The reports put 
up a nice spring of teal and several tufted ducks, 
but all kept wide of us. A single duck of some 
kind then sprang from the reeds in front of A., 
who dropped it neatly. From the boat I took it 
to be a widgeon, but it proved a pintail—a rare 
duck in those parts. Several more snipe off the 
islands and foreshore were added to the bag 
before lunch, which was eaten under the lee of 
some big rocks at the estuary of a small river. 
We had time to look around us while at lunch 
and take in the glorious view. The lough and 
sky were almost a Mediterranean blue; an old 
Irish castle on an island was silhouetted against 
the sun-way on the water; beyond were the 
brown reed beds of bogs and meadow flats, while 
above them rose th'e unchanging purple hills with 
here and there a white-washed cottage on their 
sides, so typical of the country. 
After lunch we turned homeward, shooting 
round islands, swamps and reed beds, picking 
up snipe gradually and regularly. This sort of 
snipe shooting is especially fascinating, and also 
instructive, for nearly all the birds fly out over 
the water, so the pattern can be easily seen, and 
mistakes in shooting perhaps too low and too 
far behind corrected. A pigeon which flew high 
over the boat was knocked down by A., the 
velocity with which it struck the water com¬ 
pletely laying bare its breast bone. A wily green 
plover, which, as the boatman said, “misjudged 
the distance by mistake,” paid the penalty, and 
finally a pochard was bagged. These handsome 
ducks come over in large flocks every winter, 
but are not often shot. In hard weather, how¬ 
ever, they leave the open waters of the lake and 
gather elsewhere, and a rush of pochards over 
one's head in the early morning or at dusk is a 
thing to dream about. A. tells me he has 
watched mallard, teal, widgeon and pochards in 
separate flocks beating up against a northerly 
gale on a January morning, and the pochards 
always overhaul all other ducks and pass them 
without apparent effort. 
