Chapter XV: Part 15

It seems curious that wild fowl that spend most of their time in the water particularly dislike wind, but so it is, and in making teal pits or improving them, or in attracting fowl to a river, the more artificial shelter you can afford the fowl the more they will be attracted to your water. Near the coast this is generally well understood, and there, too, the roughness of the sea greatly influences the birds to seek peace and shelter inland; so that there are naturally good days and bad ones for shooting from the “gazes.” In a smooth sea and fine weather duck seem to prefer to go to bed, which they do in the daytime, on the sea. But in rough weather the majority will find out any quiet places on fresh water where the presence of other duck prove to them that there is safety. For this reason some half-tame wild duck are a great attraction to the really wild ones, but the former can be only kept at home by good feeding, for wing-clipped fowl are _no_ attraction to the really wild birds. Home-bred birds appear not so much to attract as to go and fetch the wild ones, and this is the reason that wing-clipped birds will not do. On the “gaze” system 800 duck have been killed in four days’ shooting by a party. Mr. John Mills, of Bisterne, using an 8 and a 12 bore, has killed 130 fowl in a day from one “gaze,” and on one occasion 100 cartridges were shot away from one “gaze” in a few minutes, and the shooter ran out of cartridges and had to stop and look at the fowl for half an hour. He killed 60 duck, and thought he could have doubled his bag with another 100 cartridges. This was at Lord Manners’ place, Avon Tyrrell. In parts of Dorsetshire as well as Pembrokeshire a great deal of attention has been given to the formation of teal pits and the cultivation of wild wild-fowl, but the biggest bags made have fallen far short of those mentioned above, possibly because the fowl are generally taken in an ordinary day’s shooting of other game, and not in specially arranged big days.

RABBIT SHOOTING

From potting the unsuspecting rabbit sitting at his front door, and spoiling two blades of grass for every one he eats, to killing rabbits hunted out of heather by spaniels, there is nearly as wide a difference as the whole range of the shot gun embraces. The rabbit is said to be the schoolboy’s game, but the schoolboy might fairly retort that this is because the seniors cannot hit him. He is certainly the easiest and also the hardest to kill of all the British food for powder. It just depends upon how he is treated whether he is worthy to be called a sporting beast or not. A rabbit in strange ground, or one that knows he cannot get home, is the poorest-hearted little beast possible, and is even too much afraid to run away. Then we are often told what splendid sport rabbits make for the gun when hunted by beagles. This is a fraud. It sounds pretty, but in practice all the rabbits but one will be sitting up trimming their whiskers with their fore feet and listening to the direction of the hunt, for the beagles’ pack, and so only one rabbit is being hunted at any one time. If you are watching a rabbit and hear the hunt turn, you will get ready for the time the creature runs. But he will not run; he will merely hop quietly out of the line of the hunt, and sit up to listen some more.

In bracken that is not too thick the rabbit may bolt, but when it is very thick the author has watched rabbits defeat a whole team of spaniels by the higher strategic operation of sitting quite still. In this stuff you see them at your toes, much too near to shoot, and cannot see them at all when they are far enough away for half a load of shot not to smash them. If you want pretty rabbit shooting, you must have dogs that do not “open,” or else beaters. In fair undergrowth, in which one can just see to shoot sometimes, rabbits when at home will make for their holes fast enough, and they take shooting. But for difficulty in covert they are as nothing compared with rabbits that have well used runs through fairly long heather. Sometimes in running they will be under the heather, and even under the level of the ground in the broken surface; sometimes they will be above the heather. You will probably try to shoot a little in front of them as they turn and twist along their runs at great speed, but nothing makes a shooter feel so foolish as shooting so much in front that the quarry never at any time gets as forward as the shot went. The heather rabbit is quite capable of creating this feeling, for when you lose sight of him he frequently changes his course just as if he knew that his enemy was noted for shooting well in front. Where under covert is very thick indeed, the author has never seen pretty rabbit shooting, although he has seen fearless spaniels trying to make the rabbits run, and succeeding in making them crawl and hop by turns, but run very rarely indeed. They seem to know that the spaniels cannot catch them in such places. Rabbit shooting on a grand scale is nearly always a failure. You kill the numbers, no doubt; but in order that you should do it the rodents have been ferreted or “stunk” out of their holes, and the latter have been stopped up, and most of the quarry appear to know they are in a trap, and are philosophical enough to think that it is useless to run without having a place to run to. You can certainly drive rabbits past the guns, but you cannot always make them run. In only fairly thick under covert, with rides for the guns to stand, fair sport is often obtained. You may see the rabbits come up to the ride and then stop and hide. They fear to cross. Then, when they are obliged to go, they make a rush of it; evidently they know their danger, and think safety lies in speed. If they can be got to cross like this, there is sport in it, provided the rides are not too wide. If they are wide, you make a certainty of your shot, and the sport is less. The best sporting width is that which causes an uncertainty as to whether the shot succeeded, and an examination in the bushes to see whether the shot was well or ill timed. That is to say, the best sport is when the bushes take up a lot of the pellets and the rabbit is out of sight before the snap shot is off.

Gas tar is as good as anything to keep rabbits out of their holes. It is not bad when properly employed to get them out. But as strong-smelling stuffs are generally used, they keep the rabbits in their holes for one, two, or three nights, until hunger compels an exit past the paper dipped in tar. It is a good plan to put the paper down the holes only on the windward side of the burrows; this has the effect of blowing the smell through the whole of the compartments, but leaves open bolt holes where nothing will impede. The next day the other side of the burrow can be doctored, and this will prevent re-entry. After this, shooting may take place without many uninjured rabbits going to ground, but the wounded will go in and die there; consequently, there is nothing like stopping out if the rabbits can be got out. A very effective plan for this is the use of a line ferret. It is best not to let the ferret try and bolt the rabbits; that takes too much time. But if it is run through the holes one day and tar-paper is inserted the next, most of the rabbits will be found to have had pressing business elsewhere. Consequently, they can be shot, and give better sport than if they had been subjected to back-scratching by the ferret’s poison claws. But probably the best way of all, where the holes are not amongst rocks, is to fill up all entrances with a clod of soil or turf and sprinkle the latter with gas tar or spirits of tar. Twenty-four hours later the process has to be repeated, for the rabbits will have scratched out. This should be repeated every day until the shoot occurs, but only the first stopping will be much trouble; there will be few holes to stop afterwards. In trying to make a big bag it is very necessary to put down netting to keep the rabbits off the beaten ground. Stops will do, but are not as effective as the net.

The preservation of rabbits implies, of course, the destruction of vermin, especially cats. The next necessity is fresh blood in January or February, and early and close shooting or trapping. Rabbits degenerate quicker than most animals, and in-breeding and stale ground are the worst causes. On some soils lime-dressing seems to be absolutely necessary for the continued health and reproductive powers of rabbits in warrens. Out of warrens, and especially where they are not wanted, nothing seems to injure them. Neither disease, vermin, nor the schoolboy’s gun will do them any damage where they are not encouraged. This is probably because they are most healthy where they are most scarce, and it is only nature’s justice that if they poison the grass they should poison themselves also.

Shooting rabbits over ferrets requires much more attention than it is worth. The rabbit always seems to bolt well when the shooter is not attending; when he is all expectation, the rabbit comes and looks at him, pokes his head out of the hole, where to shoot him would be to destroy his value. Then, just as the ferret must be getting up to the quarry’s tail to make him bolt, the head disappears and is seen no more. Then in ten minutes or half an hour the experienced person says it will be necessary to dig, because the ferret is lying up, or if he is muzzled he is probably pounded, with rabbits’ backs to scratch on all sides of him, but no rabbits to bolt. Then, when the most unexpected event does take place, and the rabbits do bolt well, those you wound are sure to go to ground with a broken leg or shoulder, and so stop proceedings, either by detaining the ferret or by informing their fellows. Ferreting is not nearly as good sport as shooting stopped-out rabbits. When beaters for the latter are used, they should make no noise. The object is not that the quarry should quietly canter along in front of a line of guns, but you will want them to lie well, so that when disturbed in close contact with some beater’s stick they may run well. The former they will do if there is fair covert to lie in and no noise, not even “tapping” of sticks. The latter they will do if they are poked up with a stick instead of being thrashed up with a stake. The biggest record of rabbit shooting is that of 5096 rabbits to nine guns in the day. This was in 1885, in Mr. J. Lloyd Price’s Rhiwlas warren. The load of shot best for shooting warren rabbits, or any others if other game is not to be bagged, is ¾ oz. of No. 3 shot. This saves plastering, and enables both near shots and long ones to be taken. It was the load used with Schultze powder when the bag above mentioned was made. Perhaps it is not correct to talk of a bag of rabbits when such wilful slaughter occurs. There must have been between seven and eight tons of rabbits for that one day’s work.

If rabbits come out from a covert to feed in a rough banky grass field, one that will afford good sport if the rabbits lie out in it, this can be brought about by means of wire netting, the lower part of which is set so as to fall by the pulling of a string. However, half the fun is lost when rabbits are shot out of woods. This plan for keeping the beasts out of their coverts is perhaps more useful in snow when the trees are in danger, and when, too, the rabbits highly appreciate the hay in the sheep racks. Indeed, feeding with £5 worth of hay would often save £500 worth of young trees.

The enclosing of warrens with wire netting is a simple matter, and the principle should be that rabbits can get in but cannot get out. This is easy enough to arrange. There must be turned-in wire at both the top and bottom, and turned-out wire at the bottom. This rests on the ground, and there is no need to put it underneath. About 6 inches of turning-in is enough. Three feet 6 inches is about the best height for wire, although if the ground is quite flat probably 3 feet and an over-lap of 6 inches to prevent climbing from the inside is enough. Then if, on the outside in several places, a wall of turf is built as high as the fencing, and a single turf is laid as a lead on to the overlay of netting, rabbits will enter freely, but will not get out again. It is thought best to use graduated wire, very small at the ground in order to keep in the young ones, but it may be that the warrener will wish the young ones to fare the best, and in that case, if the crops outside permit, it may be a help to the young rabbits to let them escape through netting that keeps in the old ones. They will all come in again some time by means of the external turf walls, and then, having grown big, will have to remain.

HARES

To the insular Britisher there are only two sorts of hares, the brown and the blue. Possibly they cross breed, but naturalists are mostly opposed to this view. However, if they do not cross, the writer has seen specimens in Caithness which he could not assign to either race. Nowhere else in Scotland does there seem to be much ground inhabited by both species.

The blue hare is not only a creature of the moors, but of the top moors. The brown hare never goes up there by any chance but he often occupies moors of low level bordering the cultivation. In Caithness the highest tops are usually not very high, and the blue hares are often found on the moor only a few feet above sea-level. Consequently there are opportunities for cross breeding which in the other counties rarely exist.

Hares are said to be very prolific, but as a matter of fact they increase only very slowly: what they might do in more favourable circumstances is another matter. One writer affirms that when a brace was confined in a walled garden there were 57 hares counted at the end of one year. That is possibly correct, and yet the hare does not breed well in confinement, which is the reason that parks are more often devoted to deer and sheep than to hares, even when they are nominally hare parks. The late Lord Powerscourt introduced brown hares into his park in Ireland, where they did not increase; and the late Mr. Assheton-Smith, of Vaynol Park, introduced the blue Alpine hare there. In Ireland the latter is indigenous, but does not in winter change to white, with tips of black upon its ears, as it does in Scotland and upon the Continent.

_Country Life_ has lately reproduced a photograph of a family of six brown leverets, and it is evidently wrong to affirm that from two to five is the limit of numbers produced, as was done in _Country Life’s_ Shooting Book. Seven is the greatest number reported, but this requires confirmation. What has given the impression that two or three are the usual numbers produced is the fact that the hare does not seem to confine herself to one nest. All her eggs are not put in one basket, and this is instinctive wisdom; for little leverets give out a good deal of scent even when quite young, and are easily found by foxes and dogs. Cats are not fond of ranging the open fields, but prefer hedgerow and covert, so that they are more dangerous to young rabbits than to leverets, which are generally placed in the open fields without any sort of nest or other protection than the great space about them.

Very large bags of hares have frequently been killed. Lord Mansfield’s Perthshire bag of blue hares once reached very nearly 1300 in the day to five guns, and over 1000 brown hares are said to have been killed in the day quite recently. That the author has not verified, but formerly they must have been nearly as plentiful in Suffolk and Norfolk as they are now in parts of Bohemia and Hungary. Count Karolyi, for some years Hungarian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, once attempted to make a record: he killed to his own gun 600 hares in five hours’ shooting. It is not this unique feat for which Hungary is most noted, but for its constant supply over a large number of days. There they do not usually kill hares during partridge shooting, but delay the big drives until November. Nevertheless, at Tot-Megyr, six days’ shooting by nine guns produced 7500 hares and 2500 partridges. Probably Mindszent, in the south of Hungary, holds the record for a day at hares, for 3000 were killed there by Count Alexander Pallavicini’s ten guns.

Big bags of hares are no new thing in that country, for as long ago as 1753 over 18,000 hares were killed with equal proportions of partridges in 20 days’ shooting by 23 guns, including the Emperor of Austria and the Princess Charlotte. In Suffolk, in 1806, a complaint of the number of hares left on one estate was followed in the early spring by the killing of 6012. Whether this slaughter satisfied the farmers or no is not stated. Probably the biggest shoots of hares occur in the United States, where the animals, almost precisely like our own brown hares, are called “jack rabbits.” They have become so troublesome to farmers that the latter turn out in regular armies when the “trouble” becomes worse than usual, and the “jack rabbits” are done to death in countless numbers. Another kind of hare found in the States is the “cotton tail,” which in all outward appearance is precisely like our common rabbit, except that it does not burrow. It is the perquisite of the nigger dog, and if he is there, of the nigger dog’s master.

The “jack rabbits” give splendid coursing and a fine scent for hounds; the “cotton tails” do neither, but gun-dogs invariably point them. The hunting of the hare is probably the oldest of all sports now practised. It was rated high by Xenophon more than three centuries before the Christian era, and Xenophon would have made an excellent master of harriers in our day if we could have induced him to leave his nets at home. The fox never took precedence of the hare until earth-stopping was invented, and without it the former would even now be the less worthy as a quarry.

The brown hare prefers the open country to the woods, and is never found in the latter until haytime and harvest have driven it out of the fields. Even then it may take to a fallow field in preference to the woods, and the author has known a little 10 acre field to have more than 100 hares in it upon such an occasion. In wet dripping weather—that is, when the drip falls from the trees in covert along with the falling leaf—hares prefer to make forms in the open fields. These they will return to daily for weeks together, unless they are disturbed. But if they are put off their forms they do not often come back to them again, but make new ones. Consequently, if it is desired to have a great day’s covert shooting, including hares, the open country should be beaten for them several days before. The fact that they are disturbed will send them into the coverts. On the other hand, after the coverts are beaten, not a hare will be found in them for some time, whereas all the pheasants that are left alive will be back to roost the next day at latest, unless they have been driven to coverts that they know and like equally well.

People affect to despise shooting hares, and when they are driven out of coverts into the open they are of course rather more easy than pheasants fluttering up at a corner; but in high undergrowth, in covert or out, they are much more often missed than pheasants. In standing barley they are very difficult, and if turnips are really high they are not easy there. But the author has rarely seen clever hare shooting when the beasts have been driven up to fences in the low country, and up to the hilltops in Scotland. It is true that if only one or two hares come together, it is simplicity itself to handle them, but suppose four hares are each seen 20 yards apart coming up to your stand. If you can kill the four, you understand woodcraft as well as shooting. If you do not know the former, you will get one or at most two hares and frighten the others away. Your object will be to get all the hares nearly together before you take the farthest off one, then the next farthest off, and you will have two very much scared hares starting probably from your very feet for your second gun. The shooting then becomes extremely difficult, because it has to be very smart indeed. Sometimes, instead of four you may have twenty hares all within 80 yards, and it has been known that by shooting at the first within range all the rest have escaped without a shot. It is the habit of blue hares to follow each other up the runs through the heather or over the moss and stones; when one stops, the others seeing him stop too. Consequently, the way to get them together is only to stop the first hare when he has approached near and is also out of sight of the others behind, which any little unevenness of the ground accomplishes. A sharp “click,” which was most easily accomplished by cocking a gun in the days before the hammerless, is enough. One stone rapped once only on another will do it. But the hare must not see that, or any other movement, or he will be off at once. If he has not the advantage of the wind, and so cannot get the scent of the guns, a hare would run between a shooter’s legs without seeing him if he stood absolutely still and bestrode the hare track. But it is the “absolute” that makes all the difference. Some people say that a hare cannot see straight in front of it, but this is a mistake; it can detect the smallest movement although directly in front, and if it will almost run against you, it will not allow you to walk from the direct front up to it as it lies in its form.

When hares are wild, they sit high in their forms, and can be seen from a long distance. However, when they mean to lie close, they are remarkably difficult to see even upon open ground, except to those who know what to look for, and the most experienced will often pass them. Private coursers, especially when mounted, get extremely clever at finding hares in their seats. In beating for them, when they are not wild, the drivers who take a straight course will miss three-parts of the hares, but if they zigzag, making half-turns suddenly, every hare will believe itself seen and will run.

In beating flat country for hares, very much the same order as in partridge driving in the open, and as in pheasant beating in covert, has to be adopted. Stops and flanks are a necessity, but in driving moorlands a very different system is adopted. The hares there will all make up hill, no matter which way the beaters walk, so that a continuous circuit round the hills, beginning at the lowest level and cork-screwing upwards, is the plan if there are not enough beaters to cover the slope at one operation. If there are, the beating is done as if it were the desire to drive the hares along the slope or face of the hill, but as they will all pass along the front face of the drivers and mount the hill either near or far on, the guns will take up hidden positions upon the tops. Any other system of driving blue hares has been found from experience to be more or less misdirected energy. These animals are not very much liked in the deer forests, because the deer understand the hares’ movements as well as if they talked to each other, and a startled hare usually means also a startled stag in the stalking season. But in grouse ground the hares should not be kept very low in Scotland. Nowhere are you very far away from a deer forest and eagles, and the latter are satisfied to leave the grouse alone if they can get blue hare in summer and white hare in winter. The Alpine hare is much easier for an eagle to catch than either grouse or ptarmigan.

As to brown hares, they can only be plentiful where the relations between landowner and tenant are of the very best. The latter can, if they like, kill hares all the year round. Good land, a liberal landlord, and yearly tenancies are the conditions under which hares can thrive. The author likes to see plenty of them as proofs that the tenants are not unsportsmanlike, and that the keepers are friendly with the farmers and enemies to the poachers. Opposites in both cases have not been quite unknown.

It has been said that hares can be “called up” by poachers. Perhaps that is so; the only cry of the hare the author has heard is that distress note that will often, on the contrary, drive away the other hares. If they will come to call, they must be in the habit of calling. It is the note of the doe hare that is supposed to be imitated. If she calls her young she has no cause to call the “jack”; she is found by him by the trail scent, and is worried far more by his attentions than she likes. It is not uncommon to see half a dozen “jacks” persecuting one doe hare, and continuing to do so for hours if not for days together. The “jack” seems to hunt the trail of the doe when it is hours old, and long after any harrier would notice it.

The esteem in which the hare was held in the Middle Ages is shown by a verse attached to an English translation of the Norman-French _Le Art de Venerie_, by William Twici, huntsman to King Edward II.:—

“To Venery y caste me fyrst to go,
Of wheche iiij best is be, that is to say,
The hare, the herte, the wulfhe, the wylde boor also;
Of venery for sothe there be no moe.”

Who wrote the verse does not appear to be accurately known; evidently it was not Twici.

SNIPE

Snipe shooting is the fly fishing of the shot gun.

There are only three species of snipe that regularly visit England, and only one that breeds here. This is the full snipe. The great solitary or double snipe is rarely seen, and as a sporting bird, therefore, does not count. The jack snipe is far the most beautiful, and is met with some years in fair quantities, but is rarely found in greater proportion than one to five of the full snipe. The jack snipe is rarely missed by a deliberate marksman, but a snap shooter who is used to the quick and zigzag rise of the full snipe is often able to miss the little jacks, for their flight is almost that of a butterfly. Besides, the jack snipe has a very trying habit of pitching down suddenly as if it were badly wounded, when it becomes tempting to the shooter to go and pick it up with his gun at safety. Then the little creature is remarkably hard to move a second time, and thus suspicion becomes apparent certainty, so that when the shooter is about to give up all hope of finding the dead bird the quick one flies slowly away, unharmed by a hasty shot, or by the concentrated language which sometimes is mistakenly supposed to follow. The jack snipe is the comedian of the gunner’s quarry. This 2 oz. bird is not much of a mouthful for a big retriever, and the only reason it is not usually injured by even tender-mouthed dogs is probably because it and all the other species of the family are naturally offensive to the taste of the dog. They never would be retrieved from choice, and the duty has generally to be forced upon the young canine assistant of whatever breed it may be. Not many jack snipe come to us before October, but a few have been found in September, and in every month in the year, which has given rise to the speculation that they might have bred here, but that has never been proved to have occurred by the discovery of eggs. They are migrants from the North, frail creatures which surrender themselves to the wind, and apparently thereby avoid the wave. At any rate, large numbers of them do survive, although doubtless many in adverse winds miss the coasts and perish, like woodcocks, in the Atlantic Ocean. The course in the air taken by these birds is not well known. It has been affirmed that many woodcock arrive first on the north and west coast of Ireland, and most of the jack snipe on the south-east coast, and although we are inclined to regard instinct—and the migratory sense is an instinct—as an uncontrollable impulse which always acts in the same way, it appears to have results that are not to be thus accounted for, and the birds arrive in turn on all the coasts and by various routes.

The Wilson snipe in America is closely allied to our full snipe, although it ranks as a species. It is even more migratory than our own bird, some of which always breed in England, Ireland, and Scotland. But the Wilson snipe leaves the Northern States in the winter and makes its way to the lands warmed by the soft airs off the Gulf of Mexico. Snipe, then, in most of the States are only to be shot in the autumn and spring migrations. Probably the finest snipe shooting ever experienced in America, and only to be matched in India and Burmah, was that obtained by Mr. Pringle in Louisiana, an account of which he has published in book form.

The full snipe generally utters a sharp cry on taking wing, the jack is silent; but the breeding cry of the former differs materially from its note of fright, and at the same time that it utters the former it sometimes shoots downwards and makes another air vibration with its wings or tail. This has been said to be a vocal sound, but the author is quite sure this view would not be held by anyone who watched the bird through a field-glass. It may be seen to descend while making the noise which has given it the rustic name of “heather bleater,” and it does this with a closed bill; but upon occasion it opens its bill, and then the vocal sound, as well as the other, is distinctly heard.

The powers of flight of the full snipe vary with the time of year. The author once knew a grouse shooter of long experience and success who prided himself upon his skill as a snipe shot. When, however, he was for the first time in his life taken to a snipe bog in November, he never let off his gun. The birds, he said, were too wild to shoot; but others shot them, so that it may be said there are snipe and snipe. These birds seem to feed all day and all night too; at any rate they may be found upon their night feeding-grounds at all times of the day, and so fond are they of favoured places that they return to them constantly. Moreover, if one bird is killed on a favoured boring ground, another almost invariably takes his place in a few days if the weather remains the same. If it does not, every snipe in a neighbourhood may be gone in a night. Snipe are dependent upon food they find by boring in soft earth, so that frost compels them to change quarters. As a rule, wet weather disperses snipe all over the mountains and fields; they can then feed anywhere. Frost sends them into the bogs, and still harder frost to the springs, still harder again to the west coasts and to Ireland.

Two occasions have been recorded where snipe collected in hundreds upon dry arable fields, where apparently there was nothing for them to feed upon, and where they returned after a snipe drive had been instituted.

Many are the “certain” methods of getting on terms with these birds, but they are all to be taken with a grain of salt. Whether snipe will lie best when hunted for down or up wind, and whether they should be shot upon the rise or when their twisting is done, are questions to which different and emphatic answers are often given. However, we believe in each by turn and nothing long. The snipe is too changeable a creature to conform to any rule whatever. He is nearest consistency in rising against the wind, but even that depends upon the rate of the wind. When it is only blowing gently, the snipe can rise away from you as you walk down wind; but they cannot do so in heavy breeze, and consequently walking down wind gives the easiest shooting, and sometimes also enables a better approach to be made to the birds. On the other hand, if your feet are cracking up ice, you will probably not get near to the birds however you attempt to approach them, and they can hear you farthest off when you are beating down wind. In very wet bogs a dog will generally flush more snipe than he will point, but when they will lie to a dog, down wind is still the best way, for although your setter will sometimes flush by accident, he will point a great many that otherwise would not rise at all, and this little 4 oz. bird gives out a great scent, one that in favourable conditions enables a dog to find him at 50 and even 100 yards. A curious feature is that young dogs do not object to pointing the game, although they hate to mouth it. Indeed, it is only upon close approach to a dead snipe that a retriever first shows his abhorrence, just as if he were suddenly taken by surprise in his pleasurable anticipation of mouthing the game. In the _Snipe and Woodcock_ of the Fur and Feather Series, Mr. Shaw gives the 1376 snipe killed in the 1880–81 season as the best ever made in the British Islands, but this is nothing compared with Mr. Pringle’s work in Louisiana already referred to. His best season was that of 1874–75, when his own gun killed 6615 snipe. In twenty seasons there he killed to his own gun 69,087 snipe, and his best day, on 11th December 1877, gave a bag of 366 snipe. Britishers may be inclined to doubt whether the Wilson snipe gives the same difficult chances as our own full snipe, but their habits are identical, as also is their flight. Probably, therefore, it may best serve as a guide to shooters if instead of the author attempting to decide which method of beating is the best, he quotes Mr. Pringle’s words, for he surely is the champion snipe shot.

First, then, he preferred full choked hammerless guns by Purdey, and he used No. 9 shot, with sometimes No. 8 in the second barrel. Presumably these were American sizes. When the game was scarce, Mr. Pringle used a pointer or setter in the ordinary way, but when there were lots of snipe he only allowed the dog to point dead, and not to retrieve.

He found that there was great loss of shooting unless he himself walked to the fall of every dead bird, as others would be sure to rise near the spot and get away unshot at when this duty was done by deputy. Then this champion snipe shot preferred to beat down wind with a beater each side of him, but when he beat across the wind, as would be done if the ground was awkward for the other method, he had both beaters down wind of him, because of the habit snipe have of rising into the wind. By having the beaters a little behind him, as well as on the down-wind side, he thus got shots at birds they flushed, which would not have been the case had they been up wind of the gun. When the end of the beat was reached, time was saved by driving back, over the ground already beaten, to take another down-wind beat. The ground must have been particularly sound for good snipe bog. Walking up wind was sometimes necessary, and then the arrangement of the beaters, of which there were two, was the same as for the down-wind beat, but the wilder the snipe were the farther behind the gun the beaters’ line was formed.

Mr. Pringle only used one gun, had no loader, and explains that with a second weapon he could have killed many more birds. Probably most people will not be sorry that he did confine himself to one gun.

The best snipe bag made in England in a day does not at all compare with that from the New Orleans district just quoted. Mr. R. Fellowes is credited with 158 in a day, and Lord Leicester at Holkham, in 1860, with 156 to his own gun in the day. In County Sligo 959 birds were killed in the season 1877–78 by Mr. Edward Gethin; and Mr. Lloyd in 1820 wrote that he accounted for 1310 snipe, whereas Mr. Mottram in the Hebrides in 1884 killed 992 snipe to his own gun by the end of October. Sir R. Payne Gallwey tells us of an Irish bag of 212 birds in a day by one gun before the time of breech-loaders, but does not mention the shooter’s name.

The moon has been credited with a good deal of influence upon the behaviour of snipe; this is on the ground that they cannot feed in the dark. But what is dark to a night bird? Probably there is no such thing; certainly the fly-by-nights do not kill themselves by flying against trees, and more than that, the snipe never does feed by sight. He bores in the ground to feel for the worm; when he has felt its position, he brings out his bill and thrusts it in again in the right spot, and out comes the worm. Then he repeats the process. If these birds are not always hungry, they must stand guard over their favourite boring patches until they get so, for they rarely go away from them to rest upon foodless ground unless they are disturbed either by men, dogs, or weather.

Very few men ever excel in snipe shooting. The actual aiming at a snipe is the difficulty. He may be there when you aim, but is not there when the shot arrives. If you wait until he has done his zigzag flight, he is almost sure to be too far off. If you can shoot just above him, when his wing goes up for a twist, and at a distance of 40 or 45 yards, with No. 8 shot, you will probably kill him. That, however, is not very helpful advice, and the only thing that the author can say that is likely to be so is that the snipe becomes easy, by comparison, when he rises against the wind and shows his white breast to the gunner. The author has killed fourteen August snipe in as many consecutive shots, but he has done no such thing with November snipe on a crisp day, and it would therefore ill become him to say how it can be done, for the very good reason that he does not know.

The snipe is credited with great pace, but in shooting driven snipe it soon becomes evident that they do not require half as much allowance as a partridge. It is the twist that makes pretence that they are actually fast. They are particularly smart and quick, but distinctly not fast in the sense that a driven grouse down wind is speedy.

WOODCOCKS

Woodcock shooting over a team of spaniels is the fox-hunting of shooting, according to Colonel Peter Hawker.

It is generally stated that woodcocks are decreasing in numbers of late years, but this is possibly a mistake. At any rate, Lord Ardilaun has at Ashford made the biggest bag ever known in Ireland only eleven years ago—namely, 205 ’cock in the day; and in 1905 the record bag for Cornwall was accomplished, but this is far from being the record for England also. Still, there is no proof that because a big bag is made in one day that there are as many birds as formerly killed in any one season. Be this as it may, our method of covert shooting is now very much in favour of the woodcocks. Formerly, when they were the principal game of the coverts, the latter used to be beaten as often as it was believed there were woodcocks in them. Now this is by no means the case. Coverts are beaten once, twice, or thrice in a season, and times are fixed with no regard whatever to the woodcocks. If it is an open season, the inland woodcocks are likely enough to be there when the date for pheasant shooting comes; but if hard frost has set in the birds will have gone on to the west coasts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and possibly also many may have passed on into Spain. Then we say it is a bad season in England for woodcocks, but that is merely because we beat our coverts after the bird has flown. Still, possibly the best season for woodcocks in England is that which most favours the killing and also the preservation of the birds, if that is not paradoxical. When they are found all over the country in mild winters, they escape the guns for the most part, because their even distribution does not favour their being looked for of set purpose.

Comparatively few are killed in the pheasant coverts, even if many are seen. The guns are set in the line of flight of the pheasants, and whatever set purpose a migrant woodcock may have by night, his only purpose by day is to have no purpose at all. You can never trust him to go a hundred yards in any one direction, and for this reason he offers more chances to the beaters, who have no guns, than to the sportsmen who have them. On the contrary, when the frost comes early and drives the birds to those shores that know the Gulf Stream, then the woodcocks congregate in coverts, and are made the special objects of the sportsmen’s attentions. The longer the frosts and snows last the more ’cock are killed, and sometimes it happens that a stay is made to these exterminating proceedings by the abject poverty and weakness of the birds. This has occasionally been the case in Ireland, and the fact that these birds were caught by frost and snow on one side, and by the Atlantic on the other, shows that migration is not always salvation to the migrant. Just why the birds became so weak as not to be able to go forward to Spain or Africa, it is difficult to say. But possibly those that get starved in this way are the late arrivals that find themselves weakened by much flying when they first arrive on the Irish coast, and without food can go no farther. Probably those already there when the food begins to get scarce do go on.

Whether the woodcock are generally increasing or not, no doubt there are more home breeding ’cock than formerly. There is scarce a boggy birch wood in Scotland that has not its young woodcock in August, and obviously these birds are bred there. They are not then much good for the table, and if sportsmen would make a rule not to shoot them they would probably increase much faster than they do. Most of the foreign woodcocks come to us in October and November. Then they appear to settle to rest on the first land they see, but they are to be found there only for a few hours, and go on and distribute themselves over their favourite country very quickly. The sea walls and sea banks, especially when rough fringed with grass, are favourite places for these new arrivals, which in Lincolnshire are in good condition when they first come in, but are said to be poor and weak on arrival on the shores of Devon. In Ireland the first arrivals, and the majority, settle on the extreme north. Next in proportion, lighthouse information shows, they arrive by the west coast. The snipe also arrive mostly from the north, but the jack snipe come in largest numbers to the south-east coast of Ireland. This points to the conclusion that woodcock arrive mostly from Scotland, and it is suggested that those which breed farthest north first move south by stress of weather. It is also suggested that our home-bred woodcock do not remain in the winter, but move late in August or early in September. These contentions are evidently conflicting, and it is probable that the first is right, and that our home-bred birds remain where food and shelter is plentiful, and only move when they are not. The absence of home-bred birds in certain coverts in September has often been noted after they have been constantly observed in August, but this can often be accounted for by the springs running dry in the latter part of August, and available food being consequently scarce. The old birds are said to moult in September, and if this is correct it is a very good reason why they should be difficult to find then; and if this habit is invariable, it would be clear evidence against the home-breeding birds migrating in that month.

It appears that woodcock can be encouraged by planting in suitable places, and that this encouragement is not only to the migrants, but induces more birds to remain and breed here. The increase of the latter habit has been a startling and pleasing fact in natural history. Its originating cause is not known, but that an enormous increase has taken place is freely admitted. As the birds themselves have started this habit, it appears that it is only necessary to spare large numbers of these natives to still further increase the number of home-breeding ’cock.

But no way of distinguishing them when on the wing seems to be possible, although most useful work has been done by the Duke of Northumberland, at Alnwick, in placing a metal ring round a leg of all young woodcock found there. Amongst other things thus established is that the movements of birds seem to be governed by no law capable of definition. For instance, a bird bred at Alnwick has been shot in the Highlands of Scotland, whereas others have been shot in the extreme south of England, and another in Ireland. But the strangest part of the story is that most of them do not appear to have been shot at all. Perhaps in that fact may lie the explanation why the home breeding of woodcocks increases.

It has been said that coverts devoted to pheasants save the lives of many ’cock, but it is also said that these birds do not like coverts in which there are many pheasants. It is suggested that the pheasants eat all the food, such as insects and worms, to be found under the dead leaves. There appears to be very little in this contention. A woodcock in covert is generally a woodcock asleep and not feeding. When flushed he is as foolish as a daylight owl. But in hard weather, when he has been unable to get enough food by night, and is compelled to feed in the daytime also, and when you find him on the brook-side, he is no fool then, and can fly as quickly as a snipe, and is as much on the alert. The difference in manner proves that the woodcocks are very rarely feeding when flushed by the beaters. In Ireland and the west of Scotland the warm heather-clad hills hold the woodcock more than the coverts do, until the birds are driven by snow or hail to the woods. Rain and mist will afterwards drive the ’cock out of the coverts and back to the hills, but it is thought that at Ashford fewer go back to the heather on each occasion, so that the longer shooting is delayed in January the more birds there are in those coverts.

Woodcocks lay four eggs; they pair, probably have two broods each season, and they are in the habit of carrying the young birds out to the feeding-grounds. They hold them by various methods: sometimes they clasp them to the breast by the pressure of the bill, sometimes they clasp them between the legs or thigh. One woodcock has been seen to carry two young birds together, one by each of the methods described.

Probably no bird gives a more easy shot than a woodcock, and at the same time none is so often missed. The reason may be that shooters are inclined to shoot at twice the distance (at what they consider the “come-by-chance”) that they fire at the game bred on and by the estate. They are also frequently a little excited by the cry of ’cock, and besides this, the birds have a queer habit of twisting round any tree trunk or bush that happens to be near. These side darts are made with a good deal of pace, even by birds that have been flying like owls. They seem to be the outcome of sudden impulse; it would not be correct to call them sudden resolutions, because whatever they are due to they are liable to constant change. These twists are often at right angles to the previous flight. The birds seldom go far in one direction, but have often been known to take a flight of half a mile, with several of these right-angle turns in it, and to settle after all within a few yards of the place whence they were flushed.

The shooting of the woodcocks over setters or spaniels in the heather is extremely pretty work, but only a dog experienced on this kind of game is of much use. In covert the woodcock is rarely shot to spaniels, except in South Wales. The usual plan is a party of guns and beaters, and Lord Ardilaun hardly ever uses canine retrievers. The rocks make marking essential, and it is found that good markers are preferable to good dogs in ground so rough as to be difficult for the latter.