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.