Snipe And Woodcock

ifficult subject. I must do my best from my own point of view, and, with the foreknowledge that a certain proportion of readers are sure to differ from me in details, console myself with the reflection that I shall but be in the same gallery as that occupied by other scribes who have gone before. Let me first of all take into consideration the question of armament. I have at times regularly used a 2o-bore, a i6-bore, and a 12-bore on snipe (I have also killed snipe withsuch extremes as a -410 and a 6) and have seen a good deal of the performance of small bores, for snipe shooting, in other hands ; and the conviction I have had forced upon me is that an average shot will kill fifteen or twenty per cent. more birds with a i2-bore than with a 2o-bore. Snipe shooting is a different thing from nearly every other kind of shooting. A first-class shot can walk up September partridges and kill nearly as large, never quite as large, a proportion of birds with a 2o-bore as he would kill if shooting with a 12-bore. Such shooting is a matter of pure skill; if the gun is held right, the bird comes down. Snipe shooting is very often not a matter of pure skill ' though the gun is held right, the bird may escape scot-free. The partridge does not twist; the snipe does twist; and it is this twisting habit of the latter bird that gives the 12-bore its great superiority over the 2o-bore as a gun for snipe. Of those snipe which twist as the shot is fired, or the instant after the... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.