SPRING SNIPE SHOOTING OF 1850.

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BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF “WARWICK WOODLANDS,” “MY SHOOTING BOX,” ETC.

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It is a singular thing, and one which elucidates the great research necessary, and the extreme difficulties encountered, in the attempt to establish facts of natural history with regard to birds of passage, that this beautiful little bird, the general favorite of the sportsman and the epicure, well known to all classes of men, and a visitant, in some one of its closely allied varieties, of every known nation, is still a mystery, as regards some of its habits, and continues to baffle the inquiries of the most learned and inquisitive ornithologists.

Its habits, the nature of its food, and therefore the necessities of its existence, render it an inhabitant of temperate climates, and of regions in which the moist and loamy soil, from which it derives its sustenance of small worms, insects, and the like, is not frozen during the period of its visitations so hard as to preclude its boring with its delicate and sensitive bill for its semi-aquatic prey of worms and larvæ.

Still, as extreme cold prevents it from obtaining subsistence, extreme heat would appear to be still less congenial to its tastes or temperament; for, whereas it lingers in the north until autumnal frosts seal up the marshes and the soft stream margins against its probing bill, it flies from its winter quarters in the rice-fields of Carolina and Georgia, and the farther morasses of Texas and New Mexico, the instant that opening spring admits of its return to the fresh meadows and pure rivulets of the north-east.

The winter quarters of this bird, then, are fairly ascertained, ranging from Carolina southward until almost the northern limits of the Tropics; thence, so soon as the blue-bird begins to pipe in the apple-trees, the shad to appear in the rivers, the willow-buds to turn yellow, and the frogs to croak and chirrup, with us to the northward, the snipe is seen everywhere, hurrying, according to the progress of the season, singly, in whisps of ten or twelve, or in huge flights, ever, ever, northwardly. In Maryland, in Delaware, in southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he is wont to appear from the 1st to the 20th of March; in New York and New Jersey northward, from the 15th of March to the 20th of April, remaining for a longer or shorter period according to the steadiness of the weather, the state of the ground as regards wet or drought, and the geniality of the season. In mild, soft, temperate, moist seasons, with a prevalence of westerly weather, he will linger with us into the lap of June; and in such seasons, more or less, he woos his mate, nidificates and rears his young among us, from the Raritan and the Passaic northward and eastward to the Great Lakes, and throughout Michigan, Wisconsin probably, and Canada west, up far into the Arctic Circles.

Still, those which breed with us in the United States, and even in the Canadas, are but as drops of water to an ocean, to those which rush on the untiring pinions moved by amatory instinct to the far breeding grounds of Labrador, Symsonia, and Boothia Felix, where it is supposed they resort to rear their young in hyperborean solitude, thence to reissue, in the summer and the earlier autumn, and re-populate our midland meadows.

In the neighborhood of Amherstburg, Canada west, they appear very early; often in February of mild seasons, always in March; and there may breed, and remain until banished by severe cold. I shot one there myself last autumn, the last bird of the season, very late in November, I believe on the 28th or 29th; and with the plover, the Hudsonian godwit, and the Esquimaux curlew, they were seen there this spring in the first days of March.

Around Quebec, I have shot English snipe on the uplands, in fallow fields and rushy pastures—for the grass in the morasses does not begin to shoot in those far northern latitudes, so as to afford them shelter, until much later in the year—in the end of April and the beginning of May; but they arrive there only by small scattered whisps, or single birds, tarry a few short days, and flit onward to their unknown destination.

This, then, is their mystery—that in no known land are they perennial; in no ascertained region—so far as I can learn—are they positively known to breed in the vast concourses which must breed somewhere, in order to supply the prodigious flights which issue yearly from the northern regions of three continents, Europe, America, and Asia, to fill the warmer countries, and to be slaughtered literally by myriads, season after season, without undergoing much if any visible diminution of numbers.

Ever, in all places, in all countries, in all continents, which they visit in spring, they are seen pressing northward still, from March until May; no one being able to say here ends their tide of emigration, this is their chosen resting place.

Their breeding season is from the middle of May to the beginning of July; on the 4th of which month I have shot young birds, with the pin-feathers undeveloped, as large as the parents—these birds having been hatched on the ground whereon I killed them. Indeed, it is my opinion, that all birds which tarry in our latitudes beyond the 10th of May, either do breed with us, or would do so but for the persecution of the pot-hunter—all which intend to steer farther north having departed ere that time.

About the 15th of July the returning hordes, young birds and old together, full grown and in fine condition, begin to reappear in the marshes of Quebec and its vicinity, which may be said to be the extremest northern point from which we have continuous and authentic annual information of their appearance. At that time the slaughter of the snipe on the marshes of Chateau Richer, and of the islands farther down the St. Lawrence, is prodigious. There they linger until the frosts become so severe as to drive them from their feeding-grounds, which generally takes place early in September, from which time, throughout that month, all October, and a portion—more or less according to the season—of November, and even December, every likely swamp, morass, and feeding-ground of Canada west, of the western, midland, and eastern states, from which they are not persecuted and banished by the incessant banging of pot-hunters and idle village boys, swarms with them, in quantities sufficient to afford sport to hundreds, and a delicacy to thousands of our inhabitants, if they were protected from useless and unmeaning persecution, by which alone they are prevented from being as numerous among us as at any former period.

For I am well assured, that, unlike the woodcock, which, breeding in our midst, and dwelling with us for months at a time, is annually slaughtered while breeding, hatching, or immature, and is thus in rapid progress toward extirpation—the snipe, unmolested in its breeding-grounds, is not diminished in its numerical production, but is rendered scarcer in thickly settled districts, nigh to large towns, by incessant harassing, which drives it to remoter and securer feeding-grounds.

I do not mean by this, however, to assert that the abolition of spring snipe-shooting would not be an advantage—on the contrary, I am convinced that it would; although well assured that no such measure can be hoped at the hands of our legislators; for, as the snipe ordinarily lays four eggs, the destruction of each one of the breeders on their way northward, of course diminishes the stock of the coming season by five birds.

So much for the times and places of the snipe’s migrations. Of his appearance or characteristics—so well is he known—it is almost useless to speak! It may, however, be well to observe that although commonly termed the English Snipe, our bird is a thorough native American, differing from the bird of Europe in being about one inch smaller in every way, and in having two more feathers, sixteen instead of fourteen, in the tail. In other minute, but still permanent, and therefore characteristic distinctions, it differs from the Asiatic and Antarctic snipes; although in their rapid, zigzag flight and shrill squeak when flushed; in their irregular soaring through the air in gloomy weather; in their perpendicular towering and plumb descent, their drumming with the wing-feathers, and bleating with the voice, during the breeding-season, all the species or varieties so closely resemble each other that they are far more easily confounded than distinguished by the unscientific sportsman.

The American bird has, however, two or three habits, during early spring-shooting, which I have never observed in the European species, nor seen noticed in any work of natural history; the first of these is frequenting underwood and bushy covert abounding in springs and intersected by cattle-tracks, and occasionally even high woods, during wild, stormy, and dark weather, especially when snow-squalls are driving; and this is a habit of the bird meriting the attention of the sportsman, as in such weather, when he finds no birds on the open and unsheltered marshes, he will do well to beat the neighboring underwoods, if any, and if not, the nearest swampy woodlands; by doing which he will oftentimes fill his bag when he despairs of any sport. The second habit is that of alighting, not unfrequently, on rail-fences, or stumps, and even on high trees, which I think I can safely assert that the European bird never does; and the third is the utterance, when in the act of skimming over the meadows, after soaring, bleating, and drumming for an hour at a stretch in mid air, of “a sharp reiterated chatter, consisting of a quick, jarring repetition of the syllables, kek-kek-kek-kek-kek, many times in succession, with a rising and falling inflection, like that of a hen which has just laid an egg.”^[5]

There is no Jack Snipe in America, though many persons ignorantly and obstinately assert the reverse; the true Jack Snipe being a northern bird of Europe and Asia, visiting the milder climates during the hard weather. It is an exact counterpart of the English Snipe, only about one-half smaller; it never utters any cry on rising, and rarely flies above one hundred yards, often dropping within fifty feet of the muzzle of a gun just discharged at it, although unwounded. The bird which is here confounded with it, is the Pectoral Sandpiper, a bird about one-third smaller than the snipe, of a lighter brown, with a short, arched bill, and a feeble, quavering whistle. It is found indiscriminately on the sea-shore, and in upland marshes; I have shot it from Lake Huron to the Penobscot, and the Capes of the Delaware; it lies well before dogs, which will point it, and is a good bird on the table. It is known in Long Island as the “Meadow Snipe” and the “Short Neck,” in New Jersey, and thence westward, as the “Fat Bird,” or “Jack Snipe” indiscriminately. It is not a snipe at all, but a Sandpiper, Tringa Pectoralis.

The only other true snipe ascertained to exist in America, is the Red Breasted Snipe, Scolopax Noveboracensis, better known as the “Dowitcher,” an unmeaning name, adopted and persevered in by the Baymen, or as the “Quail Snipe.” At Egg Harbor the gunners call it the “Brown-back.” It is found only on the salt marshes, and is never hunted with dogs but shot from ambush over decoys.

It appears, then, that the coming and stay of the common snipe in our districts, in spring, is very uncertain, and dependent on the state and steadiness of the weather. Some seasons, they will stay for weeks on the moist, muddy flats among the young and succulent herbage, growing fat and lazy, lying well to the dog, and affording great sport. Sometimes they will merely alight, feed, rest, and resume their flight, never giving the sportsman a chance even of knowing that they have been, and are gone, except by their chalkings and borings where they have fed. Again, at other seasons, they will lie singly, or in scattered whisps on the uplands, in fallow fields, even among stunted brushwood, lurking perdu all day, and resorting to the marshes by night, leaving the traces of their presence in multitudes, to perplex the sportsman, who, perhaps, beats the ground for them, day after day, only to find that they were, but are not.

This variance in the habit of the snipe it is, which makes him so hard a bird to kill; for, although he is perplexing from his rapid and twisting flight to a novice, I consider him, to a cool old hand, as easy a bird to kill as any that flies. The snipe invariably rises against or across wind, and in doing so hangs for an instant on the air before he can gather his way; that instant is the time in which to shoot him, and that trick of rising against wind is his bane with the accomplished shot and sportsman, for by beating down the wind, keeping his brace of dogs quartering the ground before him, across the wind, so that they will still have the air in their noses, he compels the bird to rise before him, and cross to the right on the left hand, affording him a clear and close shot, instead of whistling straight away up wind, dead ahead of him, exposing the smallest surface to his aim, and frequently getting off without a shot, as it will constantly do, if the shooter beats up wind, even with the best and steadiest dogs in the world. The knack of shooting snipe, as some people who can’t do it choose to call it, is no other than the knack of shooting quick, shooting straight, and shooting well ahead of cross shots—this done with a gun that will throw its charge close at 40 to 50 yards, with 1½ oz. of No. 8 shot, equal measures of shot and of Brough’s diamond-grain powder will fetch three snipe out of every five, which is great work, in spite of what the cockneys say, who pick their shots, never firing at a hard bird, or one over twenty paces away, and then boast of killing twenty shots in succession. Verbum sap.

The great difference of the grounds to be beaten in different weathers; the difficulty in determining which ground to assign to which day; the immense extent of country to be traversed, if birds are scarce or wild, or if there are many varieties of soil, covert, and feeding in one range, and the sportsman fail in his two or three first beats in finding game, and therefore have to persevere till he do find them, these, and the hardness of the walking in rotten quagmires and deep morasses, affording no sure foot-hold, and often knee-deep in water, these it is which make successful snipe-shooting one of the greatest feats in the art, and the crack snipe-finder and snipe-killer—for the two are one, or rather the second depends mainly on the first—one of the first, if not the first artist in the line.

It is from this necessity of beating, oftentimes, very extensive tracts of land before finding birds, and therefore of beating very rapidly if you would find birds betimes, that I so greatly prefer and recommend the use of very fast, very highly-bred, and very far-ranging setters, to that of any pointer in the world, for snipe-shooting in the open—apart from their great superiority over the pointer in hardihood, endurance of cold, powers of retrieving, beauty and good-nature.

Of course, speaking of dogs, whether setter, pointer, dropper, or cocking-spaniel, it is understood that we speak of dogs of equal qualities of nose, staunchness to the point, and steadiness at coming to the charge the instant a shot is fired. No dog which does not do all these things habitually, and of course, is worth the rope that should hang him; and no man is worthy the name of a shot or a sportsman, who cannot, and does not, keep his dogs, whether setters, pointers, or cockers, under such command that he can turn them to the right or left, bring them to heel, stop them, or down charge them, at two hundred yards distance if it be needful.

If these things, then, be equal, as they can be made equal, though I admit a setter to be more difficultly kept in discipline than a pointer—the fastest setter you can get, is the best dog for snipe-shooting; his superiority, in other points, infinitely counterbalancing the greater trouble it requires to break and control him. I am well aware that it has been said, and that by authorities, that the best dog over which to shoot snipe, is an old, slow, broken-down, staunch pointer, who crawls along at a foot’s pace, and never misses, overruns, or flushes a bird.

And so, in two cases, he is; but in one case, no dog is just as good as he is, and in the other, the argument is one of incapacity to use what is best, and therefore is no argument.

If birds are so thick on the grounds, and so tame that you can fill your bag in walking over one or two acres at a foot’s pace, a very slow pointer is better than fast setters—but no dog at all, your walking up your birds yourself, which you can do just as quickly as the dog can, is better than the slow pointer. Indeed, on very small grounds, very thickly stocked, it is by far the most killing way to use no dog, but to walk up the birds.

If a man is so weak and infirm of purpose, or so ignorant of the first principles of his art, as to be unable to control his setters, he must, I suppose, use a slow pointer; but it cannot matter what dog such a man uses, he never can be a sportsman.

If there be a hundred birds lying, and lying well on one acre of feeding-ground, the birds can be killed without a dog, or with a slow dog, as you will; any man who can pull a trigger must fill his bag.

If there be a hundred birds scattered, wild, over five hundred acres of ground, where are you with your slow dog, or your no dog? Just no where. While you are painfully picking up your three or four birds with your slow pointer, your true sportsman, and slashing walker, with his racing up-head and down-stern setters, will have found fifty, and bagged twenty-five or thirty.

There are ten days in a season when birds are wild and sparse, for one when they are congregated and lie hard; and the argument comes to this, that when birds can be killed with ease, even without a dog at all, a slow pointer is the best; when they are difficult to find, and hard to kill, even by a crack shot, the slow pointer is no where, and of no use, while the racing setters will fill the bag to a certainty.

For my own part, I can say to a certainty, that I have had more sport, and killed more birds, by many, many times, when birds have been widely scattered, and difficult to find, and when I have walked half or a quarter of a mile between every shot fired, than I ever have when birds have lain close, and jumped up at every pace under my feet; and for a simple reason, that the places in which birds so rise and lie, are rare and of small extent, and the days on which they do so few and far apart.

Therefore I say, friend—for all true sportsmen I hold friends—choose well thy day, when the air is soft and genial, the wind south-westerly, the meadows green with succulent and tender grasses, and moist with the deposit of subsiding waters—select thy grounds carefully; in such a time as I have named, the wide and open marsh meadows; but if the wind be from the eastward, cold, squally and snow laden, then try the bushy, briary brakes, where cattle poach the soil, and the marsh waters creep, or the verge of the meadows, under the lea of the maple swamp, or at the worst the very grounds where you would beat for woodcock in July—begin from the farthest windward point of thy beat, casting thy brace of setters off from thy heel, to the right and left, and so often as they have diverged one hundred yards, taming them with a whistle and a wave of the hand, so that they shall cross continually before thy face, down wind of thee, at some thirty paces distant; and so persevere—if birds be plenty and lie well, walking not to exceed two miles the hour; if they be rare and wild, four miles, or by ’r lady! five, if thou mayest compass it. If one dog stand, while the other’s back is turned, whistle, that he shall turn his head, then hold thy hand aloft, with one quiet “toho!” but no shooting; if he be broke, he shall stand like a carved stone. Then walk up to the point leisurely, be sure that thou go down wind, making a circuit if needs be, with thy gun at half-cock, the ball of thy thumb on the hammer, and the nail of thy fore-finger inside the guard, but not upon the trigger. When the bird rises, cock your gun, and down him! If thy dogs do their devoir, they shall drop to the charge unbidden; if they do not, raise thy hand with an imperious gesture, and cry coolly and calmly “down charge;” but however ill they behave, nay! even if they run in and eat thy bird, move not till thy gun is loaded; then calmly walk up to them, drag them, pitilessly scourging them all the way, to the place where they should have charged, and rate them in the best of thy dog-language. I say “scourging them pitilessly,” because that is, in truth, the merciful course; for so one or two whippings will suffice, instead of constant small chastisement and irritation, which spoil a dog’s temper and break his spirit, without conquering his obstinacy, or gaining the ascendancy over him.

If, on the contrary, they charge as decent dogs should and do charge, so soon as thy gun be loaded, lift them, with a “Hold up, good lads!” and cast them gently onward, checking them with a “Steady, dogs!” if they show disposition to be rash, until they point the dead bird, if killed, or draw on him, if running. Then, with a “Toho! Steady!” walk to their point; pick up the bird under their noses, praising them the while, or bid them “Fetch!” according to the circumstances of the case; but if they retrieve the bird without pointing him, or even after pointing him, until told to “fetch,” let chastisement not hide her head.

This, rest assured, friend is the way to do it.

For the rest, whether thou wear fen-boots, or shoes and trowsers, or, as I use, by deliberate preference, arch-boots, corduroy shorts, and leggins, suit thine own fancy; but let thy shooting-jacket be roomy on the chest and shoulders, and well supplied with ample pockets. Let thy gun be—for my choice—of 31 inches, 12 or 14 gauge, 7¾ to 8 pounds. Let thy powder be Brough’s diamond grain, or John Hall’s glass—on no account any other—thou mayest get it of Henry T. Cooper, in Broadway, New York—thy shot No. 8—thy caps Starkey’s central fire, or Moore & Gray’s, or Westley Richards’—by no means French, or Walker’s, the first of which fly, while the latter are, I think, corrosive. Forget not to have in thy pocket a dog-whip, a stout knife, a yard or two of strong cord, a pocket-flask, replenished, as thou wilt, with old Otard, or as I recommend thee, Ferintosh or Glenlivat whisky—stick in the seam of thy waistcoat a strong darning-needle, headed with sealing-wax, it is the only true and responsible gun-picker; and so, good sport to thee, and health and temper to enjoy it!—as good sport, gentle reader, as I trust myself to enjoy this coming week of April, the rain-gods and the river-gods permitting, and the nymphs remembering us, as their long-time adorer, in their kind orisons.

The Cedars, March 25, 1850.