Woodcock are often found in bamboo groves from which it is generally hard to flush them, while the cover is so thick that it is impossible to shoot until they come out, though be it only for an instant, when, topping the bamboos, they alight again on the opposite side. I have spent nearly an hour in killing a brace which, although I saw perhaps twenty times, I had the greatest difficulty in getting a snap at. They also frequent pine woods and heather on the hills, and are identical in appearance with the woodcock found in England.
During a severe winter at Chinkiang, word was brought in by natives that some children had been carried off by "dog-headed tigers," which monsters, after making lengthy inquiries, we assumed to be wolves.
With a view to getting a shot at these brutes, a friend and I went out overnight to the community bungalow, a distance of seven miles, and in the morning ranged warily through the pines and over the snow-clad hills, seeking for traces of the man-eaters, being joined towards noon by the British Consul. Carrying my twelve-bore fowling-piece loaded with a bullet in the right barrel and a charge of big shot in the left, the latter being full-choke, I was passing along the side of a steep hill at the foot of which, and some fifty feet below me, lay a frozen stream, when my dog-coolie, pointing downwards, cried, "Look at the fish!"
Beneath the clear ice, of perhaps a quarter of an inch in thickness, a mass of fish was swimming with the current. Instinctively I fired the left barrel at them, and was greatly surprised to behold a jet of water, broken ice and fish shoot up two or three feet high from a hole made by the shot. The dog-coolie rushed down and filled his cap with our unexpected prey, which we subsequently found to number twenty-two, varying from about two to four ounces in weight each. Concussion from the blow on the ice had stunned many, but others were bleeding from shot wounds.
After a fruitless search for the "dog-headed tigers" we walked back to Chinkiang that evening.
The cold weather having brought wildfowl of all descriptions I was off betimes next morning to some islands in the Yangtse, a few miles down river. An hour's sailing with wind and stream brought me to the desired spot, where I landed on the sandy beach, when my dog, glad to escape from confinement on board, ran to the top of a high dyke, or wall for preventing floods, some hundred yards distant, and put up hundreds of wild geese which had been preening themselves in the sun on the other side, where they had also found shelter from the cutting wind. The mighty roar of wings was the first intimation I had of their presence, and as they were well out of range, my dog came in for a reminder that his place for the time being was close to heel. Had they not been thus scared away I could have walked unobserved to within five yards of them.
Following the beach a little above high-water mark, I presently came to several small ponds surrounded with willows, out of the first of which some teal rose in a close bunch, when firing into the brown I knocked them all down except one, and that I accounted for with the other barrel. Falling into the pond, some that were winged gave a good deal of trouble by diving, but eventually they were all secured, being eight in number. Several ducks were scared away by my shots, but I here added half-a-dozen snipe to the bag.
Coming to some wide ditches choked with reeds and willows my dog put out pheasant after pheasant, but as they generally got up on the opposite side, where there was no gun, I only managed to secure seven, besides two woodcock.
While eating my lunch of sandwiches under the lee of a reedstack, I observed that numerous flights of wildfowl on passing from one branch of the river to another crossed a low, marshy corner of the island, so that presently I made my way there and crouched down amongst the rushes behind a dyke, having a small lagoon immediately at my back. Mallard, widgeon and many other kinds of fowl came over in such quick succession that for two hours I was kept fully occupied, and it was highly gratifying to hear a heavy splash in the lagoon after each successful shot.
As soon as the light began to fail I ceased firing and retrieved my birds, which numbered twenty-seven, including several varieties of fish ducks with serrated bills and, as I have subsequently learnt although then mistaking them for large divers, three goosanders. On my way back to the house-boat I surprised and shot a goose which was feeding close under the river bank, so that my total bag consisted of fifty-one head, and I always look back on that day as one of the most enjoyable I have ever spent.