Life and sport in China / Second Edition

by Oliver George Ready

The snipe-shooting cannot be surpassed anywhere in the world. In spring, after spending the winter in rich southern climes, these birds, following the returning warmth, slowly migrate to Siberia for nesting. They pass through Central China during May, arriving almost simultaneously, when for about three weeks one can have superb sport, and then they depart as suddenly as they came. One day they will swarm, and the next hardly a bird is to be seen.

Snipe-shooting at home one always associates with long boots, cold water, mud and marshes. Spring snipe-shooting in China is of a totally different kind.

Imagine a bright, warm day, with the sun almost too powerful, dry meadows with fresh, green grass, and clover about six inches high, fields of wheat and barley in ear and beans in flower, all Nature at her best. You take your gun with a plentiful supply of cartridges, a coolie to carry bottled beer and sandwiches and to pick up the birds, and sally forth into the meadows and fields, dressed in an ordinary light summer suit or flannels, terai hat and low shoes, with the bottoms of your trousers tucked into your socks to keep out the insects.

You have not gone far before one, two—half a dozen birds rise within easy range, and perhaps you make a right and left. What birds they are, too, fat as butter!—in fact, so fat and heavy that they often rip quite open merely from the force of falling to the ground. In this way you go on, firing until the gun becomes so hot that every now and then you must wait to let the barrels cool. My best bag for one day was forty-one and a half couples, but this has been doubled by sports who have shot to make a record.

Autumn snipe, or spring snipe returned, on passing from Siberia to winter in the south, are not usually in very good condition, owing probably to the nature of the country from which they come, and strangely enough they appear to be less numerous and do not arrive so simultaneously as the spring birds, though remaining longer, many staying on through the winter. These do not frequent the dry meadows and fields, but belong to the long boots, mud and marsh category.

I have never seen but one jack snipe, though the painted variety is fairly common.

In the neighbourhood of a creek seven miles below Hankow is to be had the best spring snipe-shooting that I know of. One bright May morning, in response to the invitation of an old friend, I joined him and two other guests aboard his house-boat and sailed down the Yangtse to this well-known spot. On landing I shouldered my bag, containing fifty cartridges, and told my coolie to bring a new box of a hundred in the game-bag.

The plan was to send the house-boat to a place three or four miles further down river, where, after shooting through the fields, the guns would meet for tiffin.

Just as the lowdah was casting off our host asked if he might put a few bottles of beer into my game-bag as it was a warm and thirsty morning; so, to make room, and thinking that the snipe had not yet fully arrived, in which case the spare cartridges would not be required, they were replaced on board. We had not, however, walked many yards along the river bank before it became apparent that there were any number of birds, and I already regretted having so few cartridges with me. After crossing the creek in a crazy sampan the party separated, each taking his own line of country. Presently a tremendous fusillade commenced from all the others, and as the snipe were rising around them continually and making for a large swamp to my left, I concealed myself in some millet, where, the birds coming before the wind directly over my head, I enjoyed for half an hour or so some excellent shooting and made a number of very sporting shots.

I now started for the swamp, but ere reaching it passed through some grass patches between fields of barley and beans. The birds here rose by the dozen, and standing on the same spot, without advancing a yard, I shot eight, which were all on the ground at one time. My gun became so hot that it was necessary to open it to let the barrels cool, while the cartridges were all gone in less than an hour, so that carrying my now useless weapon and boiling with rage, I had to start in pursuit of the house-boat, with the shots of the others ringing merrily all round, the snipe rising at almost every step, and the coolie laden with beer and dead birds lagging far behind.