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.