such heavy bags as the Common Snipe. I know a good many
places in the North-West Provinces where a good shot could,
to this day, easily, with a breech-loader and tight charges, bag
his seventy-five couple between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M., and a good
many places where he could go on doing this for several
successive days, and yet not exhaust the ground. In my time
I have visited all the best grounds within twenty miles of
Calcutta. When Mr. Russell was Collector of Jessore, (and
India has seen few better or more persevering Snipe-shots)
I visited, under his guidance, most of the best Snipe grounds
in that neighbourhood ; and in Dacca, too, I shot for nearly a
month in the best Snipe swamps, but I have never anywhere
seen anything like the masses of Pintail gathered into one
neighbourhood that I have of Common Snipe in parts of the
Doab,
A recent writer gave a diary of the results of eighteen days'
Snipe-shooting about Calcutta between the 14th of September
and the 21st of March, showing a daily average of 33 couple
to two guns. There is a single locality in the Meerut, two in
the Bulandshahr, two in the Aligarh district, &c, where two
good shots, shooting thus once a week through the best part of
the season, would certainly average eighty, and probably more,
nearly one hundred couple per diem. Of course these are
out-of-the-way places, far from the head-quarters of the district,
and unlikely to be visited by other sportsmen ; but in one single
spot in the Meerut district, on the Boorha Gunga, in the
neighbourhood of Hastinapur, to my certain knowledge, over
7 0 0 couple of Common Snipe were bagged during December
1S50 by different parties who visited the place. Of course,
there were many guns out—some good, some bad, some days
as few as two, some days as many as seven. And there was
shooting on ten different days, and the average per gun per
diem was considerably less than twenty couple. But I have
never even heard of any one place in Bengal, Burma or
Southern India* where anything like this bag of Pintail could
have been made by any number of guns. And I think I am
correct in saying that the Pintail never masses in such enormous
numbers as the Common Snipe not unfrequcntly does
in favorable situations in Upper India.
It is not much use giving sportsmen in India advice as
to how to wind and work Snipe ; here where every one shoots
Snipe, and where Snipe afford so often the chief available
sport, every man has his own opinion as to the vexed ques-
* For instance Major C. Mclnroy writes : " The largest bags I know of in the
Mysore Province within the last 25 years have not exceeded 60 couple to two guns ;
but I do not give this as necessarily correct, for many bays may have been made
of which I have not heard. I once, shooting badly, bagged 20 couple in about
three and a half or four hours, but was unable to go on for I had to move camp."
Again Mr. Oatcs says : "The largest bag made in Lower Pegu docs not often
exceed 20 Couple."
tion of working on or off a wind, and really with Snipe massed,
as ours so commonly are, and lying as they do lie in the
Indian noontide glare, and with the almost entire absence
of wind during the middle of most cold-season days inland,
it matters very little, if you only hold the gun straight, ho*v
you work them.
But on one or two points a word of caution may not be out
of place.
As a rule men waste an incredible amount of ammunition
and tire themselves out by using too heavy charges. In the
old muzzle-loader days, with 12 and even 10 bore guns, I have
often and often, after completing my fifty couple ivilh difficulty,
had to leave off, solely owing to the terrible headache
induced by the repeated discharges of the gun, and that
perhaps before 2 o'clock, whilst half the ground or more
remained utterly untouched. Had I then known what I know
now, and had the guns now available been so then, I could
often have certainly bagged a hundred couple. A twenty or
twenty-four bore breech-loader, with the left barrel half choke,
rather heavy in metal, is best I think for Snipe. With this
have two sizes of cartridges, one dram of powder and half an
ounce of No. 10 shot, and one and a half drams of powder and
three-fourths of an ounce of No. 7 shot. With these charges, if
the gun is a good one, you can kill Snipe as well, and as far as
is ever necessary, and you may fire off such cartridges out of
such a gun two or three hundred times in a day without the
smallest inconvenience.
Wild buffalo have grown rarer during the last thirty years,
but when I as a youngster shot Snipe in the Dacca district,
it was no very uncommon incident to be suddenly charged
out of a mass of bulrushes by a cantankerous old Urna,
and we always kept a rifle close behind us in localities where
such mar-sports were rumoured to abide. Probably much the
same is the case to this day in many parts of Assam.
Once, when four of us had gathered together for a moment
close to a dense clump of rush, without warning, from the
very edge of the cover, not thirty yards distant from us, out
charged an Urna. Our men were all with us ; our rifles were in
our hands in a second ; six shots were fired almost simultaneously,
and the great mud-coated brute fell on his knees
almost within touching distance, and rolled over dead. The
curious thing was, that only one ball had taken any real effect ;
one had missed altogether, one had lodged in the right side
of the neck, one in the ribs, and three had struck the forehead.
All the balls, but one, had been about No. 12 round leaden
bullets fired from six-groove barrels ; the sixth was a clumsy
three-ounce cone, hardened with type metal fired from a twogroove
rifle, and this one had gone straight into the brain, the
other two flattening themselves under the skin on the skull.