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SNIPE AND WILDFOWL SHOOTING IN THE WEST

OF IRELAND.

BY GILFRID HARTLEY.

WEATHER is so intimately connected with snipe shooting that I need hardly apologise for referring to it, but it is not an interesting topic, and I will make only one good growl and have done with it. From our point of view it was-up to Christmas at any rate-deplorable; one calm mellow day succeeded another; one week without almost a breath of wind followed another week: "A fine day, thank God!" was the daily greeting of the country folk. I waited once for more than a month before I got a suitable-a fairly rough -day to move the duck on the lakes. Under the influence of this premature spring a good many birds left the district; why they did I never could understand; they had fine and ample feedinggrounds, and they were not disturbed here more than in other places; in the "preserves" they were often not disturbed at at all. All we wanted was ordinary rough winter weather, with a little touch of frost now and then, which did not seem very much to expect at this time of the year. The Atlantic lay on our flank; our nearest neighbour on the west lived in Newfoundland. The Atlantic was rough enough at times, but it was from wind perhaps hundreds of miles out

side; it was quite a common thing to see a very heavy sea thundering in among the rocks on that dangerous coast on days when on the mainland there was hardly a zephyr blowing with strength enough to put out a match. The fine weather brought other troubles in its train: it is strange to think that iron ore, dug out of Cumberland or Lancashire fellsides, or floated over from the mines on the Bidassoa, should interfere with a man shooting snipe in Ireland; and when I was told that the basic slag used by the farmers here did harm, I paid little attention to the warning. There were so many fields, But then there are so many farms. This slag, a product of the blast-furnaces, is sold at a low price at the seaports along the coast, and sown to a large extent over the coarse grass land, liberally often, that the passerby through places so treated raises a little cloud of evil grey dust at every step. Then owing to the dry summer there was a scarcity of bedding, and the fine weather tempted farmers to get a scythe into their rushes wherever they could, and the cover got poorer as the season drew on. The snipe shooter of older days knew nothing of such troubles. So the weather, and the basic slag, and industrious mowers did us

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much harm, but especially the weather.

When snipe were very plentiful with us they lay badly; I think they do not often "wait" well under such circumstances: there are, in a multitude, sure to be some wild ones which communicate their fears to the crowd. I used to watch with great interest the way in which the little bird got the better of the man who was hunting him. He often offered himself a quick though fair shot as he skimmed over a bank. But now and then we came across a professor, a master of the art of dodging; such a one would rise, top the bank, just grazing it, disappear on the opposite side, and only show himself, right or left, when a couple of gunshots away: in such cases the bird performed at amazing speed a perfect figure of the letter reversed, and I think the quickest and most accurate performer with a breech-loader would seldom be able to do anything with him. Great indeed must be the concentrated power that lies in that tiny body: one lightning whisk, a bit of unerring calculation not to strike the grass or thorns-not be an inch over them, and the movement is carried out. And wonderful must be the little brain which takes in the situation swiftly and acts with such extraordinary promptitude.

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Halloran has a good expression for birds which get up in a more becoming fashion-"he rose lubberly" (we were not plagued by many of this breed). The adjective exactly

describes the heavy woodcockin-the-open sort of flight; for far too much of the season a quick snap-shot had to be taken or it was no use firing at all. The professionals always carried their

guns at the "ready," if that is the right expression to use: it is an ugly fashion, almost an unsportsmanlike one to look at, but after a week or two I adopted it, and continued it whenever there was a chance of a shot. It was tiring at first, but the muscles of the arm soon accustomed themselves to the unusual strain, and it gave one a great advantage over a farrising bird. Sport was so very uncertain that I put off most of the guns who were coming to help me to bring men out many hundreds of miles and only to be able to show them snipe was a trying and uncomfortable position for a host. Some ran the risk in spite of warnings: one, who undertook the long troublesome journey from Cumberland, was a very fine shot at all kinds of game, and he extorted the admiration of the fowlers by the rapid way in which-carrying his gun in his left hand-he was able to bring it to bear on a far-rising snipe. He left me three days too soon, and had a poor return for his wearisome journey.

No doubt one of the great charms of this kind of shooting is the variety of chances given. To go out every day, ten or eleven days often in a fortnight, for two or three months together, in pursuit of ordinary game, would be an irksome

business: grouse, partridges, covert-shooting, they would all pall; and stalking, and even salmon-fishing, carried on for so long, would, I think, become utterly distasteful. But I never got tired of the snipe or of my very moderate bags; and I could even have wished the long season longer.

And how small our bags were, compared to those of older times: forty-three to three guns was my best day. I got within a fraction of 800 during the season, and worked very hard for them. It is tantalising to think what could be done even so late as in the 'Seventies in the west of Ireland; this is what Colonel Peyton, a well-known shot, says in a letter to Sir Ralph PayneGallwey, quoted in 'The Fowler in Ireland': "In Kerry I could always get 20 to 25 couple of snipe when I wanted to make a bag, but my average was about 17." In five consecutive days in December-January 1878-79 he killed 265 snipe. His best day was in 1871, when, on Lord Ventry's property, he got 51 couple. "It was a common expression among shooters then," wrote Colonel Peyton in 1882, "to say 'I never shoot a jack. Now I never let a jack off if I can help it; . . . in former days we never thought of marking any snipe down; now I turn back a quarter of a mile to a marked bird, whether it be jack or common.'

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October was a useless month in Clare last season, and so were the last fourteen days of February, and I lost also what would have been a profitable

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ten days in January owing to election considerations: with a better stormier November and December I think I could easily have made couple. What could have been done in this part of the Kingdom a hundred years ago by a man armed with the weapons of modern days! In snipe, Ireland has now lost her supremacy; that must-as far as the United Kingdom is concerned-be given to Tiree. Everything is relative, and it may be almost certainly will be the case that sportsmen will look back upon our days, which seem to us so degenerate, as interesting and wonderful. Snipe-shooting must soon fall far below even its present level in the Green Island; this is as certain as anything well can be the handwriting is on the wall-in the fields-very plain to read. The land of Ireland will in a very measurable time belong to the people of Ireland; great properties are being broken up; every year this is taking place, and fifty or a hundred, or perhaps several hundreds, of farmers will own the shooting of an estate which now is in the hands of one man. They may try to preserve it; they may see, most of them, that it is their interest to preserve, but there can never be complete unanimity: every farmhouse has a gun in it now, and even if snipe were not made a definite object of pursuit, there will always be lads on the look-out for a plover or curlew or a rare hare, and the little game birds would be continu

ally disturbed. A preserve, if it is not too large, especially if it is long and narrow, acts as a reservoir, a sort of sanctuary, and the professionals gain by having such places here and there in the middle of their open ground: I think they quite recognise this. No doubt in some of the vast bogs in the west, remote from houses, snipe will always exist, but for the perfection of shooting you want more than bogs and mountain; you require the "land," as the enclosed fields are called, also.

this rare bird has been shot in Ireland, and it is hard to say what trouble I would not have taken to have got a chance at it. Another white bird was a mature and very fine specimen of a Greenland falcon which was given to me: he was shot on the sea cliffs not far from our headquarters, and seems to have been known there for a considerable time. I was sorry to look at this dead splendid bird, and would gladly have saved his life if I could have done it.

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One or other of the profesHalloran's bags in good years sionals sometimes came out are referred to in the 'Badmin- with me, and I learnt many ton' and other books on sport. things from them. The names His best day this season was of Denny Lynch, Macmahon, 29 snipe; his best day for the John Dillon, and "Patsy thirty odd years he has shot Halloran are well known in was at the end of December the west of the two former 1906, when, on open ground, he I saw little, their beats were killed 46 snipe and 13 cock. well away from mine, but I He has a very pretty specimen knew that they were good of a white or very light-col- and keen sportsmen. Connor oured snipe in his house: such O'Brien has ceased to shoot a variety must be rare, for it is for the market, but he is as the only one he has secured, or keen as ever when he does even seen. While on the sub- go out: many a pleasant day ject of white birds, I may add I had with him, and many a that we saw one day, among long "crack as a Cumberland some twenty grey geese, one man would say. John Dillon that was distinctly white. was, I think, the keenest This lot was not more than a "shooter-body" hundred yards from us, and as other north country expression one of the men said, "It was I have ever met: he was white as it came up and when it passed." We kept anxious eyes on all the geese met with for the rest of the season, but never saw the stranger again. I know the barnacle too well to have made a mistake about him, and I cannot but think it was a snow goose which for a moment swam into our ken:

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sometimes a source of anxiety to me; I never knew quite where to have him. We would start, one on each side of a great rough not-to-be-seenover hedge, stretching for some hundreds of yards. I used to finish my part of the work in the expectation that my companion was at any rate some

where within shot of the other side, but often that was anything but the case; a tempting corner, far away, was in his mind's eye when he started, and there I would hear his shot. The insinuating manner in which he always explained the desirability, if not the absolute necessity, of his taking the course he did would have disarmed the most rigid martinet. But the only times I really fell out with him was when he declined to take shelter-what miserable shelter there might be -when we were pursuing small game, and geese came suddenly in sight. That whole tribe bored him of shooting snipe he was never weary, but he looked upon barnacle or whitefronted as creatures likely to interfere with the legitimate sport of his life. After a fashion he was right: it is useless and absurd to crouch down and attempt to hide when geese have once seen you; they are far more likely to come over you if you walk boldly on.

Halloran often said he was tired of shooting, he had been at it for so many years. I never noticed any want of energy; I should be very sorry for any man, not in the hardest condition, who had to walk with him, or against him, on a long day. He possesses all the qualifications which are necessary for one engaged in this particular occupation. Spare in flesh, long in limb, untiring in his stride, he can get over an extent of country in a week which an average walker, even in first-rate training, would find impossible, or, if he ac

complished it, it would be at the expense of his shooting and of any satisfaction in his work. Far-seeing and trained accurate eyes enable him to add to his bag many a snipe which the average performer would overlook.

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Long study had taught Halloran, as also the other professionals, where their snipe would most likely be; not close in front of the dog, not near the dog, not perhaps in front of the dog at all: when his own faithful little setter was standing he would walk well away from her, perhaps a hundred yards or more, and the odds were he got the chance. Sometimes when he marked a wild bird down he would get me to go and stand at a particular part of a fence, far away from it,"not to that furze bush or that, but to the one between,' and then put it up, and as a rule if I did not kill it the fault was my own. I have seen Halloran, like the other fowlers, now and then miss a good chance; this is only to say they are mortals. This happened more towards the end of the season, and I believe was in a great measure caused by that state of staleness to which I have referred (and the fowlers were unused to shooting in company, and I think were at their best when alone). But the misses were few and far between; the man who bet against the gun here would have made but a poor livelihood. I have sometimes seen him kill every real chance he got in a long day, and in addition get a few birds which an impartial watcher would

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