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.