The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the FieldTaplin, William
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The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field
Taplin, William
Hunting -- Dictionaries; Sports -- Dictionaries
Those who enter into the true spirit of this sport, and where cocks are
likely to be found, seldom set out for a complete day's adventure,
without being previously provided with a MARKER excellently qualified
for the purpose in which he is engaged. And an assistant of this
description becomes the more necessary, as a cock will very frequently
suffer himself to be found, and shot at, _four_ or _five_ times in the
same covert; and when absolutely driven out, will sink beyond the outer
fence, and gliding a short distance almost close to the ground, will
drop in some adjoining ditch.
WOODCOCKS are seen in this country till about the first, and sometimes
the second, week in MARCH: this, however, depends entirely upon the
openness or severity of the season: if the winter has been accompanied
with long and sharp frosts, they suddenly disappear within a few hours,
(as by a kind of magical mystery,) and none to be found, with
occasionally (and that but seldom) an exception of a disconsolate
individual at or near some warm or sheltered SPRING which has not
_frozen_. They are fullest of flesh during the months of DECEMBER and
JANUARY to the middle of FEBRUARY, from which time, as the spring sun
gets warmer, they decline in _weight_ to the time of their departure.
SNIPE SHOOTING is a sport the best calculated to try the persevering
_fag_ and _bottom_ of a SPORTSMAN of any yet recounted; if he is not
possessed of all the _fortitude_, _patience_, and indefatigable
_exertion_ of a WATER SPANIEL, he had better never be induced to make
the embarkation, at least with any sanguine expectation of success. To
_wet_, _dirt_, and _difficulty_, he must be habitually inured: in body
he must be invulnerable; with a constitution impregnable to the united
attacks of morbidity, and a mind most perfectly at ease. Thus armed at
all points for _land_ or _water_, _moor_ or _mire_, _swamps_ or _bogs_,
SNIPE SHOOTING (where they are to be found in plenty) is a most
excellent diversion; and some spots, particularly in a heath country,
intersected by moors, swamps, and bogs, (as a celebrated scope called
EEL MOOR, near Hartford Bridge, upon the western road,) the sport is so
incessant, that those who visit the place in open hazy weather, may
shoot so often in succession, as to have frequent occasions in the same
day to wait till the barrel cools. SNIPES are of two kinds, one being
full double the size of the other, and is called a WHOLE SNIPE; the
smaller is called a _jack_, and of course somewhat more difficult to
_kill_. Both sorts are found upon the same ground, and sometimes close
to each other. They are birds of passage, and vary but little with the
_flights_ of WOODCOCKS in the time of their arrival, which is generally
about the _first_ plentiful _rains_ in AUTUMN. They are said to breed
mostly in the low and swampiest parts of GERMANY and SWITZERLAND;
although it is certain numbers do not return with the greater bodies in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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