The commoner and, in our opinion—where these birds are abundant either along the courses of winding drains or streamlets, or in large reedy marshes, with wet soil and occasional pools or splashes—far the more exciting way of killing them is to go carefully and warily on foot, with a good medium-sized double-gun, say of eight to ten pounds weight, and a thoroughly well broke and steady spaniel, to retrieve and occasionally to flush the birds, which will sometimes, though rarely, lie very hard. A good sportsman will frequently, thus late in the autumn, when the mornings are sharp and biting, and the noons warm and hazy, but before the ice makes, pick up, on favorable ground, his eight or nine couple in a day’s walking, with a chance of picking up at the same time a few Snipe, Golden Plovers, Curlew, or Godwit; and this, in our mind, is equal to slaughtering a boat load by sneaking up in ambush to within twenty yards of a great company, whistling to make them lift their heads and ruffle up their loosened plumage, so as to give easy entrance to the shot, and then pouring into them at half point-blank range, a half pound of heavy shot.
In the southern States they are commonly taken, says Wilson, “in vast numbers, in traps placed on the small dry eminences that here and there rise above the water of the inundated rice fields. These places are strewed with rice, and by the common contrivance called a figure four, they are caught alive in hollow traps.” This we, of course, merely mention as illustrative of the habits of the bird; for, of course, no sportsman would dream of resorting to so worse than poacher-like a proceeding. The mode described by the eloquent pioneer of American natural history, is probably practised, for the most part, by the negroes for the supply of their masters’ table, and furnishing their own pockets with a little extra change, and is not used by the planters as a means of sport or amusement. It must be remembered, also, that Wilson, than whom there is no writer more to be relied on in matters which he relates of his own knowledge, and as occurring in his own days, must often be taken _cum grano salis_, as to the numbers of birds slain in this way or that within a certain time—things which he records, probably, on hearsay, and on which—we are sorry to say it—even good sportsmen, men who on any other subject would scorn to deviate one hair’s breadth from the truth, will not hesitate to draw a bow as long and as strong as Munchausen’s. Again, he writes of times when sporting was but little pursued, otherwise than as a method of procuring superior food for the table, or for the purpose of destroying noxious vermin and beasts of prey; when the rules of sportsmanship were little understood and as little regarded; and, lastly, when game abounded to a degree literally inconceivable in our day—although we have ourselves seen, with sorrow, the diminution, amounting in many regions around our large cities almost to extinction, of all birds and beasts—nay, but even fish of chase, within the last twenty years. We must be careful therefore not to charge exaggeration on a writer who, beyond a doubt, faithfully recorded that which he himself saw and enjoyed in his day; which we might see likewise and enjoy in our generation, and our children and grand-children after us, if it were not for the greedy, stupid, selfish, and brutal pot-hunting propensities of our population, alike rural of the country and mechanical of the cities, which seems resolutely and of set purpose bent on the utter annihilation of every species of game, whether of fur, fin or feather, which is yet found within our boundaries.