This story, “Little Longbill’s Back,” appeared in the September 1954 issue of Outdoor Life.
“It’s been 20 years since I fired a shot at one of them,” I said to Felix as he, Joe, and I crawled through the fence and headed across the Texas rice field. We were in pursuit of that tiny, long-billed, elusive feathered delicacy known as the jacksnipe, or Wilson’s snipe.
If you doubt that he’s a delicacy, consider his scientific name, Capella delicata. The “delicata” means delicate. It’s an appropriate name that can be proved in the eating.
And if you doubt that a jacksnipe is elusive, try taking a shot at him when he’s zigging and zagging. You may have heard all those old wheezes about shooting him on the zig or on the zag — that is, firing at the precise moment when he shifts from a zig to a zag, or vice verse. It’s a nice theory, but few hunters have that gift for timing.
I quit hunting jacksnipe quite a spell before the law said I had to. I didn’t want to be a party to the final clean-up, and back in 1933, when I stopped hunting them, it was easy to see they were on the way out. Year after year the flocks got thinner and thinner until in 1941, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service invoked in nation-wide ban on snipe hunting. It clamped the lid down tight and kept in tight for 12 long years — until 1953. By that time the flocks had built up sufficiently to justify the Service’s decision to announce a special, experimental season for snipe.
So when Felix and Joe and I, accompanied by Felix’s big Labrador retriever, headed across the rice field on opening day last year, I was trying to remember some of my snipe-hunting technique of many years ago.
Finding snipe should have been a cinch since there were plenty of them on the huge Barrow Ranch which Joe helps manage. They had feed and cover, and nobody had shot at them for years. The set-up was perfect, except that a heavy rain had fallen the previous day. Water stood in the rice fields, in the marsh, everywhere.
“Looks like this will be a water hunt,” Joe said.
That didn’t bother Joe. He was born and raised in the marsh lands, and knows how to walk through them. It’s a knack you don’t pick up overnight. When Joe’s on the move across a marsh, he leans forward and moves slantwise in short, quick steps. “Take the next step before the last one sinks,” he said to me. I tried it. But I made the mistake of fighting the marsh, and the marsh fought right back.
We headed across the rice fields, hoping to scare up some birds there, but our destination was a small, shallow lake about a mile away. Snipe love that lake, Joe told me, and they spend a lot of time digging around it in search of earthworms. Though snipe eat a wide range of insects and insect larvae, worms especially earthworms-are an important staple on their diet. The birds have bulbs of sensitive touch nerves at the ends of their bills, and when they jam the bills into soft earth they appear to be cap able of detecting earthworms and other creatures moving around within a certain range. No one knows what that range is, but apparently it’s enough to enable a snipe to gorge his own weight in earthworms every day.
Two snipe got up as we ploughed along slowly in the direction of the lake. They were out of range, but I fired anyway. Joe circled to the right and Felix to the left. I saw a flock of birds coming toward me, but I didn’t pay much attention since I figured they were killdeers.
“Shoot!” Joe yelled. I looked up in time to see about 15 snipe flying over head. I wasn’t used to seeing that many snipe together. Three was a big flock the last time I hunted them.
I got off a couple of shots, but I was much too quick. That was pretty sad because those snipe had levelled off and a snipe, once he gets going, isn’t hard to hit. He flies in a fairly straight line, not very fast. It’s when he’s on the rise, zigging and zagging, that he drives some hunters crazy.
I watched a flock of killdeers carefully, noting the slower wingbeat and the larger size, so I wouldn’t get fooled again. Then a snipe got up unexpectedly (snipe always get up unexpectedly unless you use a dog) on the far side of a little containing levee. He was in range, but I waited and fired when he zigged. He wasn’t there. Then I tried it on the zag. He wasn’t there, either.
Before we got to the little lake, I figured out a method of travel that worked fine. I walked those containing levees in the rice field — rough footing but fairly solid.
There were snipe around the lake, all right, but the birds we got up there were as wary as though they’d been hunted the day before. One bunch of five surprised me by flying within range, but they were behind me, and by the time I noticed them it was too late.
I still hadn’t knocked out a feather. Joe had fired once and got a bird. Felix had fired twice, out of range both times. I was shooting a .410 with No. 9 shot, and both Joe and Felix were shooting light 20’s.
After scaring away all the snipe, I told Joe I thought a man ought to carry a 12 gauge and use bump loads to reach out and get them.
“We’ll get some close shooting,” he said confidently. “The rain messed things up, but we’ll get some.”
We headed for a near-by lagoon around which was a freshly plowed field. That’s where I had some trouble because my legs cramp when the going gets heavy. It’s a hang-over from an illness years ago, and there’s nothing I can do about it. My legs started cramping in that plowed bog and, to make me feel all the more unhappy, snipe began getting up. But most of them were out of range.
I finally worked my way toward a fence which hems in the field, and stood there waiting for the cramps to ease off. While I waited a tiny bird came flying toward me. It was a snipe. He headed straight over and was in nice range. For me, the season opened then — with a bird in the bag.
Out in the field snipe were getting up everywhere, in twos, threes, and sometimes in flocks. Felix and Joe were doing some shooting, mostly out of range. With no cover, the little fellows just plain refused to wait on a hunter. I started out across the bog again, angling away from Felix, but I soon gave it up.
Then I began watching the snipe my friends flushed, and a bright light came on in my head. At least, I thought, it’s an idea worth trying.
The birds would get up as high as 100 to 200 yards, then take off as though they were going to leave the country. Some did leave, so far as I could tell, because you can’t follow a snipe’s flight very far. But one suddenly dived to the ground and settled about 300 yards away. That one ought to hold, I thought. I marked him good, and headed for him.
From then on I was ready. I decided to “miss ’em quick,” as Tommy Armour, the celebrated golfer, has advised for putting.
There are hundreds of theories about hitting snipe on the rise, and I’ve listened to all of them. Many hunters say you should walk downwind, since the bird almost invariably takes off up wind. Then you wait and take him on the turn. Some hunters say walk up wind, wait, and take him coming back. One hunter assured me he always did, that and he never missed. That’s fine — though I don’t believe it.
Actually, learning to bag snipe isn’t too hard. I know because I finally learned how, and my wing-shooting isn’t the kind you brag on, except to people who don’t hunt. I’ve talked to old-time market hunters who seldom missed. They couldn’t afford to, even though the price for a snipe was about the same as that for a fat mallard.
“How did you take ’em?” I once asked one.
“Just took ’em,” he said, which is the way really good wing shots usually analyze their shooting.
The snipe I had marked got up. He headed straight away, flying low, hard to see against the background of grass. But I let fly before he started any zigzagging, and I got him. My bright idea had worked. I decided to use that system for the rest of the hunt. I wouldn’t give those birds a chance to zigzag. I’d shoot quick — as soon as they got up.
I circled back toward the fence line. Another snipe got up. He, too, headed straight off, trying to get distance and and speed before zigzagging. I caught him just before he started a zig.
Back at the fence line I waited and watched for birds, remembering snipe hunts of the past, including those I made with my father when I was a boy. When I hunted with father, an old-time market hunter and crack shot, the country was full of snipe. They came flocking down to our south-Texas neighborhood in winter by the count less thousands, and they kept getting up, making that harsh squawking sound, and taking off in every direction. No one dreamed they would ever thin out to a point where, in 1941, there actually was talk of extinction.
But that’s what happened. Why it did, no one knows for sure, and even now wildlife biologists are puzzled by it though they’re inclined to believe that extensive drainage of the snipe’s wintering grounds may have been — and may still be — an important factor. They doubt, however, that gunning pressure has had much to do with it, and that’s one reason why there is hope that experimental seasons, such as the one in 1953, may be continued.
The reduction in the snipe population is especially puzzling when you consider the bird’s migratory range. It’s a whopper, though its extent is not widely known because the birds travel largely at night. For the most part snipe breed well to the north, but they also nest in areas ranging as far south as California, southern Colorado, northern Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Their migratory movements vary — they may be here today and gone tomorrow. Some flocks travel only as far as may be necessary to avoid freezing temperatures, but the winter range generally extends from the southern tier of states to northern sections of South America. Favorite snipe-hunting spots for those who know what a challenge the bird is — and what a delight to the palate — are the marshy coastlines of Texas, Louisiana, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.
Thinking over my own snipe-hunting experiences in other years, and thankful that I could hunt the birds again, I was standing there in the swamp when my thoughts were interrupted by a flock of five snipe coming toward me. They didn’t come in range, but after they were about a quarter of a mile away they suddenly whiffled, almost like a flock of redheads, and settled in heavy cover.
I started for them. Here was my meat — five of them wadded up together. I forgot the bad footing and the cramps in my legs and went skimming along slantwise like Joe. I walked to the spot I’d marked, but nothing got up.
Then suddenly the air was full of snipe and I was hearing a harsh, rasping squawk all around me, A flock of snipe getting up that close throws you off more than a covey of quail, for the quail at least do it in something resembling order.
I started with a quick miss. I missed the first one by five feet, but I scored on the next two. That brought my bag up to a total of five. I was beginning to feel proud of myself. I went back to the fence line and waited to mark more birds. At last I had figured out the way to hunt the little longbills.
Three flew over, out of range, and I marked them far away, near the road.
Felix and Joe were headed toward me and I figured I would wait on before starting for the birds.
Joe had five birds. Felix had four. I told them about the three near the road, and Joe said if we would spread out, maybe we’d flush others on the way to the place I’d marked. We did. A snipe got up in front of Felix and he dumped it quickly as it was skimming the grass. Then Joe bagged one on a long shot.
We got to the three snipe I’d marked. Two took off to the right, where Felix stood, the other to the left, where Joe was. They got all of them.
We headed on back to the road then, with a total of 19 birds. The law said we could take 24 but we decided we had enough.
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“Joe,” I said, as we drove toward home, “my father used to carry a little chunk of side meat with him, and he’d cut off a small piece and put it inside each snipe before he broiled it over a campfire. You ever try that?”
“I usually wrap a strip of bacon around each bird,” Joe said. “Maybe we ought to try putting a little chunk inside.”
That night we broiled the birds over a campfire, putting a small piece of bacon inside each one. Joe cooked them just long enough to give a crispy touch to the outside and yet keep plenty of juice inside. We ate the whole 19 and, to tell the truth, I was a little sorry I hadn’t bagged my limit.
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