This story, “Again to the Bogs,” appeared within the June 1972 subject of Out of doors Life.
“Are you aware the bogs in any respect, Mr. Riley?” requested a member of the Garryricken Membership in Kilkenny as he despatched me out on my first shoot in Eire.
“I’ve heard the bogs may be treacherous,” I ventured.
“It’s not their treachery I used to be pondering of. I used to be pondering you’d finest take a look in them for the snipe.”
“Snipe?” I used to be frankly puzzled.
Just a few weeks later the topic got here up once more on the Carlow Gun Membership outdoors Tullow as my information (ghillie) watched me fill my cartridge belt.
“Have you ever not one of the eights then?” the ghillie requested.
“Solely sixes,” I mentioned.
“A bit skinny within the sample for snipe,” the ghillie answered.
Queer speak, it appeared to me, as a result of I used to be going out to shoot pheasants — essentially the most attractive, flamboyant, scrumptious pounders on the earth — not a needlenosed three-ounce creature that appears like a bran muffin on toothpicks.
Out within the inexperienced fields I found the ghillies hand-signaling the pointers into bogs. As soon as the lads knelt beside a muddy patch as delighted as in the event that they’d come across a keg of stout.
“The wee holes there within the muck, do you make them out?”
I might.
“A snipe ate right here solely the night previous. Have you ever by no means seen the snipe eat?”
I had not.
“He favors the earthworm. He stands there along with his head cocked, listening — do you comply with me? And when he hears the worm crawling there beneath his skinny toes the chicken drives his invoice down clear to the attention — the attention being set to the again of the pinnacle so he doesn’t get the muck in it.”
I hadn’t seen a single but — they hadn’t are available in from England and the Continent. I couldn’t have cared much less; the pheasant taking pictures was such a pleasure. In sunny climate, with genial companions and hundreds of acres of comely Irish-countryside to rove; with superb pointers and ghillies wanting to “current” every chicken correctly, I managed to carry down a dozen cocks. There had been lunches in nation pubs and teas in farmhouses the place the new apple pie had cream on it that you possibly can trot a mouse throughout. All for $10 a day.
But after we gathered in a pub after the shoots and sat earlier than a turf fireplace, the Irish didn’t speak about pheasants, or the mallards down within the bogs and rivers, or the white-fronted geese within the close by Wexford Slobs (proper — slobs), or the numberless wooden pigeon, or the grouse, or the partridge; they talked snipe.
This behavior struck me as peculiar, for the Irish are avid, subtle sportsmen. Irish cash, as an example, don’t bear pictures of politicians or poets or martyrs; they’ve a salmon on one, a hare on one other, a chicken (grouse I believe) on a 3rd, and a greyhound, a racehorse, and a woodcock on others. While you enter a cab with a cased shotgun, you’re instantly concerned in a dialogue of chokes and side-locks, ballistics, and the horrible value of English double-barrels. Final week I rode with a cabby who shot a Purdey that was undoubtedly price greater than his cab.
How a folks resembling this, steeped in taking pictures, surrounded by a spread and abundance of sport, may very well be so hung-up on snipe I couldn’t grasp. And never simply the Irish — Europeans, notably the French, are loopy in regards to the little chicken that flies crooked; they arrive to Eire in sizable numbers to shoot him.
To me, a North Dakota boy, snipe-hunting nonetheless bears the odor of a hoax. Snipe-hunting was what we did to metropolis slickers in revenge for our having purchased the Brooklyn Bridge from them; it was in the identical league with a bucket of steam.
My private relations with snipe have been fleeting and worsening. These birds had been the demons that leaped from underneath my toes as I trudged house from a duck pond. The snipe not solely gave me many a nasty begin; he was additionally the one chicken I ever noticed who was able to flying off in all instructions on the similar time. If my duck shoot had been a bust and I used to be feeling peevish, I often gave the snipe a blast, extra in spleen than in hope. As soon as each decade or so I hit one; the final was in 1968. I keep in mind as a result of I ate him.
With pheasants hanging within the stone home subsequent door and the woodcock not but in, with the season getting on, and with all of the chatter about snipe, I made a decision I’d as effectively give them a whirl. I referred to as Noel Kavanagh.
Since my spouse Betty and our three daughters — Liz, Katie, Jan — left Manhattan Seaside, California, a couple of months in the past to see how we’d like residing with out smog, one of the best ways to go taking pictures in Eire is to name Noel Kavanagh. He’s the Sport and Wildlife Officer for the Bord Fáilte (pronounced Fall-ta), which is Irish for Vacationer Board. Noel is an amiable and clever younger man who is aware of the place each chicken in Eire is and what it’s doing. He is likely one of the Irishmen who’re working to construct up Irish taking pictures for foreigners.
These days the Bord Fáilte and the Land Fee are shopping for up sport rights from particular person farmers for gun golf equipment to make use of, with the stipulation that the golf equipment present taking pictures for vacationers. Some golf equipment have astounding spreads. One in County Clare has 100 sq. miles.
The golf equipment are bargains for American hunters. For a gun allow price of $7.80, you may shoot grouse in Donegal in September; geese, geese, snipe, and different waterfowl all around the island from September to February; pheasant from the primary of November; and woodcock from at any time when they arrive till January 31. The every day cost is from $7.50 to $12 a day for ghillie, canine, and sport.
I requested Noel the place to go for the well-known snipe of Eire.
“Galway,” he mentioned. “Get in contact with Christy Meehan in Tuam.”
Over the telephone, Christy Meehan mentioned that snipe taking pictures was glorious, however to come back over on Thursday relatively than Friday. A celebration of Frenchmen would arrive on Friday, and Frenchmen require fixed care. So I rented a automotive, and Betty and I set out for Tuam (pronounced Toom), 125 miles westward — virtually to the Atlantic. I’ve by no means taught my partner to make use of firearms, figuring that wives have already got sufficient weapons for home overkill. She went alongside to play golf on Tuam’s course.
Driving in Eire exhilarates me as a result of the Irish, just like the English, drive on the flawed facet of the highway, a observe that strikes terror into Betty.
“Left is correct, proper is left,” she retains chanting in my ear.
When you’re outdoors Dublin, nevertheless, vehicles are scarce and the roads are good. What Irish roads take pleasure in that ours don’t are sheep, cattle, previous males with canes, and housewives on bicycles. I like all of them and am notably keen on being marooned in a sea of sheep.
Outdoors the city of Ballygar (the place we’d seen a solitary roan steer standing within the village sq. within the rain, bawling lonesomely for his driver who had ducked right into a pub for a pint), I finished the automotive to observe a thousand unusual birds carry out over a lavatory. Their formation was extraordinary: they flew quickly in a rippling, flat rectangle, like a flying mattress. I made a observe to ask Christy Meehan what they had been.
“Plover,” mentioned Christy an hour later within the Hermitage Resort in Tuam. “Golden plover.”
Plover — all I knew about plover was that in English novels they laid eggs of chic taste for the aristocrats who despatched them to their sons in Oxford to eat with cucumber sandwiches. I’d by no means seen a plover.
“It’s possible you’ll get a shot at one tomorrow,” mentioned Christy, an enterprising man whose Meehan Sport Companies arranges taking pictures at any of 15 gun golf equipment in County Galway. “And a curlew.”
Snipe, plover, curlew — not a phrase a few respectable chicken.
“Any geese?” I requested.
“Geese? Ah, you possibly can have a shot on the odd duck — in case you needed one.” Christy rose. “The ghillie will probably be right here at nine-thirty.”
It was raining after we went to mattress, and I turned in with a sense that tomorrow wasn’t going to be memorable.
On December 11 in Eire the solar rose at exactly 9:30; that was after I appeared out the lodge door and noticed a younger man and an immense yellow canine peering again at me. It was Christy Meehan, Jr., my ghillie, and his canine Rusty (pronounced Roosty) , a Golden Labrador, 9 years previous, barely onerous of listening to, and of such imposing dignity, serenity, and knowledge that it appeared impertinent to name him Rusty” Sire” possibly, or “Your Eminence.”
Christy is a handsome younger man of maybe 28, barely shorter than his father. With Rusty at the back of my rented automotive, we got down to shoot snipe on the Tuam Gun Membership protect, which appears to absorb the whole lot round Tuam. Irish local weather is in regards to the mildest in Europe, however Irish climate is notorious — not as a result of it is dangerous — however as a result of it’s endlessly threatening to be, and this fixed bluffing has given it a nasty identify. However the night time earlier than, December 10, the climate had stopped bluffing; Galway froze. And after we left Tuam, the land lay shining with a white frost; within the vibrant solar the scene was like the within of a glass Christmas ball. The fantastic thing about the panorama gave me a cost, however it plunged Christy into melancholy.
“No wind,” my companion mentioned glumly; “no damp.”
A few miles outdoors Tuam, we parked on a rustic lane and I ready to hunt my first peat lavatory. Some bogs have agency bottoms, some have comfortable bottoms, and others have none, just like the one not removed from us into which a locomotive of the West Clare Railroad toppled at some point and was by no means seen once more. The peat had been eliminated way back from the lavatory that we had been coming into. Peat seems to be like a five-foot thick layer of topsoil. The Irish name it turf. The turf is lower into bricks by males with slim spades. or by monumental machines, after which is laid out to dry. The peat is turned as soon as, and is able to burn in six weeks or so. A cutover
peat lavatory is engrossing for hunters as a result of the dark-brown lavatory water hides the excavations of the peat cutters. That puddle the place you’re setting your boot may be six inches or 20 toes deep. The deep spots or “swallowholes,” are the place French hunters vanish. Ghillies debate why Frenchmen have such an affinity for swallow-holes.
“We’re all the time shedding them,” Christy mentioned. “If there’s a swallowhole round, a Frenchman goes to it as if it was a magnet.”
The elder Meehan thinks the French, being essentially the most intense of hunters (taking pictures the whole lot that flies) look solely on the sky and by no means the place they’re placing their toes. The French have one other drawback of their quick stature: 5 toes of lavatory water involves an Irishman’s chin, however it adjustments a Frenchman’s scream to a gurgle.
After the briefing on bog-trotting, Christy and I and the lordly Rusty got down to shoot snipe. I loaded my little Spanish double with No. 8’s in 2½-inch shells carrying 1 1/16 ounces of lead. The lavatory grass was stiff with frost and noisy.
“Oh, God assist us,” mentioned Christy, his gloom deepening. “It’s like strolling on corn flakes. The birds will probably be listening to us a half-mile. You’ve bought to have wind for snipe-shooting, and also you hunt into it. There’s no wind at present. No wind in any respect.”
The primary snipe rose 50 yards forward of us. I didn’t even put my gun up. The second got here out of the grass to my left. I missed him badly.
“Too far,” mentioned Christy. “Until the snipe rises inside twenty yards, he’s gone by the point you get your first barrel off.”
When the third snipe bought up and I missed him by not less than eight toes, I started to see snipe-shooting in a brand new mild. The very first thing I seen was that the Irish model of snipe doesn’t fly like our jacksnipe. This Celtic demon makes our chicken appear like somewhat previous girl from Pasadena. No rolling, sedate curves for him; this chicken makes sharp turns. He corners. Not solely can an Irish snipe make right-angle turns — he additionally makes acute angles. He doesn’t do that with malice aforethought. It’s his regular approach of attending to an altitude he fancies.
Virtually invariably, this snipe dashes to the proper, cuts again to the left, after which again to the proper, zigzagging till he’s as excessive as he desires to go. As soon as on the correct altitude, the snipe merely flies like a drunken chicken — a number of careening, a number of flying on his facet, and on occasion, I’ve heard, he flies on his again.
In October and November, snipe come tearing in from England and the Continent in huge numbers to get out of the chilly. You’d suppose you may drop one by firing right into a flock, however you gained’t. Snipe don’t affiliate with one another. In truth, one snipe gained’t inform one other snipe that someone’s coming. The snipe eats primarily worms, at night time on moist floor. The ghillies had advised me {that a} snipe can hear a worm shifting about within the earth and pluck him out; scientists have found, nevertheless, that, a snipe has extraordinarily delicate nerve-endings in his invoice and that he locates worms by random probing. At dawn the snipe usually flies again to drier grass the place he lounges about all day by himself. What snipe do when the bottom freezes onerous is a thriller. My opinion is that when the chicken rears again and tries to sink his invoice into the frozen muck, he will get such a headache that he wobbles off for an aspirin. At any price, snipe depart frosted bogs. Within the lavatory that we had been searching, Christy usually places up 40 or 50 snipe; this time we’d put up three, all at a distance.
When the fourth snipe rose, I used to be so shaken by his aerial tour de drive that I couldn’t make up my thoughts when to fireplace. So I adopted his loopy flight with my double, wanting, I think about, like a gent with a nervous dysfunction. Once I lastly pulled, the snipe fell.
“Good shot’” cried Christy. “At the least forty-five yards.”
Rusty fetched the chicken. and I checked out it. The Irish snipe is far bigger than our jacksnipe.
“Geese,” mentioned Christy with out enthusiasm. A dozen teal had gotten up. They circled after which settled.
“Would you thoughts taking pictures a duck?” He appeared ashamed of himself for asking. “The snipe aren’t right here at present, and with no wind there gained’t be any taking pictures them.”
Thoughts a duck, Christy? After making an attempt to hit snipe? Geese fly straight. None of this butterfly stuff.
We thought we had an opportunity to sneak up on the teal, however there have been many who we hadn’t seen and the alarm went out. The teal tore down the lavatory 1 / 4 of a mile and lit. Christy and Rusty set off to drive the birds again to the place I crouched behind a grass-covered pile of forgotten peat.
The primary batch of fifty or 60 teal handed on my proper at excessive vary, and I wasted a barrel on them. Once I turned again I discovered one other flock virtually upon me. With my previous Winchester Mannequin 12 pump gun I might have slid in a 3rd shell and been prepared for 3 hilarious misses. however I had a double with two triggers which are full strangers to me. I need to put my glasses on to see the place the protection is ready. I deal with the reloading like a cub bear with boxing gloves. The basis of my downside is that I’m right-handed however should shoot from my left shoulder due to an damage to my proper eye. I’ve to modify the gun again to my proper facet to reload a double. With the teal coming at me like a flight of rockets, I didn’t even attempt to put a second shell in. I wanted the time to determine which set off to tug. Once I did, I knocked down a drake greenwing.
On the way in which again to the automotive a big brown animal bounded out of the grass and zigzagged off like a terrestrial snipe. An Irish hare. Him I might hit. He weighed ten or twelve kilos, Christy mentioned. Hares are frequent in Eire, they usually differ from rabbits in that hares don’t reside in burrows and their flesh is darkish.
Now that we had determined to neglect snipe and go for geese, Christy and I went to bogs that contained open water. On the way in which to at least one lavatory we noticed a crowd of birds crossing the highway in entrance of us. Disorderly as crows, they flew with a jerky, pumping motion. That they had oddly quick necks, like alarmed turtles.
“Plover,” mentioned Christy. And after I mentioned that was ridiculous, I’d seen plover yesterday they usually hadn’t been something like these louts, he added: “Lapwing plover. They fly like fools however they’re lifeless artful.”
The plover had been flying over bushes that lined the highway on one facet. I finished the automotive, stepped outdoors, and bought shut sufficient to shoot two. Lapwings not solely fly humorous however additionally they appear like clowns. Massive as pigeons, they’ve longish legs and quick payments, are white beneath and iridescent above, and have a plume protruding the again of their heads like a cowlick. Lapwings don’t impress me. I nonetheless suppose Disney thought them up.
On this part of County Galway, with the Connemara mountains between us and the ocean, bogs are in all places within the undulating panorama. That is grazing nation, and the myriad pastures are separated by unfastened stone fences. From my prairie youth I’m fairly deft with barbed-wire fences, however stone fences defy me. Once I put a leg over I get hung up and am generally left behind, howling. When I attempt to scale the stones because the Irish do, I knock the fence down, typically onto my instep.
Apart from the fences, I might have been again in North Dakota pothole searching. We went from lavatory to lavatory, placing up about 100 teal in a single, 10 in one other, 40 in one other. In each Christy would scare the birds towards me and I’d get in my two licks. Typically I bought one, a couple of instances two, and as soon as — after I did reload — I bought three.
Late within the afternoon after we’d run into some mallards and had taken three of them, we tried a protracted lavatory that narrowed within the middle. Christy motioned.
“There! There on the grass, do you see them? “
After a little bit of squinting I made out a few dozen giant brownish birds with lengthy downward-curving payments that had been not less than 4 inches lengthy.
“Curlew,” mentioned Christy, his voice full of pleasure. “They’re the crafty ones, warier than geese, wariest of all.”
We got down to sneak up on the curlew. First, we bent double and pussyfooted, after which we went to our palms and knees. Seventy-five yards out we sank to our bellies for the ultimate slither. We had been advancing like lizards when the curlew merely flew throughout the lavatory.
“Is it them you’re after, the curlew?”
The voice was instantly above me and wealthy in brogue. I rolled over on my again and gazed up six toes of tough clothes into the face of — I assumed — John Huston, the eminent movie director who has turn into an Irish citizen and lives close to Tuam.
“Ah, it’s you, Paddy,” mentioned Christy, rising with a groan. “Now wasn’t it grand of you to come back striding down the hill like that, the entire peak of you shining within the solar to observe us creep up on the curlew.”
“Not a’tall. I got here right down to inform you that you simply weren’t keepin’ low sufficient,” mentioned Paddy, the glint of laughter deep in his eye. “A troublesome chicken, the curlew. Not one to attend for the shot.”
I nonetheless thought it was John Huston, however it was actually Paddy Ryan down from his cottage for a dialog.
Paddy adjusted his fabric cap to the solar and squinted down the lavatory.
“Now what you’d higher be doin’ is creep in’ up on the teal (pronounced story) within the lavatory there” — he indicated the decrease finish — “stayin’ solely on the proper after which givin’ them the 2 barrels on the rise.”
“What about moving into on the left, too?” I requested. Paddy regarded me thoughtfully. “Ah, you possibly can, you possibly can, might he not, Christy?” He paused. “Should you don’t thoughts disappearin’.”
Christy agreed that it was a satan of a lavatory.
One of many joys of lavatory searching is the affable Irish farmer. I’ve met a number of now, and no extra amusing man lives, nor one freer with recommendation on tips on how to hunt. We’d misplaced our likelihood on the curlew, however I’d relatively have met Paddy Ryan.
“For the night shoot,” mentioned Christy after we bought again to the automotive, “do you wish to have one other go on the curlew or at wooden pigeon?”
I selected the curlew; I’d by no means shot one. Pigeons I had, solely an hour in the past. As I had left a lavatory to examine the ruins of an Irish fort and eat an apple (there are all the time fort ruins to take pleasure in once you hunt in Eire), a pair of the large grey birds went excessive over me. I dropped one with the second barrel. Apart from, pigeons are a pest on this nation and may be shot anytime: curlew I’d by no means have one other crack at.
We returned to the primary lavatory we’d hunted. The solar had set.
“Curlew are available in right here at night time,” Christy mentioned. They had been already in, and their cries, eerie as a loon’s, Cur-lee, Cur-lee, got here down the lavatory within the darkness. Christy set me behind a hump of peat and left to drive the curlew to me.
A crescent moon rose. Stars got here out, and the lights of farms went on. A bike owner wove down a highway along with his headlamp on; I heard youngsters laughing far-off. I ought to have felt enthralled. As an alternative I felt like a felony. Wherever I’d hunted it had been unlawful to shoot after sunset, and I couldn’t get accustomed to the truth that Eire permits night time taking pictures; in actual fact there are few sport legal guidelines of any sort. Limits, for instance, are seldom imposed besides maybe on pheasants by particular person golf equipment.
Means down the lavatory Christy fired twice. Half a minute later a flock of birds instantly appeared on my left. I had a glimpse of lengthy, downward-curving payments, and I despatched two hundreds at them with no impact no matter. Once I went into my reloading act a mob of lapwing flew proper over me at 30 toes. I moved from the peat pile to see higher. I heard the creak of quick wings, and 4 birds glided by me so quick that I couldn’t imagine it.
“Hopped-up snipe,” I advised myself. However snipe don’t fly so straight, they usually fly alone. Extra got here whizzing by, and I couldn’t even get my gun up. For the subsequent batch I had it up, ready. Because the birds sped by the Massive Dipper, I led them ridiculously far and shot. One fell.
“Did you could have a shot on the golden plover?” Christy and Rusty appeared out of the gloaming.
In order that was what I had shot, a chicken of dazzling pace and superb in soups.
“We could look ahead to the curlew?” Christy requested. “They fly finest about eleven o’clock.”
As entertaining as an Irish lavatory is at night time, I couldn’t see standing round in it up till 11 p.m. For one factor my toes had been chilly, and for an additional, Betty would have a search get together out probing swallowholes for a middle-aged American who floats badly.
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Christy didn’t actually wish to depart. He felt that he’d let down the American hunter who had come a good distance for snipe. It had been a nasty day, he mentioned.
A foul day was it? We had began out to shoot snipe, and a white frost had pushed them from their common habitat. But on a vibrant, windless day — bane of waterfowlers in all places — we had been in a position to flip from snipe to different sport. A foul day in Eire would have been season in California. And that was not all. I had met Paddy Ryan. And eaten an apple in a fort destroy. And realized a little bit of the lore of my ancestors — bog-trotting.
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