This story, “Again to the Bogs,” appeared within the June 1972 concern of Outside Life.
“Have you learnt 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 greatest take a look in them for the snipe.”
“Snipe?” I used to be frankly puzzled.
A couple of weeks later the topic got here up once more on the Carlow Gun Membership exterior 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 stated.
“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 beautiful, flamboyant, scrumptious pounders on the planet — 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 encounter 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 together with his head cocked, listening — do you observe me? And when he hears the worm crawling there beneath his skinny toes the fowl drives his invoice down clear to the attention — the attention being set to the again of the top 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 capturing was such a pleasure. In sunny climate, with genial companions and hundreds of acres of comely Irish-countryside to rove; with high-quality pointers and ghillies desirous to “current” every fowl correctly, I managed to deliver 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 might trot a mouse throughout. All for $10 a day.
But once we gathered in a pub after the shoots and sat earlier than a turf hearth, 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, for example, don’t bear pictures of politicians or poets or martyrs; they’ve a salmon on one, a hare on one other, a fowl (grouse I believe) on a 3rd, and a greyhound, a racehorse, and a woodcock on others. If 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 similar to this, steeped in capturing, surrounded by a spread and abundance of sport, could possibly be so hung-up on snipe I couldn’t grasp. And never simply the Irish — Europeans, significantly the French, are loopy concerning the little fowl that flies crooked; they arrive to Eire in sizable numbers to shoot him.
To me, a North Dakota boy, snipe-hunting nonetheless bears the scent 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 aggravating. These birds have been the demons that leaped from below my toes as I trudged dwelling from a duck pond. The snipe not solely gave me many a nasty begin; he was additionally the one fowl 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 number of months in the past to see how we’d like dwelling with out smog, one of the simplest ways to go capturing in Eire is to name Noel Kavanagh. He’s the Recreation 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 fowl in Eire is and what it’s doing. He is likely one of the Irishmen who’re working to construct up Irish capturing 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 capturing 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 charge of $7.80, you’ll be able to 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 day by 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 stated. “Get in contact with Christy Meehan in Tuam.”
Over the cellphone, Christy Meehan stated that snipe capturing was glorious, however to return over on Thursday quite 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 fallacious aspect of the highway, a follow that strikes terror into Betty.
“Left is correct, proper is left,” she retains chanting in my ear.
When you’re exterior Dublin, nevertheless, automobiles are scarce and the roads are good. What Irish roads take pleasure in that ours don’t are sheep, cattle, outdated males with canes, and housewives on bicycles. I like all of them and am significantly keen on being marooned in a sea of sheep.
Exterior 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 look at 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 notice to ask Christy Meehan what they have been.
“Plover,” stated Christy an hour later within the Hermitage Lodge 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,” stated Christy, an enterprising man whose Meehan Recreation Companies arranges capturing at any of 15 gun golf equipment in County Galway. “And a curlew.”
Snipe, plover, curlew — not a phrase a few respectable fowl.
“Any geese?” I requested.
“Geese? Ah, you might have a shot on the odd duck — when you needed one.” Christy rose. “The ghillie might be right here at nine-thirty.”
It was raining once 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 once I seemed out the resort 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 outdated, barely exhausting 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 behind my rented automotive, we got down to shoot snipe on the Tuam Gun Membership protect, which appears to soak up every thing round Tuam. Irish local weather is concerning the mildest in Europe, however Irish climate is notorious — not as a result of it is unhealthy — however as a result of it’s without end threatening to be, and this fixed bluffing has given it a foul title. However the night time earlier than, December 10, the climate had stopped bluffing; Galway froze. And once we left Tuam, the land lay shining with a white frost; within the vivid solar the scene was like the within of a glass Christmas ball. The fantastic thing about the panorama gave me a cost, nevertheless it plunged Christy into melancholy.
“No wind,” my companion stated glumly; “no damp.”
A few miles exterior Tuam, we parked on a rustic lane and I ready to hunt my first peat lavatory. Some bogs have agency bottoms, some have gentle bottoms, and others have none, just like the one not removed from us into which a locomotive of the West Clare Railroad toppled in the future and was by no means seen once more. The peat had been eliminated way back from the lavatory that we have been coming into. Peat appears like a five-foot thick layer of topsoil. The Irish name it turf. The turf is minimize 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 stated. “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 (capturing every thing 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 brief stature: 5 toes of lavatory water involves an Irishman’s chin, nevertheless 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,” stated Christy, his gloom deepening. “It’s like strolling on corn flakes. The birds might 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 the moment. 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,” stated 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 no less than eight toes, I started to see snipe-shooting in a brand new gentle. The very first thing I seen was that the Irish model of snipe doesn’t fly like our jacksnipe. This Celtic demon makes our fowl seem like just a little outdated girl from Pasadena. No rolling, sedate curves for him; this fowl 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 means of attending to an altitude he fancies.
Nearly 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 fowl — quite a lot of careening, quite a lot of flying on his aspect, and now and again, 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 assume you may drop one by firing right into a flock, however you gained’t. Snipe don’t affiliate with one another. In actual fact, 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 informed 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 exhausting is a thriller. My opinion is that when the fowl 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 have 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 power that I couldn’t make up my thoughts when to fireside. So I adopted his loopy flight with my double, trying, I think about, like a gent with a nervous dysfunction. After I lastly pulled, the snipe fell.
“Good shot’” cried Christy. “A minimum of forty-five yards.”
Rusty fetched the fowl. and I checked out it. The Irish snipe is far bigger than our jacksnipe.
“Geese,” stated Christy with out enthusiasm. A dozen teal had gotten up. They circled after which settled.
“Would you thoughts capturing a duck?” He seemed ashamed of himself for asking. “The snipe aren’t right here at the moment, and with no wind there gained’t be any capturing them.”
Thoughts a duck, Christy? After attempting 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. After I turned again I discovered one other flock virtually upon me. With my outdated 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 have to put my glasses on to see the place the security is about. I deal with the reloading like a cub bear with boxing gloves. The foundation of my drawback 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 aspect 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 drag. After 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 stated. Hares are frequent in Eire, and so they differ from rabbits in that hares don’t dwell 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 1 lavatory we noticed a crowd of birds crossing the highway in entrance of us. Disorderly as crows, they flew with a jerky, pumping motion. They’d oddly brief necks, like alarmed turtles.
“Plover,” stated Christy. And once I stated that was ridiculous, I’d seen plover yesterday and so they hadn’t been something like these louts, he added: “Lapwing plover. They fly like fools however they’re lifeless artful.”
The plover have been flying over bushes that lined the highway on one aspect. I finished the automotive, stepped exterior, and bought shut sufficient to shoot two. Lapwings not solely fly humorous however additionally they seem like clowns. Massive as pigeons, they’ve longish legs and brief 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 assume 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 free stone fences. From my prairie youth I’m fairly deft with barbed-wire fences, however stone fences defy me. After I put a leg over I get hung up and am typically left behind, howling. When I attempt to scale the stones because the Irish do, I knock the fence down, typically onto my instep.
Aside 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 every one Christy would scare the birds towards me and I’d get in my two licks. Generally I bought one, a number of instances two, and as soon as — once 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 have been no less than 4 inches lengthy.
“Curlew,” stated 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 arms and knees. Seventy-five yards out we sank to our bellies for the ultimate slither. We have 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 believed — John Huston, the eminent movie director who has change into an Irish citizen and lives close to Tuam.
“Ah, it’s you, Paddy,” stated Christy, rising with a groan. “Now wasn’t it grand of you to return striding down the hill like that, the entire top of you shining within the solar to look at us creep up on the curlew.”
“Not a’tall. I got here right down to let you know that you just weren’t keepin’ low sufficient,” stated Paddy, the glint of laughter deep in his eye. “A tough fowl, the curlew. Not one to attend for the shot.”
I nonetheless thought it was John Huston, nevertheless 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 entering into on the left, too?” I requested. Paddy regarded me thoughtfully. “Ah, you might, you might, might he not, Christy?” He paused. “In the event 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 how you can hunt. We’d misplaced our probability on the curlew, however I’d quite have met Paddy Ryan.
“For the night shoot,” stated Christy once 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 fortress and eat an apple (there are all the time fortress ruins to take pleasure in whenever 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 stated. They have 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 together with his headlamp on; I heard youngsters laughing far-off. I ought to have felt enthralled. As a substitute I felt like a legal. 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 capturing; in truth there are few sport legal guidelines of any form. Limits, for instance, are seldom imposed besides maybe on pheasants by particular person golf equipment.
Method down the lavatory Christy fired twice. Half a minute later a flock of birds all of a sudden 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. After 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 informed myself. However snipe don’t fly so straight, and so they 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 will have a shot on the golden plover?” Christy and Rusty appeared out of the gloaming.
In order that was what I had shot, a fowl of dazzling pace and excellent in soups.
“Lets look ahead to the curlew?” Christy requested. “They fly greatest 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 have been chilly, and for an additional, Betty would have a search celebration 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 foul day, he stated.
A nasty day was it? We had began out to shoot snipe, and a white frost had pushed them from their typical habitat. But on a vivid, windless day — bane of waterfowlers in all places — we had been in a position to flip from snipe to different sport. A nasty day in Eire would have been a great season in California. And that was not all. I had met Paddy Ryan. And eaten an apple in a fortress break. And discovered a little bit of the lore of my ancestors — bog-trotting.
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