"Sniper Shooting" Oct. 5 - 1874 Oct. 5 Clear with a bracing N. wind. Rose at 5.30 and getting a light breakfast I met Nesbitt by appointment at his house and started for the swamps. In taking Belle & I shot, in the brickyard swamp he flushed a snipe & I killed a solitary Sandpiper and two rails. One of the latter was sitting in bush two feet or more above the water enjoying the morning sun: as I fired at him another ran quickly across a little channel & from the Promontary glump that I had of it I was quite positiver that it was V. novorbeancus : him I also saw a wood duck which rose at the report of the gun. Our attention was now attracted to the big meadows by repeated firing in that direction & approaching them from the Artificial side we found them occupied as on Saturday with a mob of pot hunters armed with long muskets &c. who were putting up the birds in all directions. Having marking down their birds into adjacent meadows we soon began to get some sport and morrows in a short time most of them began to leave & we closed the white ground to ourselves. By 12 the birds became so badly scattered that we gave them up and started for home. My bag was snipe 16, geese bird 1, old sandpail 3, Nesbitt had 5 snipe (2 were drawn birds which I count ed both bags). Shot behaved admirably & made several fine points. Ch. Snipe