Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in Louisiana, their denunciation would be just, but I opine if these same critics could be transported to Louisiana in the woodcock season they would be surprised to find in how short a time they would become lovers of the night pothunt. "I know from personal experience. I was born a sportsman and I can recall, some thirty-five years ago, when I scorned to shoot a woodcock on the ground, but then I was new in the State. It did not take me long to get broken in to the method. The great delicacy of the bird and the almost impossibility of getting him by daylight hunting begets the habit of night pot- hunting, and, like other bad habits, it grows apace. "This section of the State is rather out of the woodcock country, and I have not hunted them for twenty- five years. They are here every year, but not plentiful enough to warrant night hunting, but well do I remember a noted hunt of about thirty-five years ago. I was a visitor to Louisiana then. One dark, drizzly night my brother-in-law was lamp-carrier for me, and I killed seventy-two from 9 until I A.m. with a muzzle- loading gun. No, it was seventy-one that I killed with the gun, but when my ammunition became exhausted on the way home we found a bird on the side of the path. I drew the ramrod and killed it with a blow on the head, making an even six dozen. "I cannot refrain from telling of my last woodcock hunt . It was in January, 1885, just twenty-five years ago. On a starlight night three of us started out for a hunt, one gunner on each side of the light. Thebirds were plentiful, but were so wild that we could not get shots at half of those we found. The two of us killed fourteen. "The next night was bright also, and I suggested a new scheme. I, being a crack wing shot, was to load my gun with the ordinary bird load,...