One fine October day in 2005 a good friend, Maria Trogen and I, decided to do a little snipe hunting, She had just recently gotten her first shotgun and this her very first time to shoot at game, and in my opinion, it takes a brave heart to
choose snipe as a virgin hunting experience! Anyway, the coin was tossed and Maria would take the short grass and bogs near the lake's shore with her little cocker, Yippi, while I would take the waist high grassland further inland with Bonny. After only a
short while Bonny and I came to a very wet, marshy area that looked promising and before I could finish thinking that thought, she flushed two snipe. One flew straight ahead of me and the other about 120* to my right and slightly behind me. These are the times
when experience and instinct seem to shift into high gear. Being right handed, the snipe to my right would be the toughest shot, as I would have to twist my whole body in that direction but coming back to pick up the straight away bird would be much easier.
Bangbang! and both snipe dropped into the tall grass and as I broke open the faithful and true old side by side 12 gauge that I have been shooting for forty years, I looked down at Bonny who was still holding fast but with a serious case of the shakes waiting
for me to say that magic word. After loading two new bright red and shiny federal 7 1/2 shot shells I said "fetch" and Bonny leaped into action, but to my surprise she dove into a tuft of marsh grass about a meter and a half away and out flew another snipe.
Bang! now three lay hidden in the tall grass and I understood just why she was really shaking as she was. She knew all along that that third snipe was tucked in and hiding. That's my girl! I must say that it takes a lot longer to tell this story than it took
to transpire, because in real time from the first to the third shot, maybe 30 - 40 seconds had passed. Bonny had marked all the falls and made the retrieves, but they were not that easy as the tiny little devils were for the most part laying in mud and water
below a meter or more of grass. Shortly afterwards, Maria came over to me and asked me if I knew what I had just done and it was only then I realized I had shot a snipe double, and sort of a triple, I guess you could say.
On another
occasion a few years earlier a good friend, Peter Norberg, from Sweden; paid me a visit to do some snipe hunting and it was another kind of day indeed. One of those we spent shooting a lot of holes in the air. So much so, I had to write a poem about it. Hope
you like it.