Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Hard to see, harder to hit
Simon Garnham plans an anniversary meal to celebrate an Afghan adventure — but the snipe on the marsh haven’t read the memo
I’m going to cook snipe next weekend,” I found myself boasting. “There’s been a decent fall of them on the marsh and Coatsy’s coming over. It’s 20 years since Operation Snipe. What better way to celebrate?”
The children, Mrs G and I had just finished a Sunday roast of assorted game. It had been edible — which when I’m cooking is a triumph. The success had gone to my head.
Mrs G raised an eyebrow. She remembers Operation Snipe as the one when I asked her to send silly string, that squirty, colourful stuff that gets sprayed around at parties. It was useful for finding tripwires in Afghan caves. Operation Snipe had been fun in its own way in 2002. Twenty years on, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to mark it with a meal to match its name. Snipe seemed suitably indulgent as well as delicious.
I eschewed suggestions of steak from the butcher’s and found myself instead taking station at the junction of two small tidal creeks in the predawn blackness of the following weekend. Here, sea purslane and sea lavender finish and thick reed beds begin. It is a place with unusually straight lines.
On the northern bank, a vineyard is laid out in perfect symmetry. In the creek, the reeds grow like ramrods and the soft feather heads all begin at a level, forming a horizontal line running towards the tide mill.
Sibilant wings
Morning was approaching, the sky dappled like a cock pheasant, all silvers and greys against a fiery russet. The last of the stars faded. Birds were on the move, their sibilant wings whispering in the gloom.
Low pressure circling the British Isles sat squarely over East Anglia, creating a peculiar calm in the warmth of a jet stream coming from Spain. A chattering wedge of eight
mallard were high and extremely wary, banking right and left and flying with urgency from feeding grounds to their daytime roost. It was good weather for them, poor for the wildfowlers below.
Tucked into the creek, I watched Scout. She picks up the sounds of murmuring pinions more effectively than I do. Her stare alerted me to three birds advancing at speed in an arrowhead, coming up river from the west. Although they were high, it was a straightforward driven shot with enough time to gauge their speed and line. I was inwardly celebrating as I squeezed the trigger, having swung through the leading bird.
Expecting to see him tumbling, I took my cheek off the stock to mark the retrieve before picking out a second shot. But the first had not connected. And the second barrel was equally wayward.
Greylags
I fumbled for a reload, incredulous at the simple miss. A single teal jumped from the reeds on the other bank and set off from left to right across me. Two further shots were wasted. From beyond a nearby wood, the guttural calling of greylags could be heard. Were they approaching? I found the 3in magnums kept for exactly this eventuality and hunched lower. But the geese did not come.
The glowing sunrise cast a pink blush in the west. Flight was coming to an end. It was time for a coffee and, for Scout, a treat by way of compensation for her lack of employment. Four empty cartridges rattled hollowly in my pocket.
Weighing around 100g (3.5oz), several snipe are needed to
make a meal. And what a meal they make. Winston Churchill is reputed to have wished for a “brace of snipe washed down with a pint of port” as a hangover cure and Shooting Times’s Tim Maddams calls them, “seriously tasty rare treats”.
They’ve been much sought after for hundreds of years. Even Shakespeare in his tragedy Othello recognises that they are exceptional sport. In the US, to go on a ‘snipe hunt’ is their equivalent of our wild goose chase. I was excited and wasn’t going to let some poor shooting at wildfowl dent my enthusiasm for the hunt.
Bird flu
My friend Liam Fearis was dogging-in his errant birds from the sea wall and I joined him with my coffee. “You did spray your waders, mate?” he asked. Like all keepers, he is extremely concerned about this year’s serious outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu. We chatted about snipe. “Walk straight out towards the island,” he recommended.
Skylarks were first to jump as
Scout and I pushed through the sea purslane, following Liam’s directions. A redshank shrieked and had me levelling the gun. A single curlew arced overhead, fluting through its elegantly down-curved bill. Then I heard that scratchy ‘scaipe’ that tells you a snipe has exploded out of cover. It was away to my right, setting off at top speed to put air between itself and me.
I spun, raised the gun and fired. Behind. The snipe jinked. I fired again — again behind. Spray kicked up in the shot trail, showing I was too slow. Scout braced, staring at the disappearing bird. Although we scoured the saltings for another 45 minutes, it was to be our only chance on that marsh.
Patsy Halloran of Kilkee, Co Clare, made his living from snipe shooting. I have a picture of him from 1925, in a tie and three-piece tweed suit, leather boots and puttees, a moustache to rival any sergeant major. He looks tough, exceptionally tough. In December of 1924, Shooting Times published a letter in which Halloran describes shooting nine snipe in six shots, “getting two brace right-andleft; then three snipe rose and I killed them with one shot”.
Shooting Times gives some background to what must have been an extraordinary man: “His best run of them [snipe]was 23, getting five couple right-and-left… [killing]…
“In Othello, Shakespeare recognises that snipe offer exceptional sport”
1,200 snipe for his season’s shooting.” He is said to have shot more than 40,000 in his career.
With titans like this in my mind, I couldn’t return home empty-handed, so I drove for half an hour down the coast to a marsh that I know holds a lot of birds. By now, the sun had risen fully and a moderate breeze had picked up in the south. This was not in my favour; the marsh to which Scout and I had headed is on the south side of the estuary and we would therefore be walking it with the wind behind us.
Astonished
A single bird jumped almost as soon as I had closed the gun. It seemed to jink and evade the entire pattern — 32g of steel No 6 shot — from both barrels, which splashed up water all around it. The dog was almost as astonished as I was. “Come on, Garnham,” I muttered. “You’ll get one.” Talking to myself is never a healthy sign. I now had eight empty cartridges and an equally empty game pocket.
We advanced across the borrow pit and out on to the saltings, Scout working in front up to 20 yards. Three birds jumped and all broke left. Two kept low and one set off into the stratosphere. That was the bird I favoured. Tilting the gun slightly to match the angular lift-off, I pointed, swung, shot, shot again. Once more the bird got the better of the Gun.
It was much like watching a hare toying with a pair of deerhounds in the coursing field in pre-ban days. Although they try their level best to catch up with the puss, there is never any doubt that she has the better of them, needing only to turn slightly to increase her lead. Not for nothing do military snipers derive their moniker from this little bird. It is hard to see and harder still to hit.
Last chance
I had one last chance remaining, the best of the day. We waded the main creek and emerged on to the ness, a mosaic of scrapes, low cover, grasses, samphire and standing water — ideal for snipe. We saw the greatest number of birds lift — at least six and possibly more. I tried hard to focus on a single bird that set off straight away from me and headed for the channel. I shot. It jinked left.
I adjusted the line, shot. It jinked right. Rafts of wigeon watched from a safe distance. Egrets patrolled the shallows of the estuary. The bird, along with its fellows, disappeared.
It’s not been a bad season so far. I’ve managed tolerably well on grouse. The marshes have been (previously) excellent, with a couple of productive flights on teal. In the field, I’ve bagged some decent partridges. All seem inconsequential now. Snipe have found me out. Coatsy will have to go hungry until I’ve recovered from this terrible snipe bug; I really want to get one. It’s like goose fever. Only worse.