My First and Last Snipe Hunt
When I about 9 or 10 years old, I had heard my older brother Leon talk about snipe hunting a whole bunch. Him and a couple of his buddies went every once in a while. They wouldn’t let me go cause he said I probably couldn’t keep up with em thru the woods.
Finally one bright moonlit night, he decided I could go but he was gonna let me have the easy job, he was gonna let me hold the bag to catch em in. He told me to get my cotton picking sack and lets go. Now yall what might don’t know what a cotton picking sack is, it’s a big burlap bag with should straps knotted on the open end that we used to pick cotton in and to pull corn when it got dry on the stalks.
I got my sack and we headed to the woods, we went down to where there was a big ditch where folks said a train track used to be there many years ago. We weren’t but about 50 yards from the head of my uncle Hurbert’s pond and there was a lot of old trees that had done died still standing in the shallow water at the head of the pond.
Me and our ole Redbone hound Rattler got settled down with the sack at the end of the ditch and we was to wait there until Leon and brother James could go on down to the swampy area and start driving a flock of snipe up to the ditch and I was supposed to hold the sack open and let em go in the bag. He told me to be patient cause sometime it takes a while to get a flock to coming.
I know me and ole Rattler had done sat there for over 2 hours and didn’t see nor heard nothing. It was a still and quiet night, well all of a sudden we heard a scream like bloody murder up at the head of the pond and then a loud splash what sounded like a #3 washtub had been dropped from one of them dead trees, and such screaming like you ain’t never heard.
There is some big bob cats in that swamp and me and Rattler figured one of em was on his way toward us and he sounded like he was mad so me and ole Rattler jumped up and headed for the house, and I actually beat Rattler to the yard. I run in the house and was telling daddy about the loud racket and I don’t know where Leon and James is. Daddy said why they’ve been home over 2 hours and they done gone to bed. That’s my last snipe hunt.
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