THE PENSACOLA JOURNAL — SEPTEMBER 06, 1911
YOUNG MEN ARE TAKEN FOR A SNIPE HUNT ♢ One of the Party Gives Interesting Account of Experience of Last Night—At Last Accounts the Novices Provided Lanterns were Still Holding Bag for the Birds.
One of the party told a representative of The Journal an interesting story of a snipe hunt which was pulled off last night. His account of the hunt was as follows:
“Two corn sacks and several lanterns formed the equipment of the party of snipe hunters who took advantage of the glorious moonlight and two inexperienced ‘yaboos’ who had never witnessed the catching of the most wonderful bird of the ollibbi character, or better known as the long-tailed snipe.
“The hunting party, composed of Messrs. Hoppen, Langford, Ritchie, Fickas, Olsen, VanHorn, Blitch and Willis, departed from the Y. M. C. A. in company with the expert bag-holders, Messrs. Fulter and Israel, at 9:30 o’clock.
“For the occasion Fuller purchased two new lanterns, to assist the snipe to enter the bag when run up by the scouting party.
“There is no place more suitably located than Bayou Texar, where the birds are plentiful, to hold a ‘spizzen-whoffel’ snipe hunt.
“In order to evade the existing game laws, this method was selected: A boat was secured and after reaching a point several miles up the bayou a landing was made where the bag-holders were comfortably located holding a sack with a lantern immediately in front, where they patiently waited for the long-tailed ‘zuzzenbuffs’ to be run up from the rushes, being attracted by the lights, when they would enter the bag, when ‘they’ would quickly close down the bag containing a whole, school of the beautiful birds.
“Completing these preliminaries, the bunch took to the woods to run out the birds, although changing their minds and returned to town, leaving the bag-holders to wait until they had caught enough birds or until their lanterns went out.”
From— The Pensacola Journal. (Pensacola, Fla.), 06 Sept. 1911. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.