Our method of carrying out the hunt was to take the young and impressionable scouts out at night into the middle of the woods or sagebrush (depending on where we were camping in Idaho). They each had a pillow cases open and ready to receive the snipes that we were to scare out of the bush. We all “knew” that snipe were so dumb that they’d run right into the open bag. For the hazing to be complete, we confiscated their flashlights because we needed them to scare the snipes in their direction. The young scouts were left standing in a circle in the middle-of-nowhere calling in the snipes, while we older scouts went out into the wilderness to scare the snipes back toward them.

I can still hear the kids hollering “Here snipe! Here snipe!” from the hills while we older scouts sat cozily sipping hot cocoa around the camp fire. When the new scouts finally found their way back to camp the initiation had been complete…almost instant maturity obtained by having been deceived…and once they got over their initial irritation and realized it was funny, they too knew that they would pass on the myth.

Now my own son has seen real Wilson’s Snipe with me on a few occasions and knows their typical habitat. I am confident he will never become a victim of the Snipe Hunt initiation. Plus it will probably be outlawed as soon as some hapless boy scout spends a cold night in the woods and his parents sue, but why let that stop several generations of prank perpetuation?!