Catch birds at night by dazing them with a light and knocking them down or netting them.
Example sentencesExamples
So far as I know, batfowling was never an American sport.
A rare nocturnal sport, batfowling consisted of going into a forest or shrub-laden area and beating birds senseless with a bat.
Medieval man may not have had the thrill of flinging Frisbees, but they had a worthy counterpart, the challenging sport of batfowling.
Besides hawking and shooting, there is another way of taking birds, termed "batfowling" or "batfolding," and that this method is of some antiquity we may gather from the following line in the 'Tempest' (Act ii. Scene 1).
But people unfamiliar with batfowling sometimes assumed you were supposed to beat the bush itself - which completely missed the point!
Definition of batfowl in US English:
batfowl
verbˈbatfoul
[no object]
Catch birds at night by dazing them with a light and knocking them down or netting them.
Example sentencesExamples
So far as I know, batfowling was never an American sport.
A rare nocturnal sport, batfowling consisted of going into a forest or shrub-laden area and beating birds senseless with a bat.
But people unfamiliar with batfowling sometimes assumed you were supposed to beat the bush itself - which completely missed the point!
Medieval man may not have had the thrill of flinging Frisbees, but they had a worthy counterpart, the challenging sport of batfowling.
Besides hawking and shooting, there is another way of taking birds, termed "batfowling" or "batfolding," and that this method is of some antiquity we may gather from the following line in the 'Tempest' (Act ii. Scene 1).