bat-fowling

The sons played cricket and went bat-fowling with the village boys, and not seldom joined with them in a poaching expedition to the paternal preserves.

Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography George William Erskine Russell 1886

He was not afraid of his mother missing him till bedtime, as it was the wont of the youths -- especially of those who had comfortless homes -- to wander about in parties in the evening, bat-fowling sometimes, but often in an aimless sort of way, doing little bits of mischief, and seeking diversion, which they seldom found, unless there was any solitary figure to be shouted at and startled.

The Carbonels Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

Their manner of taking these birds resembles something a sport called bat-fowling.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time Robert Kerr 1784

There's your low cost, you yeasty, bat-fowling coxcomb, you.

Fool.com: The Motley Fool 2009

"I know not whence your faith came; but while we were lads together at a country college, gathering blueberries, in study-hours, under those tall academic pines; or watching the great logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the summer twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the forest -- though you and I will never cast a line in it again -- two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the faculty never heard of, or else it had been the worse for us, -- still it was your prognostic of your friend's destiny that he was to be a writer of fiction."

Literary and Social Essays George William Curtis 1858

There’s a bit of rough sex in this one, but just about the nastiest thing you’ll hear anyone say is, “Hell’s bells! or “You, you – bat-fowling, lily-livered skainsmate!”

2007 November 19 « One-Minute Book Reviews 2007

a party of fellows bat-fowling along the hedges of that field that came through the dark, attracted by the glare of the torches, the blaze of the scarlet clothes, and the outcry.

The Fifth Queen Crowned Ford Madox Ford 1906

"go a bat-fowling", with lanterns, some of us on one side of the hedge and some on the other.

The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (W. Hale White) Mark Rutherford 1872

After dark we would “go a bat-fowling ", with lanterns, some of us on one side of the hedge and some on the other.

The Early Life of Mark Rutherford Rutherford, Mark, 1831-1913 1913