Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a practical joke, originally a (rural) trick whereby the victim was handed a bag and told to wait in a given (out-of-the-way) location in order to catch a non-existent creature, the ‘snipe’.

1881		Armidale Exp. (NSW) 25 Feb. 7/4: t is an old time custom of playing pranks on greenhorns by taking them snipe hunting and giving them the bag to hold. A short time since a crowd of the boys decided to play a joke on a new comer, and one they took for a 'greeny,' by taking him down into the swamp, snipe hunting.
1896		Harpe’s New Mthly Mag. 92 352: ‘It ain’t every man that gets a chance to go on a snipe-hunt.” . . “Now, Bud,” Mr. Collum said, when the bag was set on the edge of the gully, with its mouth toward the prairie, “you just scrooch down behind this here sack an’ hold the candle. . . An you whistle jest as hard an’ as continual as you can, whilst the balance of us beats aroun’ an’ drives in the snipe’.
[1912		P.C. Wren Dew & Mildew 157: ‘Is this dust the salaried shikaree o[i..e. hunter] f the Presence, or is he a black-faced bazaar-wanderer, babbling to foolish chota-wallahs of ishnipe when there are no ishnipe?’].
1932		Sporting Globe (Melbourne) 2 Jan. 3/7: [ref. to US] In New York, he used to delight in drawing the unfortunates out into the woods for the well-known snipe hunt.
1958		W. Humphrey Home from the Hill 40: Any you fellows be interested in going on a snipe hunt?
1978		W. Hjortsberg Falling Angel 41: I was beginning to feel like the sucker in a snipe hunt. The guy who waits all night in the woods holding the empty sack.
2012		T. Pluck ‘Summer of Blind Joe Death’ in Life During Wartime (2018) 167: ‘They sent him on a snipe hunt all over the state, and by the time Joe realized he’d been fooled [etc]’.