130 A BIRD COLLECTOR’S MEDLEY. 
butterfly net, and without any great confidence in our resources we re- 
turned in the early morning to the attack. It proved an easier business 
than we had dared to hope. The Owl had dropped down to the lower 
ledge, and seemed, poor creature, very groggy, but though I got the net 
over him with comparative ease, he fought like a demon when once in 
the toils, and there was much work for Aesculapius before he was finally 
subdued. 
It is not often that a premonition that a gun is likely to burst is regarded 
by its owner as a valid reason for trying to sell it second-hand to an un- 
suspecting friend, but it has been so once, at all events. The friend in 
question expressed a desire to try it first, and was invited by the owner 
to accompany him to a neighbouring marsh. At the first shot the gun 
kicked violently; so with the second; after the third the prospective 
purchaser found himself on his back in the mud seeing stars. The owner, 
not one whit abashed, strolled up to him. ‘‘ Well, I’m blessed if I didn’t 
think she was going to bust soon,’ was his apt comment on the event. 
How many people, I wonder, know the exact range of a gun? If I 
don’t myself I ought to, for I learnt it by experience the very first day I ever 
went shore-shooting. I arranged with another novice that we should take 
it in turns to sit in a stranded boat and shoot, while the other drove. I 
drove first, and with great success steered a small flock of Dunlin straight 
for the boat. My friend fired while they were still straight, and the only 
thing hit was myself. I was fairly peppered, though fortunately in no 
vital spot. But after all there was somewhere about a hundred yards between 
us, and the experience of the boatman who went out with a keen but 
short-sighted collector must have been far more terrifying than my own. 
He worked his man up to such a pitch of excitement by his successful 
whistling and his multitudinous directions that the sportsman, feeling, I 
suppose, that there was a bird to be shot somewhere, though he could not 
see it, finally let drive at some imaginary Wader underneath the rower’s 
arm—a shot which stopped not the bird but the boat, for it blew a hole in 
the bows and sank her! 
It is marvellous that more accidents do not happen amongst shore- 
shooters when one considers the treacherous walking and the general 
recklessness that supervenes on all sides if a Duck does happen to put in 
an appearance during the day. It seems a recognized case of sauve qui peut, 
so far as onlookers are concerned. Not that Ducks are always un- 
approachable on salt water. One of the softest shots I ever saw was made 
at a September Wigeon in an estuary. I was rowing barely clear of the 
