Colonel peter fbawfeet 147 



was posted as a miracle in all the papers because the 

 birds were never known to be so wild : considering all 

 things I shot famously." 



But this was eclipsed by the sport he had in the 

 following September. His bag on the first day was 

 1 02 birds and I hare, besides three brace shot and 

 lost ; on the second day 50 birds and 2 hares ; on 

 the third day 56 birds and 3 hares. 



" Having now," he writes, " done what I believe never 

 was done here before, and what may possibly never be 

 done here again, and supplied all the farmers and my 

 friends with game, I shall here terminate the war against 

 the partridges, and at all events leave them to others 

 till I want game again and can have proper scenting 

 weather to kill a few birds in a quiet way." There 

 speaks the true sportsman, a very different creature 

 from the mere game-slaughterer. 



" In our opinion," says Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, 

 the greatest living authority on shooting, "it is a sure 

 mark of a true sportsman to be contented with a 

 small and hardly earned bag of wild birds." He is 

 referring there more particularly to wild-fowl shooting 

 on shore, but the remark applies generally, and no man 

 ever stood this test of a true sportsman more triumphantly 

 than Colonel Hawker. There is one bone, however, I 

 have to pick with him, and that is in respect of his want 

 of sympathy with the shore-shooter. Like all punt- 

 shooters, he regarded the shore-shooter as a nuisance. 

 Now, I have been a shore-shooter, and I maintain that 

 the stalking of wild-fowl from the shore requires every 

 whit as much craft and sportsmanship as punt-shooting 



