256 ikfnss ot tbe 1Rot>, IRifle, an& 6un 



scored 147, having lost a shot, owing to a mistake of 

 his servant in loading. Captain Heaton, of Manchester, 

 was first with 150. 



As a pigeon-shot, too, he was supreme. In a match 

 with Lord Macdonald, to whom he gave 5 yards, 

 shooting at 30 yards rise to his lordship's 25, Ross 

 killed 52 birds out of 53. In 1828, after five days' keen 

 shooting against the best shots in Great Britain and 

 Ireland from 5 traps at 30 yards, he won the Red House 

 Club Cup, then the Blue Riband of pigeon shooting, 

 by grassing 76 birds out of 80. The other birds were 

 killed but not scored, as they fell just outside the 

 boundary and one escaped through a wire fence. So 

 that practically the Captain accounted for all his birds. 

 On another occasion Captain Ross killed 96 out of 100. 

 If you contrast these feats with the exploits of our latter 

 day pigeon-shots, the superiority appears to lie with 

 the older sportsmen. Mr. Dudley Ward, in his great 

 match with the American crack Captain Bogardus, 

 killed 84 out of 100 ; and Mr. A. J. Stuart-Wortley, in 

 his match with another famous Yankee sharpshooter 

 Dr. Carver, killed 83 out of 100. In each case the match 

 was a tie. But the reader will find further information 

 on this point in my chapter on Lord Kennedy. 



Amongst the many wagers between Lord Kennedy 

 and Captain Ross was one of 20 that Ross would not 

 shoot twenty brace of swallows on the wing in a day. 

 It was a rash bet, for Lord Kennedy had no idea of 

 the swarms of swallows that were flitting all day around 

 Rossie Castle. " I sent him the twenty brace," says the 

 Captain, "in a box, and they arrived while he and a 



