no How I Became a Sportsman. 



shot;" but I am quite sure it was more by 

 accident than design, or more by good luck 

 than anything else. 



I ran up, and there, as dead as a stone, was 

 my first " cock," and a grand bird he was, being 

 the biggest I have ever seen. We did not weigh 

 him for several days after, when he turned the 

 scale at seventeen ounces, which I fancy is 

 a very unusual weight. I have since killed 

 hundreds of couples, and never approached the 

 wei2;ht of this bird. 



Not long afterwards, in passing through a 

 small plantation of tall, scrubby old firs, we 

 caught sight of a brown bird sailing away 

 at some distance ; somebody sang out, " Mark 

 cock," but it pitched in a tree. We went up, 

 and Fisher knocked it down ; it was a brown 

 owl. 



This reminds me of an anecdote of another 

 owl. When I was shooting in that first-rate 

 sporting county, Shropshire, some years after- 

 wards, a boy named Bill Price came up from 

 his work one evening and said to the farmer, 

 at whose house I was staying, in a great state 

 of excitement, ''Maister! maister ! I bin and 

 marked down a woodcock, and he's pitched in a 



