The anecdote I referred to above (and got it wrong from memory), told by Ripon in "King Edward as a Sportsman"
I can remember none of a sufficiently impersonal nature to publish which would be likely to interest the reader, except perhaps the following rather strange experience at Bradgate, the late Lord Stamford's country place, where I was shooting with his late Majesty, then Prince of Wales. The masters of the works at Leicester, not many miles from the Bradgate estate, gave their men a halfholiday, and they came out literally in their thousands to see the sport. After luncheon the head keeper
approached Lord Stamford and remarked :
' I fear, my lord, that it will be impossible to have more than
one drive this afternoon.'
'Why,' Lord Stamford inquired, *we have two more coverts to shoot ?
' Yes, my lord,' the keeper answered, ' but there
are some four thousand people between us and the
next covert.'
One large fifty-acre field was absolutely crammed
with spectators. Lord Stamford asked me and another
gun if we minded going into the crowd and guarding
that side of the covert. Of course we did so, and the
scene which ensued was extraordinary. As we shot
the pheasants coming over, they fell among the crowd,
who seized them and tore them to pieces in their
eagerness to secure them. It was somewhat foggy,
and several people climbed up into the trees to obtain
a better view. My friend, not noticing this, was very
near shooting one of the aerial spectators, and it was
merely a matter of luck that he did not do so. His
surprise was extreme when, firing what he never doubted
to be a perfectly safe shot well up in the air, he heard
a voice from above crying out, ' Hi ! hi ! that was too near !' It had never, of course, occurred to him that the trees were populated.
