He died on September 22nd 1923 in the field, having killed 51 grouse on his last drive, while the last birds of the day were being picked up, he fell down dead."
Dammit, what a death!
Re: 7 birds with one stone, I'm convinced that there are so many variables in hunting (and life in general), and they tend to coincide in such a bizzare fashion, that almost anything just might happen. Once, unintentionally, and with zero chances of consciously repeating, but just might happen. Like killing big game at 1000 yards with iron sights - you can't do it, shouldn't even try, but the bullet has to hit something, and once in a while the something would be the deer or whatever. I mean, birds don't always drop to the ground like bricks, if the wings are spread, that slows down the fall, if the bird goes down rolling, wings spread, it slows down the fall even more, sometimes the apparently dead bird would even glide for a while, and some cripples glide quite consciously. (I don't think it could happen to pheasants, but once my Dad shot a crow, which was doing a bird-of-pray imitation glide, and it dropped the head and legs down, but the wings remained fully spread, and it was coming down very slowly, like on parashoot). So, what if it just coincided, that on that occasion, the first one or two or three of the birds His Lordship shot were of the slow-falling variety?
