One sportsman testing his skill at Highland Lake in East Andover New Hampshire…
narrowly escaped with his life.
This town had been the home of a pair of herons for nearly half a century. The good people of the town had come to regard these venerable and long-legged fowl as birds of good omen.
However, in 1872 a “sacrilegious fowler” shot one of them. The local residents were indignant and their anger “rose to such a pitch” that the sportsman’s life was endangered. He escaped the town before he could be harmed.
Source: Appletons’ journal: a magazine of general literature
“Home and Foreign Notes“, Volume 8, Issue: 196, Dec. 28, 1872, page 742
