"It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."-Mark Twain

Many years ago I was playing in an individual stroke event at my club and this actually happened to me. The 6th hole of the old course is a drivable tight par four with a deep gully right in front of the women's tee. To the left are some taller overhanging trees which I caught that day and my ball crashed down into the 20' deep gully. It's a 50/50 chance of finding it and making it out without penalty strokes, so I didn' reload but headed to the area of my ball. I get there and Old Mickey, the local ball hound, was wandering around at the bottom with his pockets full. I asked him if he had seen a ProV1x with two blue dots on it. He puts his hand in his pocket and the first ball he pulls out is mine. He quickly headed to where he had snatched it and placed back down. Decent lie but not a good shot out. A few years later he was foraging around in the brush in front of the women's tee on the 17th and a lady whacked him right in the head. He recovered, but the club finally banned him from hunting balls. He would boast of finding 4,000 golf balls a season.