Wrongs, rights-and-lefts

We all like shooting right-and-lefts, says Tom Payne, whether it’s woodcock or partridges, but what’s the secret to getting better at it?

- Tom Payne

Some years ago at a talk in London, I learned that more than 60 percent of guns now made by Holland & Holland are over-and-unders. “I wonder if shooting a right-and-left woodcock” — referring to a side-by-side where the front trigger operates the right barrel and the back trigger operates the left — “will ever be known as shooting an over-and-under woodcock,” mused a friend in the pub afterwards.

I couldn’t give him much of an answer. But over the years, I have developed some strong feelings about right-and-lefts, both in terms of how to execute them and why becoming obsessed with them can lead to some very poor sportsmanship.

We are in the game of killing and this should always be at the front of every Gun’s mind. If your neighbour pricks a bird, you have a duty to finish it off — even if a nice high pair is getting up in front of you.

The first rule of right-and lefts is not to give too much thought to actually shooting right-and-lefts. As most people will have experienced, when you’re thinking about bringing down a second bird before you’ve shot the first, you’re highly likely to end up with two spent cartridges and nothing to show for it.

Shooting right-and-lefts when walked-up shooting is as much about reading a piece of ground and interpreting a dog’s body language as it is about straight-shooting. It can take years to learn when you spy a patch of bog or get to a watery gutter if it looks like the sort of place that might hold wild quarry. Then you need to be able to work out how the birds might break depending on which way the wind’s blowing.

Theory

Fieldcraft needs to be absorbed over time but reading the likes of Shooting Times and books by wildfowlers, pigeon shooters and rough shooters will teach you a lot of theory.