Have you ever discovered that you have become fashionable by accident? Wildfowlers shared this experience a few years ago when metropolitan young men intentionally started sporting beards and looking unkempt.
A game shooter’s garb, no longer ancient and malodorous, is now ‘cottagecore’, according to The Guardian’s fashion correspondent Priya Elan, who describes the look as a “romanticised ideal of masculinity”. Reared driven shooting has been en vogue for more than a century. The Edwardians, the bright young things of the 1920s, Madonna and Guy Ritchie, David Beckham, Wills and Kate – for generations the place for the ‘in crowd’ to be seen was at covert-side.
The antithesis to all this glamour has been rough shooting, walked up or driven days where the bag is made up by native wild game, waders and wildfowl. To achieve a bag at all requires hard toil by the Guns and even more labour from keepers and landowners. Habitat provision and nurture, along with pest control, are everything. Every egg laid, every brood, every chick that grows from bee-sized fluffball to poult and then to adulthood is an example of triumph over adversity.
Weather is a threat. Cover crops can fail, leaving broods at the mercy of avian predators. An inopportune downpour will kill chicks if a marauding badger hasn’t got there first. There are no certainties here, and therefore it is harder to sell to a public weaned on buying their shooting on a price-per-bird basis.
Despite these perceived negatives, British Guns are reawakening to the delights of wilder, rougher shooting and this suggests that a number are even starting to view reared driven birds as passé.
Denne historien er fra July 15, 2020-utgaven av Shooting Times & Country.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra July 15, 2020-utgaven av Shooting Times & Country.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
United we stand
Following United Utilities' decision to end grouse shooting on its land, Lindsay Waddell asks what will happen if we ignore our vital moors
Serious matters
An old gamebook prompts a contemplation on punt-gunning
They're not always as easy as they seem
While coneys of the furry variety don't pose a problem for Blue Zulu, he's left frustrated once again by bolting bunnies of the clay sort
Debutant gundogs
There's lots to think about when it comes to making the decision about when to introduce your dog to shooting
When the going gets rough
Al Gabriel returns to the West London Shooting School to brush up on his rough shooting technique
The Field Guide To British Deer - BDS 60th Anniversary Edition
In this excerpt from the 60th anniversary edition of the BDS's Field Guide To British Deer, Charles Smith-Jones considers the noise they make
A step too far?
Simon Garnham wonders whether a new dog, a new gun and two different fields in need of protection might have been asking too much for one afternoon's work
Two bucks before breakfast
A journey from old South London to rural Hertfordshire to stalk muntjac suggests that the two aren't as far detached as they might seem
Stalking Diary
Stalkers can be a sentimental bunch, and they often carry a huge attachment to their hill
Gamekeeper
Alan Edwards believes unique, private experiences can help keepers become more competent and passionate custodians of the countryside