Sharpshooter

A fond farewell to Willy Poole, a true countryman and fine writer, and why comments about the “exploitation” of beaters are wide of the mark

Willy Poole has died, aged 76. He was a great Master of foxhounds and a fine writer. I knew him when he lived in Northumberland. He wrote a very kind review of a book I wrote about goose shooting, back in 1997, and we kept in touch.

He once turned down an invitation to a day’s shooting. He explained that his eyesight was not what it was and, as he could no longer be reasonably certain of making a good shot, he thought he should decline on the grounds of animal welfare.

I once had lunch with Willy at a rather traditional restaurant. As we settled at our table, a waitress asked: “Any vegetarians?” With barely a moment’s hesitation, Willy said: “Yes, I’d like one as a starter, please.”

Hard to beat?

Is beating a job or a hobby? I ask because a certain type of activist has been known to make snide comments about millionaire grouse moor owners exploiting downtrodden serfs who are so desperate for money that they exhaust themselves wading through waist-deep heather in return for a pittance.

Yet one of my friends, who was an avid shooter in his youth, tells me that he now finds equal enjoyment in a day’s beating (admittedly, he’s talking about a lowland shoot). He values the exercise, the camaraderie and banter — and simply watching others shoot. And of course legions of shooters become semi-professional pickers-up, finding greater fulfilment in working their dogs than in raising a gun.

The sheer number of non-shooters required to make a day’s driven shooting work is something that the general public often fails to appreciate. The focus might be on people with guns, but they are in a minority on a driven shoot day. It is a team effort. I doubt if most driven shooting would be financially viable if beating were treated as ordinary, clock-watching employment. Beating on a grouse moor is hard work — and the flankers, in particular, really have to know what they are doing. I am not sure they could ever be paid their true “worth”, if one were to try to calculate it in standard employment terms.

The sneering comments about the “exploitation” of beaters seem to misjudge the true situation. It also strikes me as rather inconsistent with the attitude towards temporary agricultural workers. The Guardian, which never misses an opportunity to parade its Remoaner credentials, is always harping on about the need for farmers to have access to cheap seasonal workers from eastern Europe. The paper even ran a piece bewailing the fact that affordable strawberries might not be available for Wimbledon if a “hard” Brexit prevails. (Oh, the suffering!).

Yet some might wonder if we really need a horticultural business model that depends on paying overseas seasonal workers rockbottom wages and housing them in shoddy Portakabins. Some might even say, why not import strawberries from Bulgaria, rather than Bulgarian strawberry pickers? Would anybody at Wimbledon notice?

But these are the sorts of questions the Guardian, with its new and rather implausible concern for rural businesses, probably doesn’t want to entertain. Certain folk would rather wring their hands about supposedly downtrodden, exploited grouse beaters than about poorly paid seasonal workers breaking their backs in Lincolnshire fields. Or at least, that’s one way of putting it.

“Beating on a grouse moor is hard work — I’m not sure they could ever be paid their true ‘worth’”