Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
Fines and punishments are a good means of concentrating the minds of Guns on a shoot day, as well as a source of charitable donations
Ishot a small, white cock pheasant two weeks ago. I didn’t know it was one when I pulled the forward trigger on the old AYA, but I did by the time it hit the ground and the ribbing started. In my defence, it was the last drive of the day and the sun setting behind the cover to my front cast a deep, dark shadow. I genuinely believed I was shooting a pale hen bird.
This public admission will doubtless lead to some tutting at my error. I know I should have checked beyond all doubt that what I shot at was what I should have been shooting at. I thought I had, but I failed.
Back at the game cart, my faux pas stood out like a snowflake in summer as it hung there among the more conventionally hued pheasants and partridges. My host, Nick Levettscrivener, fondled the bird and gave a good impression of looking like thunder.
Counting the cost
My fellow Guns took no little delight at the hangdog expression I wore courtesy of this white cock-up. Nick muttered something about hefty fines and my face turned ashen before him. Thankfully for my distressed wallet, his scowl turned sunny and he laughed it off, saying his gamekeeper wanted the white birds gone anyway and that was that.
My blunder led me to think about the numerous fines and penalties that are imposed for shooting, or should that be mis-shooting, birds on a driven day. One local shoot, that will remain nameless, has a catch-all method that the host employs to ensure his ‘cocks-only’ policy is adhered to by guests. The system runs that anyone who shoots a hen has to pay a fine of £50. Meanwhile, the Gun that the hen lands closest to is required to pay an additional £500 fine.
This military-style group punishment generally leads to accurate target recognition, with Guns not wanting to inflict a weighty forfeit on a mate. However, on the rare occasion that a mistake is made, skulduggery can occur. For example, a few seasons ago, a Gun who was standing at five watched in horror as the Gun on two shot a hen bird that arced across to land with a thump some 10 yards from his peg. Seeking to avoid the punitive fine, he immediately sent his dog to retrieve the hen and hid it in his game pocket.
When the whistle blew at the drive’s end, he walked back to the Gun bus, stopping briefly to surreptitiously empty the pricey bird from his pocket a short distance behind the gentleman at number seven, who was obliviously busy putting his gun in its slip. He would have got away with it, too, were it not for a telltale picker-up, who had watched the whole charade.
This system of crime and punishment is not only a canny way of funding a shoot’s port bill, it is also a charity fundraiser. On the beautiful Rivers Hall shoot, on the Essex-suffolk border, estate owner Jonathan Minter has a strict policy that Guns may only try their hand against his beloved grey partridges in seasons when his keeper, Robert Graves, deems there is a genuine surplus. Should a Gun down a grey against orders, a £100 fine is imposed, with the money going to the GWCT.
English humour
Jonathan told me that his own system of punishment was played against him a few seasons past. He’d had a particularly successful drive on French partridges, shooting 12. He had marked each and, working his dog in tandem with the picker-up, he believed he had picked all of his birds. The picker-up then asked Jonathan: “Do you want me to pick the 13th, Jonathan? That cracking English that you shot behind?”
“I turned pale,” Jonathan told me. “I honestly didn’t think I had shot 13, nor that I had bagged a grey.” Deciding that his own dog had better pick-up his wrongdoing, he sent his lab to where the picker-up marked it. “I could see the bird hanging out of my dog’s mouth and from a distance it was obviously a grey.”
The master of Rivers Hall bent down to take the partridge from his dog, only then noticing the bird’s sunken eyes and notably cold and rigid frame. He looked up to see the beaters and pickers-up rolling around with laughter. A few weeks previously, one of their number had found a grey killed on the road. It had been kept in the freezer until this day and was brought out, on the off-chance they could trick the guv’nor.
“Back at the game cart, my faux pas stood out like a snowflake in summer”
Richard Negus is a professional hedge layer and writer. He lives in Suffolk, is a keen wildfowler and a dedicated conservationist with a passion for grey partridges.