KEEPERS AS SHOTS

In recent weeks, I have been asking shooting friends for the answer to the great mystery of shooting: why are gamekeepers such good shots?

In the summer, I took part in a charity clay shoot in Northumberland. I was shooting in a relatively strong guns’ team and as we waited at each ‘drive’ we watched and admired the teams made up of Northumbrian and Cumbrian keepers. They rarely missed and consequently came first and second out of some 25 teams (we were a proud fourth).

But when do keepers put in the hours that we guns do? I was with guns who shoot 20 to 30 days a season and are deemed to be good grouse and partridge shots. The keepers cannot possibly have that many birds driven towards them.

I postulate the existence of a parallel or twilight world, one in which when we guns are not shooting there is a team of keepers out there enjoying day after day of the most wonderful driven game. Perhaps the real reason our beaters are so good and know the drives so well is because they are actually out every day driving birds to the keeper’s gun. Is there a whole world of night-time shooting? Is it a myth that birds roost as the sun goes down and don’t fly so well when the moon comes up? I wonder if those poachers occasionally spotted are in fact the keeper’s guest guns lost between drives. Perhaps they have mastered the technology of shotgun silencers and infrared sighting. All I

know is that keepers should not be as good as they are for the days they shoot. Or, to turn that around, why, after all my years of shooting, am I not a better shot than my keeper? Perhaps your readers can help.

Peter Cooper

Bradley Green, Worcestershire