They Only Serve, Who Only Stand And Wait

THEY ALSO SERVE WHO ONLY STAND AND WAIT

It was the 19th. Century cleric, Sidney Smith, who voiced the opinion that heaven was eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. This has always seemed a highly indigestible and noisy business, but as another season closes, we might think about other people’s ideas of heaven. In particular, those who take their pleasures shooting in the countryside and specifically, those often-unsung heroes and heroines in the ranks of the beating line and among the pickers up. For every stylishly attired Gun disporting themselves in the shooting line there will be six largely unsung heroes rampaging about in the surrounding foliage. Those who also serve, who only stand and wait.

Guns are simple folk. Given sufficient instruction to get them to the correct location at the right time on the right day, with their boots, coats, hats, gloves, dog, cartridges, gun, ear defenders and flask, start their hearts with an unctuous libation and let them remember their peg numbers and a Gun will thereafter be content if he sees the odd bird in the sky and even more so if he despatches one or two. Happy amateur that he may be, your Gun will drive triumphantly on to the neatly raked baronial gravel looking bright of eye and bushy of tail, to be faced with as mixed a bunch of professional rural footpads as you can shake a stick at. Except that they will be shaking sticks at him.

    These are the people who have dragged themselves out of warm beds at dawn, to be marshalled mostly efficiently by the head keeper, with the sole purpose of giving the Guns their sport. Lest any Gun should think the less of the assembled battalion for their grumpy mien, functional dress and rude humour, it is best to remember that driven shooting is a team game and neither group would have reason to exist without the other, in this context at least.

Who's who among the home team

    The assembly facing the Guns generally divides into groups, though confusingly, not always standing with their peers. The Old Guard will have forgotten more about shooting and the ground over which you are soon to labour than you will ever know. There will be another group, newer to the business but no less important as they will be fitter, more agile and less inclined to shy away from barbed wire or the thickest and most prickly underbrush in which often reside the best birds.

    A third group may be made up variously of children, wives, mothers, family retainers, camp followers, very camp followers, game cart drivers, a man on a sickie from work and other less obviously qualified volunteers but don’t be fooled; this group might well also contain the Heir or the Spare or both, sons of the belted earl whose pastures, plough and spinneys are about to produce your sport. They will be accompanied by a constantly moving, miscellaneous gathering of raucous dogs, from Jack Russells to, improbably on occasion, Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Bassets and Dachshunds.   

    Lastly, probably a pace or two apart and engaged in less animated conversation, stand a group with much more polite dogs. They are the pickers up and it is their beady eyes that will be upon you throughout the forthcoming battue and their Labradors, Setters, Springers, Cockers, Sprockers, Clumbers, Flatties and other assorted hounds that will return the product of your labours to the game cart. If the beaters are the foot soldiers in the combat of wits to come, the pickers up are the field officers in this unspoken but no less delineated pecking order and the keeper is the general; he who must be obeyed and on whose back rests the weight of giving you your day as you and he might want it.

    This is probably the only occasion on which you will see everyone together as once the day begins, these groups will swing into action and perform manoeuvres as finely honed, rehearsed and convoluted as the Brigade of Guards spin wheel during Trooping the Colour, only without the noise. Strangely, for a pastime as noisy as shooting, the sound of the human voice is mostly anathema, and the best teams will only be heard - often describing the total ineptitude of the Guns - between drives.

Briefings should be brief

    There will be a briefing. This is important for the beaters and pickers up as it helps for them to know where they are going. The Guns get briefed separately and for different reasons, but by the time the beaters wagon, game cart and gun bus depart the scene, one side has been encouraged not to shoot the other as nothing enrages a volunteer more than being peppered about the mazzard or rude fustians by a wayward spread of Number 6 shot from an equally wayward numb-nuts with a gun in his hand and smart tweed breeks. Talking of clothing, whilst the average beater on the hoof might look much like an unmade bed in camouflage, it will not be they who suffer from frozen fingers or soggy stocks. Beaters don’t like to do cold and wet!

    So what makes any right minded individual do these supplementary things? It is a received but erroneous wisdom that beaters and pickers up are universally frustrated Guns, but any Gun who thinks naively that these volunteers might be picking up tips from watching the line of baggy breeks and Schoffels ahead of them is way off the pace. Everyone knows that beaters and pickers up are somewhere between Dashwood and Digweed on the competence scale and can do better than any paying Gun, with their brains tied behind their backs, an idea that only reveals its fallacious nature annually at the end of January.

What Guns learn by listening in

    A Gun can, however, learn much from observing and listening to the beaters and pickers up. Sound does travel over misty meadows and in recent years it has been possible to monitor the love lives, social predilections and betting habits of whole families by listening to pickers up, whilst on the peg; good ear defenders help this process. For example, I now know how one treats a dog for coprophagia and a partner for practices too bizarre to trouble us here, and beaters believe that had God said it was natural, then animals would certainly do it. One can often work out before the drive commences how good one’s peg is likely to be by observing where the pickers up have positioned themselves in relation to the flushing point and wind direction and they are rarely wrong. After all, no picker up wants to expend more physical energy than might be totally necessary.

    By and large, the beaters control the show. If they are well marshalled, nicely spaced and move forward at a slow, steady pace then the birds will trickle out over the Guns in perfect order and the keeper will be seen with an expression on the smiley side of glum. If the line is too long, if it moves too fast or if its members are bloody minded enough to give their spaniels too much leeway, the birds will flush in uncontrollable lumps and the keeper will be halfway between bleak despair and outright hysteria. It therefore pays to look after beaters with a cheery word, a cherry brandy, a decent lunch and a brace to hand at the end of each day because even the most dedicated professional bush thrasher may bridle without these simple rewards.

The year of the Wally

    Whilst loading on a particularly well-found double gun partridge day a season or so ago, with a team who were not quite as good in despatch as their weaponry and clothing suggested that they should be, the beaters could distinctly be heard agreeing that on the basis of current performance, they would declare that day the start of the International Year of the Wally. Guns have a high standard to attain, and beaters take no prisoners but grudgingly acknowledge competence if, as and when they see it. Which in their view is not often.

    Beaters have a highly developed sense of humour, thrashing about o’er bog and sticky plough requires it, whilst pickers up rarely display any emotion, as being caught enjoying themselves too much might compromise their gravitas. Dogs, on the other hand, mud magnets that they are, are absolutely in their element and are mostly off the wagginess scale all day but rarely does an outing pass without the quietest looking lady picker up or beater roundly berating her poor benighted hound for some minor peccadillo in tones so strident and profane that they inadvertently alert the nearest man of the cloth from his God bothering.

    When we enter the next shooting season, estates may have changed hands and keepers may have moved on but as long as they have been treated right and thanked copiously by Guns and keeper alike, the core team of experienced beaters and pickers up will probably remain largely unaltered year on year. Such is the contribution to the day - of those who also serve who only stand and wait - that it could probably go ahead without the owner or his keeper actually being present at all and there are those who believe this to be their idea of heaven; and you can keep your pâté and trumpets.

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