Anglo American Shooting Society

Back Gun — A shooter who is placed by the gamekeeper behind the line of Guns in a spot without a numbered peg; this usually happens when there are more Guns than there are pegs in the line. The gamekeeper puts the Back Gun in a safe place where both the Back Gun and the Guns in the line in front should have something to shoot at. (All these terms are explained below, in alphabetic order.)

 

Bag, the — The number of gamebirds shot in a day is the bag. Estates price their shooting accordingly; a 300-bird day costs 50 percent more than a 200-bird day. See also overage.

 

Beater — A person who drives game toward the Guns by walking through the fields or coverts making no attempt to be quiet. Beaters often rap on trees or beat the brush with sticks or wave flags to flush birds into the air. Beaters advance in line as a team under the direction of the gamekeeper, who is in touch with them via two-way radio. In the UK and Ireland, beaters move gamebirds; in Europe, beaters may push boar or deer toward the Guns; in India during the Raj beaters flushed tigers as well as deer, gaur and rhino.

 

Blue Sky Rule, the — For safety’s sake, Guns are asked to shoot at birds only when there is empty sky all around them, whether blue or cloudy. A shot fired at a bird flying below the tree line or horizon may injure someone—a beater, gamekeeper, picker-up or bystander—on the ground.

 

Captain — The lead Gun; usually the person who put together the day’s shooting. Along with the gamekeeper, the captain is often expected to say a few words about safety or behavior at the start of the day. On a syndicate shoot the captain is responsible for tipping the gamekeeper at day’s end. 

 

Double-gunning — Shooting with a matched pair of identical guns and a loader. When the shooter has fired both barrels, he or she hands the empty gun to the loader, who in turn hands off the other gun, now reloaded.  Double-gunning is normal on grouse moors, where packs of several dozen birds may come by all at once and at high speed; or on high-volume days where the bag is expected to be 500 birds or more. 

Fast, safe double-gunning is an art—an experienced grouse Gun may have their own loader with whom they’ve practiced and shot often—and a skilled duo of Gun and loader can maintain a high rate of fire. 

 

Drawing for Pegs — Before leaving the lodge in the morning, each Gun draws a number at random to determine his or her first shooting peg. Then the gamekeeper announces the order of rotation: During a day with five drives, after each one every Gun typically moves up two spots—that is, No. 3 goes to No. 5. Since there are usually eight pegs in the line, No. 7 will move back to No. 1 and No. 8 goes to No. 2. This way everyone gets to shoot from every part of the line. The assumption is that the center of the line sees the most birds but, depending on wind, weather, sun, noise or one’s astrological sign, this is not necessarily so. 

 

Drive — To push birds toward the line of guns; or one complete cycle of stationing the Guns on their pegs, driving birds over them and then picking up the fallen birds. A typical shooting day in Great Britain now is five drives, with elevenses after the first or second drive and lunch after the third or fourth or at the end of the fifth drive. Weather or dusk may determine whether a team ‘shoots through’ or stops for lunch inbetween. 

A drive is also the location where a line of pegs has been set for shooting, usually at the foot of a hillside or facing a stand of trees. A small shoot of several hundred acres may have four or five drives while the largest estates may have 40 or more over thousands of acres. Since drives must be ‘rested’ for several days after being shot, the number of drives determines how many days of shooting an estate may ‘let’ each season. 

 

Elevenses — The traditional mid-morning snack, usually after the second drive and often near 11:00 o’clock; the Guns gather in the field, at a cabin or a trailer or at the gun bus, and staff serve snacks, soft drinks, sloe gin and champagne.

 

Flanker / Flagger — A beater who has been stationed on the flank of a drive, usually at the end of the line of beaters, with a brightly colored flag with which to try to turn birds toward the Guns. Without flankers, a pack of birds that has been shot at before may try to fly out to one side or the other instead of over the guns. A flanker may or may not advance with the beating line. 

 

Game Card, the — At the end of the day, usually at the shoot luncheon, the gamekeeper hands each Gun a game card, a list of the bag by species and number on a handsomely printed folder as a memento of the day. Sometimes the game card also includes the number of cartridges fired.

 

Gamekeeper / keeper — A professional wildlife manager employed by an estate to maintain its game and fish—pheasant, partridge, grouse, woodcock, waterfowl, deer, trout, salmon—and their habitat. A large estate may have a head gamekeeper and several underkeepers. The gamekeeper organizes and manages each day’s shooting, hiring and directing the beaters and deciding which drives the team of Guns will shoot. At the end of the day, the team captain or booking agent tips the gamekeeper (the amount determined by the bag), who then shares the cash with the beaters. 

 

Ground Game — Foxes, rabbits, hares, weasels, rats, small deer such as muntjacs and Chinese water deer are all ground game, as distinct from birds, flying game. At the morning safety briefing the gamekeeper will likely say ‘No ground game!’ It isn’t that he doesn’t want foxes (that prey on gamebirds) shot; it’s that he would much rather that the Guns shoot only up into the sky, where it’s safe. 

 

Gun — Capitalized, a Gun is a shooter, one of the estate’s guests; a lower-case gun is a shotgun, a smoothbore firearm (as distinct from a rifle).

 

Gun Bus — A vehicle used to transport the Guns around the estate from drive to drive. Until the COVID pandemic, the typical gun bus was an old all-wheel-drive military troop carrier. During the pandemic, for social distancing, shooting estates asked Guns to travel between drives in their own 4x4s. Now, special-built enclosed trailers towed by farm tractors are more common, with amenities such as comfortable seats and room to stow guns and cartridges. 

The beaters are usually transported in a different trailer while a smaller one is used to carry the bag, the shot birds. Gamekeepers often drive the gun bus or Guns’ tractor. 

 

Horn, the — The gamekeeper signals the end of each drive with a blast on a horn or sometimes a whistle. The Guns must immediately unload and stow their guns in their slips; many estates also ask the Guns to pick up their empty cartridge shells. No shot may be fired after the horn is blown. See also Live on peg. 

On a grouse moor there may be two horn blasts: The first one, when the beaters have approached to within shooting range of the line, is the signal that birds may no longer be shot in front but may still be taken behind the line; and the second one when the drive is over. 

 

Line, the — The actual line of shooting pegs; or the team of Guns placed by the gamekeeper on their pegs. It’s a flexible and useful term: Birds are said to be flying across the line or along the line, behind the line or in front of the line, etc. The word can be used collectively as well: That line are dead shots! 

 

Live on Peg — At the morning safety briefing, one of the gamekeeper’s instructions to the team may be ‘You will be live on peg,’ meaning that there will be no horn blast or other signal for the drive to begin; instead, the Guns may fire on the first gamebird that comes within range. 

Typically, the keeper will then add, ‘But please don’t shoot the early pigeons.’ Wood pigeons are considered gamebirds; they usually flush in front of the beaters first and shooting at them will alert the pheasants, partridges or ducks still to come. 

 

Loader — A person, usually an experienced shot, wearing a cartridge bag who stands with a Gun and reloads for them—inserts fresh cartridges when the shooter has opened the gun and the empty shells have been ejected. The shooter only breaks the gun and then closes it again, without changing their grip, which speeds up the shooting. 

A true loader assists in double-gunning; a loader who reloads for a single gun is more properly called a stuffer, but the distinction is fading in modern usage. 

Fast, safe double-gunning is an art—an experienced grouse Gun may have their own loader with whom they’ve practiced and shot often—and a skilled team of Gun and loader can maintain a high rate of fire. Even ‘stuffing’ for a single gun requires some dexterity and speed, particularly with smallbore guns; 20-bore, not to say 28-bore or .410. cartridges, are more difficult to handle than 12-bores. 

A loader/stuffer also spots incoming birds and offers advice and coaching, which can be invaluable to a newcomer. A loader also helps keep everyone safe by pointing out oncoming beaters or other Guns. A loader is responsible for their Gun’s behavior and listens for the signal at the end of a drive. Finally, a loader polices the peg, picking up the empty cartridges and making sure nothing is left behind.

Between drives, the loader is responsible for their shooter’s gun, or pair of guns, and cartridges; and at the end of the day the loader cleans the guns and delivers them to the client or to the estate’s gunroom for safekeeping. A skilled loader earns their daily rate and tip. 

 

Overage — Birds shot in excess of the agreed-upon daily bag is the overage. By unwritten courtesy, British shooting estates generally allow up to 10 percent overage before charging any additional fees. 

The gamekeeper monitors the bag throughout the day and may adjust the drives to try to make sure that the team reaches their agreed-upon total. 

 

Peg — The location where each Gun is stationed at each drive. Each drive typically has a line of eight numbered pegs, plastic or wooden markers, driven into the ground in order from left to right when facing the direction from which the birds will come. If there are more than eight Guns (there may be nine or 10 but rarely more) the gamekeeper places the extras behind the line in positions that are safe but also likely to see birds. See also Drawing Pegs and Back Gun. 

On a grouse moor, the Guns usually stand in stone-lined pits called butts, also numbered and often referred to as pegs, although there may be no actual pegs.

 

Picking Up — Retrieving the fallen birds is called picking up; it is done by the pickers-up, also known as dog-handlers because they invariably have one to four or five dogs trained to stay and then, when the drive is over and the guns are unloaded, to fetch the dead and wounded game. 

The pickers-up stand well behind the line, for safety’s sake and also to prevent any possibility of distracting the Guns or spooking the birds away from the line. Picking up is an important part of driven shooting because the price of a day’s sport is determined by the bag, the bird count. 

 

Poach — To shoot one’s neighbor’s birds is poaching. One of the unwritten rules of driven-game shooting is that birds within 45 degree of each side of a peg are fair game for the Gun on that peg. Among a team of friends, this can lead to good-natured competition; in a composed team of people who don’t know each other, it can lead to bruised egos and conflict. (Rule No. 5 of the Anglo American Shooting Society is Poach with honor!) 

 

Rotation — See Drawing for Pegs.

 

Shooting / Hunting / Stalking — In countryside Great Britain and Ireland, shooting is generally for driven gamebirds; stalking means hunting with a rifle, usually for deer; and hunting requires horses, hounds and a fox. Wildfowling is shooting waterfowl along a shoreline while flighted duck (or geese) refers to shooting waterfowl that have been driven off a pond. Shooting waterfowl after dark is legal; it requires silhouetting the birds against the evening sky as they fly into a pond or cove for the night. Pigeon shooting is usually done in late summer or early fall, along crop fields and often over decoys.

 

Stand — A gamekeeper may say that he is “standing nine guns today,” which means that the line is not eight but nine pegs long. This is important because it affects the counting when it’s time to move to the next peg. See also Drawing for Pegs.

 

Stuffer — See Loader.

 

Syndicate Shoot — A team of Guns, usually local residents, who lease land for game shooting in a cost-sharing arrangement. Members pay annual fees to cover rent, gamekeeper salaries and other costs such as birds, feed and upkeep. This is a less expensive alternative to commercial shooting booked through an agent. 

 

Walking Gun — On certain drives where, because of topography or weather, gamebirds may vary their flight path more than usual, a gamekeeper may designate a walking gun. This is typically someone on one end of the line who is then free to move away from their peg (or who may not have a peg at all) to go where the birds are flying. A walking gun is typically an experienced shooter or has an experienced loader.