TYPES OF SHOOTERS 185 
having kept the keeper waiting, instead of allowing 
him to go straight on with the beaters.to the next 
beat or drive. He refuses to allow the keeper to show 
the guns to their places, forgets where to put them 
himself, makes a hopeless hash of a good beat, and 
than calmly tells the keeper that he understood him 
to say so-and-so. 
The keeper cannot help feeling a bit of a fool on 
discovering, when too late, that the guns have been 
wrongly placed. Talking very often accounts for 
guns being placed so that they cannot cover a beat 
to the best advantage. The host and a guest 
begin to discuss some subject, and perhaps each 
forgets the business in hand, or the one may not 
like to cut the other short. Suddenly it is discovered 
that someone ought to have stopped a hundred 
yards farther back, or half the guns find themselves 
in a cluster at the endof the beat. Then it isa case 
of, ‘Oh, very well; it does not matter now. Stay 
where you are.’ No wonder partridges come wide 
or pheasants run between the guns. 
Some guns apparently are born late. But if it is 
rude to be late for a dinner-party, surely it is rude 
to be late for a shoot. Ata dinner the late guest is 
‘the chief sufferer, because he must eat warmed-up 
food or go without. At a shoot the host and his 
punctual guests, the keeper, the bag, and the success 
of the day, all must suffer. A wait of half an hour 
at the start means that the proceedings throughout 
