LAND AND WATER 
December 19, 1914 
AN OLD-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS SHOOT 
CHRISTMAS SHOOTING 
Beaters and Stops 
By GUY C. POLLOCK 
IT can scarcely be supposed that covert shooting will 
in this tragic )'ear show more than a very small part 
of its usual activities. But since my gunmaker tells 
me that, after a drastic period of almost complete 
inaction , demands for cartridges and even for guns 
have shown a great recuperative power, it would appear that 
a considerable number of sportsmen are left in this country 
who, because they cannot or because they will not do military 
service in the country's hour of need, are likely to indulge, 
with such zest as may be, in the milder forms of bombardment 
which pull tall pheasants out of the air with twelve-bore 
hammerless ejectors. 
In all the circumstances one of the great changes in 
covert shooting that is likely to be seen may be a famine in 
beaters. In those country villages with which I am best 
acquainted, and on those estates where in happier 
times I have enjoyed the best sport of my life, hardly an 
able-bodied man is left. All the reasonably young men of 
the village have heard the clear call and obeyed the natural 
impulse of a man. At any time the lack of efficient beaters 
is a serious handicap to satisfactory sport. A certain number 
of men are trained to this not wholly unskilled work. One 
meets the same beaters on the same shoot time after time, 
until one can single out at once the man who generally carries 
one's cartridge bag. 
The keeper who, for any reason, cannot lay his hand on 
his usual assistants is not a happy man. The scratch beater 
is anathema to him. This is the sort of man who is seldom 
exactly in his right place, who gets out of the line, who 
makes a noise where silence is essential, who shirks the thick 
stuff, who errs in a hundred ways either from laziness or 
from ignorance, and wlio may thus impair or ruin the hopes 
of a carefully planned scheme. The scratch beater is only 
better than none at all. On very many shoots this year it 
will be a case of scratch beaters ; on others of none at all. 
There remain, however, the local resources in boys. 
Boys — experto crede — often make excellent beaters. When 
we used to shoot the coverts which once were added to the 
little shoot we soon learned the superior value of local 
contingents of boys over the services of such men beaters 
as we could get when the larger shoots had been supplied. 
With a dozen boys and three men we used to do very well 
both for stops and a beating line. A steady man on each 
flank and one in the middle of the line do very well to keep 
the boys in order and to remind them that the sport is also 
work when the first exuberance of their spirits has been 
exchanged for a disposition to believe that they have had 
enough of it. It is, of course, very difficult to "impose any 
rule of silence on boys, and I do not say that the youthful 
line of beaters is better than or as good as a line of well- 
tramed men. But they have the advantage of economy ; 
they are keen, energetic, and not too mindful of clothes 
when brambles or wet bushes have to be beaten out, and 
with some supervision they make excellent beater's. A 
real disadvantage is that if boys are to fill the beating line 
the coverts must be shot on a Saturday, when schools 
release these youngsters, but this will not' of course apply 
during the Christmas holidays. 
It has often seemed to me that the common practice of 
employing men as beaters and boys as stops is a topsy-turvy 
arrangement. If there is one occupation in a day's shootirg 
which, more than others, demands intelligence, steadiness, 
and resourcefulness, it is the occupation of a stop. If the 
stops do their work thoroughly the birds can be managed 
well enous=;h, and sport at certain stands can be relied on. 
If the stops shirk or wander about, or gather togetlier for 
company, conversation, and the sharing of light refreshments, 
it is perfectly certain that numbers of pheasants will escape 
on their always active legs at the vulnerable points, and that 
the fortunes of the whole day will be seriously compromised. 
It seems to me a hard thing to ask of a small boy that he 
should stick at his solitary post in cold or dripping weather 
from very early morn until the shoot has safely passed the exit 
which he guards, not infrequently being so iar forgotten by 
the keeper in charge that his commissariat breaks down. 
I could never find it in my heart to blame too much the boy 
who turned his back on duty in such circumstances, and 
I shall always remember as something with a true touch of 
pathos the small and rather scared lad whom I once found 
still at his post, deeply concerned because a carefully ccurtcd 
number of cock pheasants had run out despite his efforts, 
still trying to keep hirriself warm by the aid of a smouldering 
fire of sticks which he had lighted for himself quite early in 
the morning. Men, it seems to me, would do the work of 
stops much better and more reasonably, and I am not at all 
sure that any perfection of organisation would not establish 
a beaters' line of boys and a stops' company of men. 
There is, however, a further possibility even if men are 
gone and boys are not available. Women and girls might 
well be pressed, willingly enough, into service as beaters. 
It is, indeed, on record that one audacious keeper won some 
local renown or notoriety by his organisation of a corps of 
women beaters, whose work certainly took nothirg off the 
totals of the day's bags. I dare say they might be rather 
slow, petticoats being a certain hindrance to the work they 
would have to do ; certainly they would excite some comment 
among astonished guns ; probably they would insist upon 
conversations here and there ; presumably the keeper who 
organised them would need a double dose of tactful urbanity. 
But the possibility exists, and it may be commended — magnii 
componere parva — to those who are unwearied in urging 
upon us that in these historic times women should 
largely undertake the duties which in peace are performed 
by men. 
Any temporary arrangements for the beating line in 
covert shooting must be an inferior substitute for the best 
conditions. For it is a fact, though it may be insufficiently 
realised by many of those who shoot pheasants constantly, 
that the beater's work is skilled work and that he is one of 
the most important factors on the success of a day. Of 
course he enjoys the work, which is also sport. But he can 
do it very well or very ill, with many degrees of indifference 
in between. And when we have had a good day and admired 
the steady stream in wiiich high pheasants were put over lis 
at a certain stand wc do well to give the skilled beater his 
meed of admiration with the rest. 
160 
