Of Birds and Beating

I had a unique opportunity Monday—one of those once-in-a-lifetime things. The woods around Harlaxton Manor are teeming with fox, grouse, woodcock, quail, and pheasant. The pond area has geese and different types of ducks. Today there was a "shoot" on the grounds and I got the chance to go along for the first half of the day. I had read about the hunt a few days before coming to England and had asked Ian Welsh, the tech guru and all-around go-to guy at Harlaxton, if there was any way I could go along. I knew I wouldn't be able to shoot, but I thought I might go along as a "beater." He put me together with the guy in charge of the hunt and I found out last week that I could go along. It was a great adventure.

This was to be a traditional English bird hunt. Not in the tails-and-topcoat sense of the word, but in organization. But there would be around thirteen to fifteen "shooters" and four or five "beaters." The job of the beaters is to walk along the field or through the brush and shout and whoop and beat the bushes, scaring the birds into the air toward the shooters. The shooters' job is to, well, shoot. Only birds that are rising or flying along straight are fair game, and no shooting toward the beaters, please. Bad form, old chap.

Three of the men brought along dogs—there were six dogs altogether. The dogs ran through the bush scaring up birds, and also brought back fallen birds. 

I met up with the hunt organizer David at 9:30am in the manor. David takes care of the game at Harlaxton, and is also a groundskeeper. He knows the area well, and is in charge of the hunts on the lands here. He also has a thick, thick accent that was at times very hard for me to decipher. There were times when he'd say something to me—sometimes two or three sentences worth—and I wouldn't understand a single word. I felt bad having to say "huh?" all the time.

We proceeded to the car park area to join up with the hunters. The group seemed to be made up of white- and blue-collar working class folks. There were about fifteen to twenty people, all men except for one woman. David explained that this was one of the last shoots of the season, and that several of the men who had acted as beaters all season (and who normally get paid £10 each shoot to do it) would have a chance to shoot today if they wanted. For some it would be their first time. After getting some assurance that it wasn't their first time actually shooting a gun, I relaxed a bit.

One thing I noticed right away was that hunters are the same the world over. There was an easygoing chatter and some relating of past hunting stories. Some of the guys were giving another one a hard time about the missed shots he made at the last shoot, while another group were discussing the bird situation around the area. Still another knot of people were talking guns. One person walked around taking wagers on how many birds would be taken that day, with side wagers on what types. I laid a pound down on seventy-five birds in total. Except for the accents it could have been any hunting group in the world.

I started chatting with one of the other beaters, an older guy who had been hunting birds in Lincolnshire for his entire life. He was a great guy and we really hit it off. He used to be head of security here, and helps care for endangered bats in the area. I walked with him on the first of the three parts of the hunt.

For reference the grounds of Harlaxton, from overhead, look like this:

The grounds around Harlaxton Manor.

We began on the other side of the pond from the manor house, walking along the brush at the edge of the pond, while a group of shooters walked along with us, but further out in the field, and still another group stood on side of the pond closer to the manor. There were clear instructions not to shoot anything directly over the pond as there was still a thin sheet of ice on top and they didn't want the dogs getting stranded. So we walked along the brush above the pond.

Because of my location, I couldn't see the shooters very well. But pretty soon birds started jumping out of the brushy area along the pond and from off the water. Up into the air, birds zigging one way then zagging another. Lots of coo-cooing and squawks as birds tried to get away from the brush-beaters and the dogs. Except there were were shooters in most any direction a bird would naturally go. David had placed them almost perfectly.  Bang! Bang! Bang! and birds were falling. Dogs went crazy, and one dog went into the pond to get a wounded bird that had flailed in that direction. Then another jumped in. And then the beaters met up with the shooters, everyone set out to collect birds, and soon enough the first leg was over.

Through all of this a tall, beautiful, majestic swan swam around the edges of the pond, completely unbothered by the ruckus. I later learned that the swan was strictly off-limits to shooting.

Not a bad haul. Grouse, ducks, and a few pheasant.

A few pheasant, a grouse, duck, and a goose.

Birds

One person got a big goose, which was the envy of several shooters.

For the second leg of the shoot we went to the field just above the right-side of Harlaxton Wood, beginning in an area that is off that picture, and then coming up towards the woods toward the trees halfway into the tan-colored field.  We began along a gulley, pushing birds out of the brush and up toward the hill. Again the dogs pushed into the thick brush, and again the birds started coming out in flocks, only to run into shooters in most any direction. David's placement was again pretty masterful.

This time I could see the shooters well enough to get a sense of their style. Some guys were clearly novices. Birds can be hard to hit, and they proved the point. I walked for a while next to this guy, though.

This guy carried a beautiful over-under with nice engraved scrolling on the side. It was a gorgeous piece.  And when he pulled the trigger, birds fell. No two ways about it. He knew how to point that gun. Notice the safety, though, which David was very strict about. When you're walking along and the gun has shells in it, the shotgun is broken open for safety. No two ways about that, either. Not that this guy ever had to be reminded of it.

And so the second part ended. Unfortunately one of the dogs was cut badly on its leg, so the man and woman to whom the dog belonged headed off to have it fixed up. She had been a beater, while he had been shooting, and I never got to talk to them. I did notice, though, that he was fully dressed in a tie, a vest, and very fine-looking clothes.

Part of the haul after the second leg.

For the final drive in which I participated we made our way to the western side of the woods. Here:

This last part will take some extra illustration. David lined us up in a straight line walking into the woods, with a few shooters below the left-hand woods, like this:

The blue arrows are beaters, and the red arrows are shooters walking alongside the beaters. The red dots are standing shooters who waited for the birds to come barreling out of the woods. For this leg I walked next to a younger guy who seemed to be on his first shoot. He ambled along near me, getting a shot off now and then. The standers bagged a few birds that came out of the woods, but the walkers inside the woods weren't as lucky. We then crossed the short field for the last section.

Crossing to the last section.

David spoke with a few of the other beaters, and some of the more experienced shooters and laid out his plan. The illustrations go as below, with blue and red representing beaters and shooters (though not in exact numbers. I'm doing the arrows as I go along).

This is an area of the Harlaxton Wood that is absolutely thick with pheasant and woodcock. And soon they were flying in all directions. And guns were going off and birds on my right-side were dropping through the canopy onto the ground. The dogs were running everywhere, snatching up birds and scaring out more. A pheasant, not quite dead yet, dropped to the ground near me after having been shot by the person to my right. I quickly dispatched it and carried it along, shouting and whooping and beating the bushes and throwing sticks into the brush ahead of me, all the while watching game birds flying up and then (some of them) dropping back down with a thud.

Then we paused. I figured out that David was checking with his folks about the next step in the plan. In a move that would have made a general proud he had the the right-side group wheel around as illustrated below. I continued, dead-center of the five arrows on the left:

and then

All the birds that had been skittling along the ground ahead of the line of beaters and shooters, pushing ahead or taking refuge in the underbrush, suddenly had nowhere to go but up. Pressing into them like that was a great way to drive them up and out. The woods absolutely exploded into a blur of pheasant and woodcock flying in every which direction. As they got high up, shotguns pounded into them and birds fell back to the ground all over my right side. A steady light rain of shotgun pellets littered down through the leafless trees, and smoke began to collect. As the remaining birds took cover or got away we paused for a moment and then pressed on a bit more, down towards the manor. To anyone outside of the woods it probably sounded as if a war had broken out.

A few of the shooters had moved out into the field below the woods, waiting for strays to break out of the brush at the end of the woods. Every once in a while some bird, who had heretofore been very patient, lost its cool and decided to break away. Bad move at that point for the birds. The group down there could shoot pretty well.

You might have noticed that I've mentioned all the birds falling on my right during this leg. What about my left side? I'm pretty sure that in those few hours my left side in the woods was just about the safest place to be a bird in the entire world. The people still in the woods on that side seemed not to be able to hit much of anything. The guy to my immediate left was a clear novice. A bird would come at him and he wait to take a shot until it had already begun to arc over him. His second shot would literally be with a bent back, gun over the top, and pointed behind. The guy had no chance. I watched him take probably thirty shots and never saw him hit a thing. Birds would fly off that way and I'd watch them go, accompanied by a chorus of six, seven, eight, and sometimes nine BANGs. A couple of the attempts were almost comical, as a bird would fly straight between two shooters, each of whom banged off two to four rounds as another shooter up the line got off a couple of shots. Meanwhile the bird flew away completely unmolested. Ah well.

Finally, we were done. Lunchtime for them and I ran off to teach. Altogether it was a three hour morning of hunting. I had a great time, learned a lot, and made some new friends.

The group headed back out in the afternoon, and ended up with more than 150 birds altogether. After class I found a "thank you" on my doorstep.

David had left me a brace of pheasant and a brace of ducks. They're currently hanging in the garden shed, seasoning until next Sunday when I'll clean them, remove the feathers, and make some nosh for a faculty gathering. Maybe I'll pair it with some single malt and cheese. Who knows? Whatever the case, it was a great day.