How NOT to be asked shooting again

It’s said that good manners cost nothing. It’s also true that bad manners in the field will cost you a future shooting invitation. So here is a guide to what you should avoid.

Being late

Lateness is a serious sin. Mark you, earliness can be quite embarrassing if you stride into the kitchen roaring for coffee and bacon sarnies to find your hostess, still in her nightie, surrounded by last night’s washing up, poking forlornly at the fire and roaring at the dog and her useless husband to rouse themselves because their so-called friends will be turning up at any moment for another bloody shoot.

The worst reason for lateness will be following the satnav’s advice, which will inevitably lead you down a progressively muddier and narrower track where you will either get hopelessly bogged down or drive into a river.

However, seeing a lot of tweedy chaps standing around in a farmyard is no guarantee you are in the right place. I have got as far as drawing a peg among a group of perfectly agreeable – but nonetheless total – strangers before it was gently pointed out that the place I was expected was the house some few miles farther along the road. Being late is one of the worst of bad manners in the field.

Dog pooping

Do NOT let your dog out of the car as soon as you arrive. Because you can be sure that it will immediately deliver a steaming five-coiler onto the freshly raked gravel, which is a sin that can only be magnified by collecting a hefty dollop on your shoe before striding down the hall and into the gun room surrounded by an unseemly pong and leaving the full horror of your passage behind you in a series of pungent footprints.

Being ill-equipped

Having consumed coffee and buns you return to the car to find that you have a gun and cartridges but no fore-end. Or a complete gun but the wrong cartridges. Or no gun. Your gunslip is still hanging on the back of the hall chair. (Read our advice on what to wear shooting.)

You have one Wellington boot, no hat and the dog has registered its resentment at being left alone in the car by eating your ear defenders.

Your host and his less disorganised friends will doubtless be able to remedy these glaring omissions but no one likes a cadger. It slows things down and it embeds in the minds of those other guests, who do not know you well, that if he is this shambolic when he is packing, whatever is he going to be like on the peg with a loaded gun and birds flying in all directions? (Read our advice on whether you should reprimand an unsafe Shot.)

Make sure you are correctly equipped before you leave home

Going on and on

We all acknowledge that the real reason that we shoot is for the camaraderie. However there is a time to chat and a time to shoot, n’est-pas? Going on is definitely bad manners in the field.

Bad manners in the field? Badly behaved gundogs

I have to admit that I carry a corkscrew to peg my dog. Yes, I bear the mark of shame of the inadequate dog trainer.

In his defence, he might stay if something falls a way off. But if it lands only a few feet away he’s going to have it. No question. Especially if it twitches. Or leaps about. So, I admit it, my dog is pegged. Not everyone pegs their dogs though, do they? “Sent it to one of the top trainers in the country, you know. Cost a mint but it’s worth it, I say. Marvellous!”

Not so blooming marvellous as it careers past you in full cry half way through the drive in pursuit of your neighbour’s neighbour’s bird. As often as not lugging a cartridge bag behind it and strewing shells as it goes.

It is worse still when the blasted thing pauses to pick-up my birds which my dog is expecting to collect at the end of the drive. My dog is content to bide his time until the whistle goes. Not happy, but content. But when he sees his birds being collected – mid-drive, mark you – by an interloper, he is not going to take that lying down. Or quietly.

I venture that even those wonderdogs that do sit throughout a busy drive gazing adoringly at their owners without so much as a twitch as the birds plummet around them would find their iron self-discipline under sufficient pressure that before you can say “Hi lost!” the entire line descends into a lot of red-faced men peeping their whistles and roaring at the tops of their voices.

A very well-behaved labrador

Being greedy

Hauling out a gallon flask of whisky and a mug as an alternative to the shot glasses of sloe gin which the host has laid out on the tailgate is not going to make you friends. Not will grabbing handfuls of sausages while asserting that they might assist your hangover and stuffing your pockets with Mars bars.

Don’t pinch birds

Pinching birds is acceptable between friends. Good friends, that is, who have agreed to compete before the day even began. Between anyone else it is bad manners in the field.

It is also a sin that is, to some extent, diluted by stylish success. Blatting unfeasible birds at astonishing distances is one thing. Half-blatting the same bird just as someone else is about to elegantly despatch it is quite another. (Read our guide to knowing which bird is yours and which is your neighbour’s).

At the same time, butchery will also not win you friends. So if you can’t manage the high, wide and handsome, don’t take it.

Always take a brace home

Car crash behaviour

Do not put your dog, which has just retrieved a long runner from across the swamp, into the passenger seat of someone else’s Range Rover. It’s not polite. On the other hand, if someone else does it to you, don’t whine. It’s a Range Rover.

Similarly, don’t bleat when you sideswipe the narrow gateposts. If you can’t drive it, don’t bring it.

Don’t overdo the claret at lunch. (Read our advice on alcohol, guns and the law.) Don’t comment loudly on the pheasants, the beaters, your fellow Guns or their wives and girlfriends. Don’t rush off at the end of the day or forget to thank the beaters and pickers-up. Don’t forget to tip the gamekeeper – generously – and take your brace at the end of the day even if you have freezer-full at home already. And always, always write to say thank you afterwards. (You might like to reread our advice on shooting manners.)

This article was originally published in 2019 and has been updated.