Shooting has always been a popular sport amongst British upperclass men. Weekend "shooting parties" at grand country estates were fashionable amongst the well-to-do. They were also satirized in movies like Gosford Park. Though these aristocratic sportsmen certainly would "muck about," regardless of the poor weather, they could afford certain hired luxuries like "beaters" (men to flush the birds out of the grasses) and "loaders" (who would quickly prepare the shooter's next gun so that the master could shoot continuously). A wealthy aristocrat would have a large estate and a permanent "gamekeeper" (and maybe an "under gamekeeper") who would maintain the semi-wild grounds and conditions for optimal animal breeding and replenishment. Gamekeepers would also try to prevent poachers and other predators which might harm the game. In the 1987 film of E.M. Forster's Maurice, Rupert Graves plays Alec Scudder, the under gamekeeper on Clive Durham's estate, who plays a pivotal role in Maurice Hall's life.
Shown here, a portrait of a hunter, out in the field with his dog. It was published in 1898 in An Almanac of Twelve Sports by William Nicholson. It is framed in a rusticated, "woodland" frame, of the same period. Click on the photo above to learn more about this handsome work.
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