Simon Reinhold: The Lost Art of the Walking Gun [9 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

Some love it; some hate it; but is the ‘back gun’ a symptom of a wider problem in game shooting?

I have a confession: walking gun is one of my favourite places to be on a game shoot. I say that even as a member of the gun trade who, when asked to ‘go with the beaters’ invariably ends up with a performance review committee of customers past and present scrutinising one's every miss. It is at times like these that the ability to turn electric ear defenders off and mute the inevitable abuse is a godsend.

Yet still walking gun remains an opportunity to remember the early days of my game shooting. My father would be asked by some kindly host to 'bring along the boy if he’s free, he can walk all day'.

But it's not just the memories of my youth. Walking gun heightens the awareness of your surroundings. You are not relying simply on a steady stream of pheasants driven from one covert to the next. You must listen as well and think. All of it is bound up in the anticipation of one of two clever cock birds knowing the danger and making a bid for safety curling back over the wood.

This is particularly the case in January when their seasoned wits are put to full use until they run out of running room and break out the side or come back over the beaters. These are the birds I treasure and as a young man bringing one crashing through the canopy to the acclaim of the beaters (before I started taking their money and filling in their licences) was a special triumph.