In a class of its own

That Shooting Times is celebrating its 140th anniversary says a great deal for both its readership and the generations of dedicated staff who have laboured to produce it. At the time of such an impressive landmark, it is interesting to muse on what changes in the shooting field you might see if transported back to 1882. Would the average shooter blend in or be viewed as something of an oddity?

Perhaps the first thing that might be noticed in the Victorian sporting field is how much the class structure affected everything. Game shooting for the average person would have been much less available than it is today and the idea of paying for a day’s sport was virtually unknown. Driven game shooting was largely by invitation only and almost solely the preserve of the titled, landed