The finest of them all

Some 50 years ago, I remember interviewing an octogenarian keeper who told me in hushed tones that he had once loaded for the Marquess of Ripon — the greatest Shot of all time — while working as a young man on a well-known shoot.

This had obviously been the high point of the elderly gentleman’s career and his face creased with pride as he handed me a much-thumbed sepia photograph of himself pictured with another loader standing to attention, guns at the ready, behind this legendary marksman as he swung through a high pheasant. In the background could be seen a smartly dressed cartridge boy and the usual brace of ubiquitous curlycoated retrievers.

Even today, few people in the world of shooting have