Shooters are a very hardy lot and shooting carries on in almost all weathers. Not at all like cricket, a very civilized game where people retire for tea in the village hall at just the hint of bad light. Nor is there a marked resemblance to that delightful game, Beach Volleyball. This is a sport many beaters dream about at night…Please see the photo below and you will understand why.
 Game-keepers talk a lot about the weather. In fact, the weather can be blamed for all failures and absolutely everything that goes wrong.
 Fine sunshine is very bad! The birds don’t fly well into the sun or maybe away from the sun or in any combination of wind-direction as regards the sun…
The Beaters love sunshine and tolerate a long hard day in sunshine much better than in the sleet of mid-winter.
 Wind is mostly bad as it may cause the birds to be swept off course so that they don’t travel over the guns.
Birds also don’t like flying into the wind although sometimes they do seem to like it.. Sometimes they fly very well into the wind and the sun, in spite of all the predictions to the contrary.
 Rain is bad as it makes the birds heavy and less willing to fly, especially when combined, as it so often is, with strong wind.
Beaters agree with the birds on that one…
Snow doesn’t matter very much except that the beaters and the guns may fail to arrive.
 Fog is about the only thing that causes cancellation of shooting days. Unfortunately most shoots wait until at least 11 am to make the decicion to abandon. By then it usually clears up and all that happens is that a late start leads to a late finish.
If no shot has been fired by 11 the insurance will pay out for a cancelled day. But not many shoots actually insure against cancellation as the premium is too expensive