I was wondering if anyone had time to explain to me what the various duties of a head keeper, under keeper and beat keeper would be. I've seen the terms as job descriptons, and people seem to take about them without ever explaining what they mean. I know, it's obvious to anyone doing it!

Many thanks for any help,

Joyce

Briefly. A head keeper is in charge of the other beat/underkeepers. On some shoots he will have his own beat to look after on other he will just be a general boss and organise everything. Head keepers often organise the guns on shoot days.

An under keeper is normally a second keeper where only two keepers are involved. Or is a young lad (like myself) that is just a general skivvy :lol:

And a beat keeper is a keeper in charge of one of the beats on an estate.

i.e on a large estate there could be 10 beats and there you would probably have 10 beat keepers and one head keeper. and on larger beats and beatkeeper may have an underkeeper.

Hope that makes sense

Thanks, that makes perfect sense.

The internet seems to be a bit of a black hole so far as gamekeeping goes. Wikipedia, which is usually infinitely useful has 2 lines on gamekeepers and two pages on The Gamekeeper, a character from Stargate!

And "Game Cart Driver", another job description I was tryin to check, has no hits on Google at all.

Everyone must be too busy with real life!

Joyce

A game cart is normally a trailer or a kawasaki mule/john deere gator which has had racks put in to hang dead game on. they can vary in size and simplicity according to the size and budget of the shoot. these racks often fit into the larder/chiller too. the 'game cart driver' drives the game cart and ties and hangs the birds up and sometimes has someone to collect birds from guns/pickers up (depending on the size of the shoot)