by Iain Overton
It was clear this was a show where money talked, where it could buy you a lesson in prescribed taste or cause the self-same arbiters of etiquette to look the other way. So, if you took your Genghis Khan shooter from its rifle case and signed up to an over-priced safari the people here would, you imagine, follow the lead of one of the advertising flyers and insist you were ‘hunting in elegance’.
I carried on through the high, vaulted space. There were huge stalls, each themed, each drawing your eye with carefully considered marketing allure. Despite the early hour, people were sipping white wine at a Scandinavian bar made of bleached wood, pelts and furs. Opposite them was a tent for the British shotgun manufacturer John Rigby. It was a safari fantasy in zebra skins and wicker chairs. Even its whisky spoke of a rugged past: Monkey Shoulder – a nickname given to the lopsided look that maltmen once got after endlessly turning the barley by hand.
Then an enormous wolfdog, a 30-kilogram monster with amber eyes and a high-set tail, walked past. A beast that came out of a 1950s programme that sought to merge German sheepdogs and Carpathian wolves, it had been bred as an attack dog for the Czechoslovak special forces. It turned and stuck its muzzle into my crotch. I gently pushed it away, and it followed me until I darted behind a screen to come face to face with a woman in a white shirt and a high-waisted black skirt tapping meticulously on a long barrel fixed firmly in a vice. Her movements were steady and sure, and I stood momentarily enamored of the delicate skill of her art. She was marking an elaborate design into the metal upper housing of a shotgun. Small circles showed upon metal and were expanding under her guiding hands into a subtle rococo flourish.
Her name was Lieben. She was in her mid thirties and had been an engraver for thirteen years now, her role one of the chief engravers for the Belgium arm of the shotgun manufacturer Browning. She was based in Liège, the centuries-old home to gunsmiths, and worked in a unit custom making about 100 bespoke rifles a year. She could tap like this for hours, she said, taking her craft seriously and slowly. One day she might like to do knives or jewellery, but for the moment she was content with beautifying firearms. Lieben found this gunmetal work meditative, her attention to detail part of a tradition that spanned back to medieval Walloon artisans.
‘Let Our Craftsmen Create The Gun Of Your Dreams,’ said a Browning advert on her right. Twelve workers could take up to a year to produce bespoke guns like these – the engraving alone on a rifle takes 500 hours.
The head of sales for the custom shop walked up. His name was Lionel Neuville, a youngish man with a filled-out face and a high forehead. He was clearly in love with the artistry of the weapons here. When he was a child his mother once took him around the grand museums of Europe. Now, though, she’s mystified at his hunting lifestyle, hating the idea her son sells such instruments of death. But it seemed to me it was more the allure of beauty in the gun, not blood, that had inspired Neuville’s enthusiasm.
‘I’m not really here to sell guns, more to show the quality, the feeling of the gun – what is possible,’ he said. ‘Our customers are mainly self-made men and are really into stunning things: guns, cars. They want a “wow” item to show to their friends, and we are that: the Aston Martin of the gun.’
His usual client is a rich man in his mid fifties who has been hunting for a while. He invites them over to Belgium to view the factory; they are chauffeured from the airport and given a €500 luxurious French meal to seal the deal. He pats his stomach, and you can see he’s sealed a few of them. One thing that he does not do, though, is discuss the price with the client. That would be gauche.
Of course not all customers want the same thing. He can’t sell gold-plated pistols in France – ‘It’s a bit “bling-bling”’ – but the Germans or Americans buy such things happily.
‘The French and the English may not like each other, but they are similar in that they know what they like – even down to the colour of the wood,’ he said. ‘The French want a yellowish wood, the British a dark red.’ Such bespoke taste does not come cheap. The double-barrelled shotguns he sells run into the upper tens of thousands of euros. But for many of the buyers, price is never the issue.
‘The Russians have the money, but they want to buy a piece of history,’ he said. ‘They like to buy the Side-by-Side because this was what the Tsar had.’ A shotgun made for Tsar Nicholas II recently sold in auction for a record $287,500, so it was clear the Russians were prepared to dig deep for the right image.10
‘They want people to see their guns, but they will be discreet about it. It’s not “take a look at my new gun”, but they leave it purposefully at the entrance to the house. It starts a new conversation.’
Of course, there is a long, deep history of European hunting with guns. The Lithuanian, Finnish, Czech and Polish national hunting associations all recently celebrated ninety years since their founding, while the granddaddy of the Union of Hunters and Anglers in Bulgaria had its 115th birthday in 2013.11 By and large, European hunting is incredibly popular. Today there are about 7 million European hunters.12 Finland, for instance, has the third-highest rate of firearm ownership in the world, and over half of its firearm permits are for hunting.13 There are an estimated 1.3 million hunters in France, and 980,000 in Spain, while the island state of Malta has the highest hunter density of anywhere in Europe – possibly the world – with fifty hunters per square kilometre.14
It is even more extreme, as many things tend to be, in the US. There, pro-hunting groups claim almost 14 million Americans hunt every year (some say as many as 43 million Americans hunt, but that seems to be overstating things);15 58 per cent of all those who carry guns reportedly do so for hunting;16 and there are over 10,000 clubs and organisations across the US dedicated just to hunting, such as the Safari Club International, the National Wild Turkey Federation and Ducks Unlimited.17
Not surprisingly, it’s big business and always, in a sense, has been. In the early days of the American frontier the hide of a deer was worth a dollar – which is how the term ‘buck’ for a one-dollar bill came about.18 Today, American hunters are said to spend 38.3 billion bucks on their passion, more than – the hunting lobby claims at least19 – the revenue of Google.20 Hunting supports an estimated 680,000 jobs: the $26.4 billion in salaries and wages being larger than the entire economy of Vermont.21 And it’s reportedly growing: between 2006 and 2011, the number of hunters was said to have increased by 9 per cent.22
Of course, with this much money and enjoyment at stake, the US has a very strong political voice that shouts loud about the benefits of hunting and the right to bear arms. They argue it is safe and humane, environmentally sound and economically beneficial. Some disagree, clearly. According to the International Hunter Education Association’s own historical data, over 1,000 people in the US and Canada are accidentally shot by hunters a year, with about eighty of those accidents being fatalities. Hardly safe.23
Amid Nuremberg’s artisanal beauty, though, you could hardly envisage danger and death. Here was luxury and life. The sections spun off into different gun genres. Some focused on selling decoys and targets of ducks and geese; others sold high-quality ear protection; some just made their living by selling gun-care oil. There were multi-pull clay pigeon systems for training, or shooting-range ventilation manufacturers (yours for €30,000). A Scottish-based gunbox manufacturer from New Zealand would make you an elaborate storage system in walnut for €8,000. There were optic sights and gutting knives, thick stalking boots and wrap-around sunglasses. Everywhere was a microcosm of economic supply and demand – accessories for weapon and hunter alike.
Robin Deas, an old-school Brit, summed this up. He showed me how he had built a flourishing business by focusing on a very specific aspect of gun-hunting culture: namely, feet. At seventy-three, he runs the House of Cheviot and sells knee-high, luxury stalking socks to the hunting classes: merino wool reared in Australia, spun in Italy and knitted in Hawick on the Scottish borders. And he told me, in a crisp English accent, that these s
ocks, in the colour of cinnamon and moss and bilberry, sell for as much as £300 a pair.
‘To presidents and kings, sultans and queens,’ he said with a smile. I was sure most of them wouldn’t want the world to know their socks cost close to their subjects’ living weekly wage, but it was testimony to the rich micro-climate of the hunting economy.24
I wandered on: into a world of skull mounts designed for bleached trophies from East Africa; enormous bronze sculptures of stalking leopards; Slovakian hunting furniture built in an explosion of jutting wood and wrought iron; and Italian stands selling delicate silver trinkets of pheasant and fox. It was a marathon just to wander the endless aisles.
Slowly, a feeling of claustrophobia began to grip. The entire place was so focused on hard selling and slick marketing that the romance and open space promised by the hunt diminished and died. Here was a good place to see merchandise: luxury, bespoke and of the highest quality. It was also a good place to be an anthropologist studying Europe’s landed elites. But it was not a good place to understand the motivation of the rifle hunter.
Loaded down with brochures and name cards, I walked wearily back to the metro. But my stalking had paid off; I had caught what I set out to get: an introduction.
The office was in a run-down street in a run-down part of my home city. I walked past a fly-poster-daubed corner shop, continued opposite a washed-out council estate, then, skirting a line of under-the-arches businesses offering cheap MOTs, came to a bleak south London side road.
It was still a far cry from the open plains of Africa or the medieval charms of Bavaria, but I had travelled a short distance from my home, heading south of the river, to talk to Marc Newton. I had first met Marc at his African fantasy pavilion at the IWA show, and as he was the managing director of John Rigby & Co., one of the oldest gun companies in the world, I had asked to see him again. He had agreed, knowing that I wanted to talk about the culture of the huntsman and he was well placed to have such a conversation.
He oversaw a venerable company that had, over the years, become renowned among big-game hunters for its powerful guns, particularly among a certain type of larger-than-life American hunter. It was the gunsmith of choice for bold whisky-touched men and for crown-touched kings. They had made rifles under Royal Warrant for the last three King Georges and for Edward VII.
Rigby were in the middle of a refit. As I rang the doorbell, the buzz of drilling and the murmur of polishing buffers sounded through the door. Inside, the décor was evolving; it promised to be in sharp contrast to the industrial grime outside. Here you were spirited away to a privileged world of deep-shine leather and aged spirits drunk from fine crystal.
‘Everything is here for a reason. We went for a colonial, East African feel,’ said Marc, pointing at the heads of impalas hanging from the wall.
Marc was an outspoken and yet disarmingly engaging man, and surprisingly young for the head of such a historical gun company. But then again, his father and his grandfather had both been game-keepers, and he had been raised on the virtues of hunting.
He spoke plainly. ‘Let’s call a spade a spade. There is bullshit about guns in all their aspects. Something about guns seems to empower people, giving them a right to lecture others. Gun is just one word, but it says a million words. It’s one of the most emotive words in the English language,’ he said, settling into a leather high-backed chair.
I asked him what guns meant to him.
‘Hunters love guns; we have a deep passion for fine-quality items. We enjoy hunting because it’s so different from the society we live in, where we are trapped in front of computers. A fine hunting rifle is your ticket to transforming your dull life into those scenes you see in these black and white photos – back to a time of adventurers. When someone buys a Rigby they buy into that image, a key to that lifestyle. On a Friday night they can transform themselves into Denys Finch Hatton.’
Finch Hatton, an old Etonian and Oxford-educated aristocrat, was an interesting example to use. He was a big-game hunter, who, when on safari with the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, was asked to creep up on a rhino and stick the king’s head – taking the form of postage stamps – on its bottom. He did so, one for each buttock. When Finch Hatton died in a plane crash in 1931 his brother had a quote from Coleridge inscribed above his grave: ‘He prayeth well, who loveth well both man and bird and beast.’ I was not sure that most bankers picking up a rifle on a weekend had such noble sentiments or romantic sense of style, but I got Marc’s point.
Here Marc was selling a lifestyle as much as a weapon – the life of the big-game hunter in South Africa, a whiff of Hemingway in metal and wood. It was, at the very least, a good business tactic – because even though they sold only about 250 rifles a year, some went for $100,000 and more. The most popular of their line was the 1911-designed .416 Rigby, a $20,000 rifle that could take down an elephant. All of this epitomised, he told me, a certain spirit.
‘It’s a real roll-up-sleeves culture,’ he said. ‘What I find fascinating is that people look at me – a young man going out stalking, shooting, butchering – as barbaric and macho. Yet the same people see a National Geographic video, and all of a sudden that is “cultural”. But to that I say: “What about my culture?”’
Of course, this being England, I could not help but think that this culture was one notable for its privilege. Even this room, with its bespoke furniture and leather-bound books, spoke of inherited wealth or city bonuses. But it was not the first time that people I’d met in Britain had been defensive about their right to hunt. People were quick to claim they and their sport were misunderstood, even persecuted.
One bluff Yorkshire huntsman had sounded indignant on the phone when I suggested that hunting cultures in Britain were exclusive, even though his own website showed only photographs of middle-aged white men dressed in matching orange-brown tweed, sat in leather chairs enjoying a post-shoot drink. He told me, in a hectoring way, that the people he employed to work on a grouse shoot were from all walks of life. Then he reprimanded me for describing shooting grouse as hunting.
Many, though, have a perception of hunting as the sport of the British gentry, one as much about class as it is about animal welfare – a measure of status. It is something underlined by things like press interviews where Princess Michael of Kent once claimed she was experiencing economic austerity, too: ‘I sew better than any nanny we’ve ever had . . . And my father had a farm in Africa. Have you ever taken the insides out of a stag?’25
It’s not surprising, then, that left-wing polemicists saw class lines when the British Conservative-led government kept the cost of gun licences at £50, resulting in a government subsidy of some £17 million a year, just as they saw privilege at work when the subsidy for grouse moors was increased from £30 per hectare to £56. The left-wing critic George Monbiot wrote at the time: ‘So back we go to the hazy days of Edwardian England: a society dominated by rentiers, in which the city centres are set aside for those with tremendous wealth and the countryside is reserved for their bloodsports . . . our money is used to subsidise grouse and shotguns.’26
But, for me, such issues spoke more about the hoary British class system than guns. So I steered the conversation with Marc back to hunting and asked about the controversies around big game – the horror many feel when someone is photographed kneeling next to a felled leopard or cheetah.
‘Anyone who can shoot a beautiful animal like this one,’ he said, pointing to the skin of a lion on the wall behind, ‘anyone who can do that without having a pang of guilt – well . . . I feel guilty.’
‘But,’ he said, and I was expecting the ‘but’, ‘there is a use to the flesh. Within half an hour an elephant will be chopped up. We shot a hippo two years ago, and out of the bush people just appeared and chopped it up into pieces, and the meat went back to the local people.’
I did not buy this argument at all. Hunting for a deer, sure. Hunting for a lion that has killed someone, fine. But killing a lion just
because you wanted to: I couldn’t understand it. I was pretty sure most didn’t kill them just to eat their steak.
A few months before, I had been in New York. The glittering heart of Madison Avenue had revealed a similar world of wealth and status. There I had gone to the sumptuous shop of the Italian gun makers Beretta. They had chosen to have their flagship store in New York, not Milan, but stepping through its heavy entrance door, framed by a hand-cut Italian stone façade, you were immediately transported into a European world of precise luxury. The ground floor was devoted to thick shirts and jackets that were a frenzy of buckles and pockets. The top floor was filled with shotguns whose price tags you had to look at twice to make sure you had not misread them. But it was the middle floor, the walls filled with monochrome pictures of Africa and bookshelves heavy with coffee-table hunting books, that caught my attention. Because there stood a line of DVDs, and one leaped out. Boddington on Cheetahs, it read. But this was no David Attenborough-style film; rather it was highlights of the fastest animal on earth being taken down by a 12-bore. Others stood beside it: Boddington on Lions, Boddington on Leopards.
What Boddington had done was strictly legal, but the images on the back cover felt like the sort of footage, as an investigative journalist, I would have wanted for a film about the ugly world of animal abuse. It seemed unnecessary and cruel. I am sure I’d be dismissed as a naive, city-dwelling liberal for this sentiment. Those who bought these DVDs would argue that there is no philosophical difference between shooting a boar or a cheetah; the latter was just nicer-looking.
