As one who has hunted what we here in Yankdom call "upland birds" (grouse, pheasant, chukar, and others) I must admit that the idea of having the birds driven to the hunters has always puzzled me. People can be shot (witness what Witless Dick Cheney did some years back), and that was a line of shooters walking, not using "beaters." That's totally apart from the land issue -- here you get permission to hunt private land or hunt public land such as National Grasslands and Forests. The concepts of "shooting" in the UK escape me, except as a way to point out how much better one social group is than another. (Yes, there are private "hunting preserves" here and they are spit on by true hunters.)