December 16, 2011

Leather gaiters or not?

And the dog is "wrong" too.

A minor dust-up in The Telegraph over alleged anachronisms in the costuming of a shooting party during the British stately-home soap opera Downton Abbey.

I am sitting here with my first cup of coffee only half an inch down, trying to think of American equivalents.

A group of Colorado big-game hunters in the mid-1960s, all wearing blaze orange? Back then, a red cap was considered sufficient for safety. It probably still is in Vermont.

Conversely, duck hunters all in brown coats or tan coveralls in a scene set any time after the 1970s?

Help me out, the caffeine has not yet kicked in.

3 comments:

PBurns said...

The border terrier is wrong too. Not a shooting dog, and not a "breed" in the Kennel Club sense until 1920, and not common until a decade or more later. Now a top 10 dog in the UK, but not then... and certainly not as that dog looks (a modern dog). The "right" dog (if a terrier can be seen as being right at all in a shooting scene) would be what is now considered a fell terrier. But what's it matter. I treat all this stuff like Star Trek. You should see the legal nonsense in the Law and Order TV show. Wooooo--eeeeee.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Patrick, I think that comment is worth a letter to the editor of the Telegraph.

Heather Houlahan said...

How about a deer hunter in the 40's in a stand with a compound bow?

Whether the Labrador *breed* is unlikely, a shooting dog of the era would certainly not have the size and build of the one pictured.