author
W. Coape Oates
Remembered for practical country-sports writing and a detailed regimental history, this English author wrote from firsthand experience in rural life and military service. His books offer a window into the sporting and social world of late Victorian and early 20th-century Britain.
1 Audiobook
Wild Ducks: How to Rear and Shoot Them
by W. Coape Oates
About the author
W. Coape Oates, also known as William Coape Oates, was an English writer whose surviving books include Wild Ducks: How to Rear and Shoot Them and The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War, 1914-1918: The 2/8th Battalion. Those works suggest a life shaped by both field sports and military service, and they helped preserve practical knowledge and personal perspective from his time.
Records connected with his published work and biographical listings identify him as William Coape Oates, the same man also noted in cricket and local historical sources from Nottinghamshire. He lived from 1862 to 1942 and is associated with Besthorpe in Nottinghamshire.
Today, Oates is most likely to interest listeners who enjoy vivid period nonfiction: books grounded in experience, written for readers who wanted useful advice, local history, and direct accounts rather than literary ornament. His work has lasted because it captures a very specific world in a clear, matter-of-fact way.