What is "beaters"

Usage examples of "beaters".

The figure was too distant for him to recognize but he thought the man was a poacher and the beaters after him.

There was nothing on the table, only a lot of broken implemenIs like twisted egg beaters laid out in a line.

My patrols were ambushed, the beaters who were supposed to hold a boar we were hunting somehow failed, footpads attacked me outside a taverna.