Dog season, as good on three legs as four

While enjoying the calm of the late summer evenings, those at High Park begin to wonder what the coming pheasant season might bring

Even in the course of a summer that has found it almost impossible to stop raining, there have come a few evenings when the wind has stilled and the sun has been able to look down on High Park and make sure that it is still there. Perhaps the best place to spend part of these evenings — the part before the part devoted to a glass of sherry — has been down by my beck near High Park’s new pen, enjoying the evening patchwork of sunshine and shadow.

The alternative would be to prepare for sherry time with an hour or two on the river — assuming that it is not in flood — in search of a few trout. But when poults are newcomers to my pens they almost always draw me to them in the early evening. I can check that all is well, give the birds their supper, close the pop-holes and make certain that the electric fences are working properly.

On a still and sunny late summer evening, our new pen is a peaceful sort of place. The poults peck away quietly at their pellets or stretch their wings in the unaccustomed sunshine; they scratch in the straw and take sips of water, delicately like connoisseurs

32 • SHOOTING TIMES & Country magazine of fine wine. They explore the cover with which the pen is so generously provided, they make the little noises that young pheasants love to make and one or two of them may flutter up on to the roofs of their shelters or on to the roosting poles.

Relishing the sunshine

This summer they have not been able to dust themselves because what might have been dust has all turned into mud. But they have coped remarkably well with the rain and the cold and the wind. They have, of course, relished those rare evenings

Laurence catlow with the threelegged fred and youngster Zac