Shooting Times & Country Magazine
The best days of my life
A look back through old diaries during lockdown reveals the dates that hold the fondest memories
Uncertain about the future, I have spent the odd half hour lately living in the past by turning the pages of my shooting diaries and waking some of the countless memories waiting for me there. Some of the days to which these memories belong come back to me with surprising clarity, others have left fewer and hazier impressions. I should like to recall two or three of the former sort together with the thoughts and conclusions that they have inspired.
The first such day was almost 20 years ago, a day between Christmas and New Year when an impromptu decision brought me to High Park to explore a few odd corners with an unruly black and white spaniel called Digby. There is snow on the high fells and bright winter sunshine over the rough fields; the air is sharp and we have barely started on our way when a cock pheasant rises from a bed of rushes and falls to my shot. Digby doesn’t wait for instructions and has soon brought him in. Before long a crossing hen has been added to my bag and then, up on the fence along my southern boundary, two hens rise together from a tangle of briars and bring me a rare right-and-left.
All this and more I can remember from the morning, as well as sitting by my ramshackle wooden hut at the top of the meadow, eating a cheese sandwich, drinking a generous measure of sloe gin and feeling profoundly grateful that the sunshine had persuaded me to abandon other plans and come shooting instead.
I can also remember the two pheasants that came to me in the afternoon. I can see a hen breaking back over my head and falling in a jungle of gorse and I can still feel the relief that was mine when Digby appeared from the jungle with a hen pheasant between his jaws. It cannot have been more than five minutes before another hen rose from the gorse and fell over the beck on the edge of the big wood. Digby made short work of her and I then decided that half-a-dozen pheasants was enough for an unplanned and solitary excursion in search of a dinner or two.
I think the day’s shining and windless brightness is one reason why it has left such sharp memories. Digby was another, because it was one of those rare days when he decided that for once his wishes more or less
“What I have realised, in looking back, is that all my sharpest and best memories have been of rough-shooting days”
coincided with mine. And then, of course, there was the fact that I pulled the trigger of the old Webley six times and came home with six pheasants in my bag and a warm feeling of satisfaction. I have not often been able to tell myself at the end of a shooting day that I have killed every pheasant to which I have raised my gun.
Moving forward 10 years, to the first year of my retirement, I can remember a similar experience on a late autumn afternoon of windy sunshine when, this time in the company of an entirely dependable spaniel called Ross, I tramped the rough fields of my rented ground and shot the four pheasants that came my way. I can still see each one of them in flight and fall.
Disappointing days
There are memories, too, of days when my form deserted me and I came home feeling dissatisfied and disappointed. There are memories of Saturday afternoons in January, roaming the length and breadth of High Park with two or three of the boys who had helped me keep my birds fed throughout the season. There are memories of all sorts of days but what I have realised, in looking back, is that all my sharpest and best memories have been of rough-shooting days and I have been wondering why this should be.
One reason, I think, is that our rough-shooting days generally see fewer birds and bring fewer shots, which means, of course, that the birds we do see and the shots we take stand out in the context of the day as a whole. It is my belief, by the way, that shooting less is often better than more, and that more not infrequently means too much. But there is surely a deeper reason, namely that rough shooting brings a closer, deeper and richer contact with nature than does more formal sport.
In my previous article I praised fishing for the vital and nourishing connection it makes between the fisher and the natural world. The same is true of shooting and that connection is made most completely through rough shooting, exploring your ground with your dog and perhaps a friend or two, searching it in the hope of a few birds or rabbits to show for your efforts at the end of your day.