Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Flex your truffles
A valuable ingredient guaranteed to add girth to any dish it touches – John Wright helps us find this sought-after tuber
Way back in the 1980s, the British Mycological Society held a series of summer forays devoted entirely to finding truffles. I had previously come across a rather nibbled Summer Truffle, already unearthed by a squirrel, so, hoping for more, I went on four of these trips at various locations in England. They involved camping in a likely location and spending the day scratching around under suitable trees in the hope of finding any fungus that had taken to fruiting underground, but most notably the Summer Truffle (Tuber aestivum). This is the only one worth eating that grows in summer, hence its appeal. We found many species that were interesting, one having not been seen since the 19th century, but sadly the Summer Truffle never showed up when I did.
In October 1987 we went instead to Italy. About 20 of us travelled around for 10 days, going out with truffle-hunters, visiting processing plants, attending civic receptions in our honour and having the best lunch ever at a truffle research establishment.
We found dozens of Summer Truffles, a few of the considerably more fragrant Black Truffles and, in the north, the White Truffle of Alba. The latter is the king of the truffles and fabulously expensive. The truffle festival was going on at the time, with sellers sat behind small tables, waiting to sell the single White Truffle placed there. The aroma in the open streets was overwhelming. Earlier, I had managed to purloin a fragment that had broken off during excavation. I wrapped it in a plastic bag and, later, put it in the glove compartment of the car. After five miles of driving, the aroma started to make me feel dizzy, so I stopped the car and tied the bag to the roof-rack.
On the scent
I came across a few more English Summer Truffles in the years that followed, notably when a friend brought round a dozen he had found while uprooting a beech hedge. He asked me what they were and I suggested he leave them with me and I would let him know in due course. I trained up a friend’s dog using small potatoes soaked in dimethyl sulphide (the chief aromatic compound), though truffle-oil would do nicely, and she, Beth, did find a few over the
years. One she found was identified by Professor Pacioni, our former guide in Italy, who was with me that day. It was, he said, Tuber fulgens and the first British record of this nicely orange species. Unfortunately, by the time it got to Kew for confirmation, the colour had faded and it was recorded as the very similar but drab and common Tuber excavatum. My moment of fame was snatched away.
Terry the truffle-hunter
Years later, I met an interesting fellow (we will call him Terry) who had taken enthusiastically to truffle-hunting. He owns a trained truffle-hound, a Lagotto Romagnolo that we will call June. This breed earns its keep in
Italy as the go-to dog for wildfowling. However, it is well-tempered, has the powerful front legs necessary for swimming (and, crucially, digging) and a first-class nose.
Terry took me and June to one of his spots. It was in a beech wood in England, if you are interested. After a few false starts with larvae-infested truffles, June found the perfect spot. She’d run around, sniffing furiously, then stop and dig. Terry would grab the truffle as soon as it was exposed. Very occasionally June would snaffle it and sometimes the truffle would shoot between her back legs, providing me with
Ispend most of my working day teaching driven shooting and sporting clays so an opportunity to shoot a semi-auto is always a welcome change. The Beretta A300 appeared to be a good-looking gun when it was delivered and I was already dreaming of using it in the pigeon hide or on the duck pond.
The A300 we are reviewing is the entry-level model in the range designed for the field shooter, and is competitively priced at £1,075 for guns with either a walnut or synthetic stock, while the Max-5 camo version is slightly more at £1,145. The standard stock length on delivery is 14½in and the gun on test came with 28in barrels weighing in at 7.2lb, which is around 6oz lighter than an equivalent semi-auto for competition shooting. Gun fit on semi-autos is generally a little more rudimentary than that for over-and-under and side-by-side guns, where gun fit can be achieved to a high degree. However, the options on the Outlander are better than most, making it easier to achieve a good fit both in terms of length – using Beretta pads and spacers – and drop and cast – using the supplied shims. These came after the arrival of the A390, allowing shooters to adjust the cast and drop on their guns to help with the fit.
Beretta has been making reliable, gas-operated semi-autos since 1965. The first, the A300, remained in production until the late 1970s, when it gained multichokes and became the 301. Further developments in the 1990s meant that we had the A302 and then the popular A303, which included a sporting clays model for the first time; the A304 and the A390 followed as refinements were added. In 1999, the A391 was born with new model names, including Urika, Teknys and Extrema. Given their popularity in the pigeon hide and on the foreshore, this development was welcomed by many shooters.
Steel-proofed barrels
The Outlander barrels are made using the Beretta Steelium process, which is also used in the firm’s best
“Cleaning regime is important with gas operated semi-autos to retain reliability”