GROUSE OVER BOGUS BRACE

Oven-ready Italian woodies sold as king of gamebirds

Apal of mine, in anticipation of a forthcoming visit from the head of the Greek shooting organisation KOMATH, decided it would be good to entertain his guest with a dinner of game. There are no grouse in Greece, so it was thought that the king of gamebirds would be a special treat and two brace were ordered from his upmarket local butcher.

The latter wasn’t confident that he would be able to source any grouse, which is understandable as they’re not a bird that’s shot in the area where my friend lives, but after a couple of days, he called to say that he had managed to get a brace.

My friend’s wife collected them that day, though she was somewhat taken back to be charged £32 for two oven-ready birds that she thought looked rather diminutive. My friend takes up the story: “When the birds came home, I looked at them carefully. They were not only small, but clearly labelled by the game dealer from whom they came, in Italian, separately on each bird as colombaccio (woodpigeon).

“They went straight back to the butcher, who refunded the money but without much apology. ‘We have never been asked for grouse before’ was the response, as if it was all our fault.”

Though my friend isn’t a shooting man, he knows his birds, even without their feathers on, so passing off a woodie as a grouse wasn’t likely to fool him. However, both grouse and woodpigeons are darkbreasted birds, so they could possibly be confused, while how many potential buyers would be confident enough to tell the difference?

The question also arises as to whether this was a genuine mistake or deliberate, and had the colombaccio been imported from Italy? I suspect that £16 is a record price for a pigeon.

I’m pleased to say that my wife managed to save the day by digging four partridge breasts out of the freezer, which had been lurking there since January. They are unlikely to be replaced, as the local shoot they came from hasn’t been able to source any partridge poults this season.

Could £16 for a woodpigeon be a record price?