Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Selecting the best of Britain’s wild game
Not everything that you shoot will be suitable for eating, so you must show caution when choosing meat for the pot, warns Soldier Palmer
When it comes to non-native species, there must come a tipping point when they can no longer be described as ‘alien’ or ‘invasive’. In many parts of the UK, grey squirrels are so common and well established that the fact that they are not meant to be here is hardly relevant any more. They’ve supplanted the red squirrels so effectively that the ‘Tufty’ of Beatrix Potter’s day has become the stranger and many people live their entire lives believing that squirrels are only grey.
Of course, we know that in areas where grey squirrels and red squirrels overlap, it’s useful to trap or shoot greys. The control of grey squirrels can play a significant role in the recovery of reds, but only where there are still reds clinging on.
Away from this conservation front line, control of grey squirrels is the management of a pest species, the same as rabbits or carrion crows. To that end, most people regard grey squirrels as fair game — regardless of whether they are native or non-native.
Grey squirrels only recently arrived where I live. They still have a novelty value and, because there are red squirrels in the trees above my office, there’s value in running traps to catch the newcomers.
Having enjoyed barbecued squirrel with friends down south, I was looking forward to trying one of my own. When my opportunity arrived, it fell into my lap. As I was driving out to work, a squirrel jumped into the farm track ahead of my truck. It was dead in an instant, but well preserved despite the collision. Working on the basis of “waste not, want not”, I took the corpse with me.
Thinking it would be a good project to work on with my three-year-old son, I produced the squirrel that night, alongside the scalpel I’d usually use for taxidermy. He’s fascinated by anything to do with nature and he was delighted at the prospect of “taking the squirrel’s jacket off”.
Youthful curiosity
My son has helped me skin a range of creatures over the past few months, from foxes and deer to crows and pigeons. Perhaps ‘help’ is an exaggeration, but he’s an extremely curious character and he’s always in the thick of things. He loves exploring meat and feathers, and the bonus is that, while he has sometimes been a picky eater, he never fails to eat
things he’s prepared himself. As soon as he was able to understand that animals mean meat, and meat means food, he was hooked.
As I had made a fanfare around this squirrel, my son was excited by the prospect of skinning it. But no sooner had I begun to peel back the skin on the unfortunate roadkill than I realised that something was very wrong indeed.
Tumour
The meat looked great all down the shoulders and the saddle, but there was something like a large tumour on one of its legs. There was a second tumour under its chin. When I accidentally touched this with the tip of the scalpel and burst it open, the lump produced a nasty powdery residue. I rather lost my appetite after that. I had to explain to my son that the squirrel had been poorly and we probably shouldn’t carry on with the skinning.
Nature provides a rich and fascinating store of wild food and it’s fair to assume that most things you find in the woods are pure and clean. Discovering that this creature carried some kind of sickness was surprising. And yet, I also remembered finding some red squirrels that were suffering from squirrel pox. They were covered in lesions, with their eyes swollen up like myxy rabbits.
Knowing that they got that disease from greys, I wasn’t sure if I could trust this meat. I wouldn’t eat the squirrel I had begun to skin, but I wonder if others have experienced similar doubts about squirrel meat. I know that squirrel pox poses no threat to humans, but it doesn’t thrill me to think of eating lesions.
Wild meat is a huge part of our sport. Many of us will have learned basic butchery and preparation from our friends and family, perhaps as we were growing up. Others will have been on specialised game courses, which can provide an additional layer of detail and authority.
“It’s a timely reminder to think carefully about disease and illness in wild animals”
Much of this information is based around the most efficient use of the meat, but there are always certain things to check for signs of health. When butchering a deer, one of the most obvious indicators of health is the condition of the liver.
That’s where all the poisons, infections and illnesses are filtered out of the bloodstream, and a clean liver is a sign of good health. By and large, most roe deer I shoot have firm livers with an even texture, consistency and colour. I’ve only encountered problems in the liver where animals have experienced injuries elsewhere; bucks that have survived road-traffic accidents, or animals euthanised after an extended period caught on a fence.
You wouldn’t necessarily choose to eat the offal from these animals, but in the height of prolonged pain or stress prior to death, the chances are that carcasses aren’t suitable for eating anyway. Professional stalkers have a list of indicators to check on a carcass and they can be sure that diseased animals never enter the food chain, but it’s testament to the deer themselves that sick animals are pretty unusual.
Rabbits are different. While myxomatosis is said to be harmless to humans, there seems to be several issues with rabbit health. Perhaps it’s a consequence of their tendency to live in tightly packed communities, but I’ve become more suspicious of rabbit meat over the past few years. Despite a history of prosperity, the number of rabbits is low in my part of the UK.
Some recent declines are attributable to disease, which vary from coccidiosis to liver fluke and the horrible haemorrhagic disease. I’ve often found rabbits in the last stages of death, twitching and staring distractedly into the middle distance.
Myxomatosis destroyed many cottage industries based on rabbit meat and skins. Rabbits became harder to find, but I can’t help thinking that, when they returned to prominence, we never enjoyed eating them like we once did.
Rabbits are another example of an invasive alien that has gone native. They’re not indigenous to Britain, but they have been here so long that we’re inclined to accept them as Brits. Wild boar lie at the other end of the scale. They’ve only begun to prosper here in the past 10 years and many still think of them as ‘feral’.
I’m pleased to see their numbers expanding. Having stalked and shot them a number of times, I stand in awe of a very special quarry species, but one of the best reasons to control wild boar is the disease risk they pose to domesticated pigs. It’s a timely reminder to think carefully about disease and illness in wild animals, regardless of whether they are old natives or recent newcomers.