A rook and a hard place

Who would swap the pursuit of the lordly pheasant for banging away at juvenile rooks with an airgun? Jonathan Young laments the end of a social pastime

WHILE there’s no shortage of rooks, I doubt many guns will be packing wicker baskets this spring with lemonade and game pie for a light picnic to sustain those busy harvesting the young birds.

Yet the old shooting tomes in my library attest that this was once a common sport with 12 May – the traditional day – almost as celebrated as the grouse’s Twelfth. The popularity of knocking down juvenile rooks – the aptly named ‘branchers’ that were big enough to leave the nest but still incapable of flight – was partly down to harder times, when meat was expensive, but mostly I suspect because it was enjoyable and social.

In our well-fed times we think differently of our bald-beaked corvids. Their reputation as egg thieves — and most countrymen will have seen them flapping away with a nest’s spoils — is countered by their good deed in consuming slugs, leatherjackets and other arable pests.

And besides, we like rooks. We admire their sociability, their skill in nest building and the raucous cacophony of the rookery, as much a part of the countryside’s music as the village church bells.

Yet I feel a slight sadness that this is another country tradition that has faded into sepia past. Young rooks do indeed make an excellent pie if heavily larded with stewing beef and accompanied by a pint or two of rough cider but who wants such rustic fare when the lordly pheasant is shot in such numbers that he can’t be given away? And who now has the time to organise a rook-shooting party under the terms of the general licence? But perhaps we should, as a surplus of rooks can cause farmers problems, which is why they still use scarecrows.

As teenagers, we tried to shoot branchers frequently and unsuccessfully, usually because we’d mistimed the attempt: either the rooks were too young and hadn’t climbed onto the branches or we were too late and they had joined their parents in a spiral of black smoke yelling their indignation at the audacity of our armed invasion.

Even when we did find some branchers, we either couldn’t secure a clear shot as they hid among the foliage or our air rifles weren’t accurate, the folding leaf-sights being bashed awry after countless clamberings over fences.

Even so, we managed a few and loved every moment of being in the countryside and bringing home food for the kitchen, a youthful fervour that still burns among my closest friends despite their grey hairs. Many of them are titans of the blue-riband fieldsports, lethal on grouse and curling pheasants, consistent winklers of salmon from majestic rivers home and abroad. But still their eyes brighten instantly at the suggestion of a day’s ratting or a chuck in a fenlands drain for a jack pike.

Such pursuits could be classed as ‘minor fieldsports’ but for many of us their ‘lesser’ status is nothing to do with lack of sporting challenge nor excitement but only lack of superficial gloss. Yet as our Victorian ancestors demonstrated with their rook expeditions, the humblest of quarry can be just as much a catalyst for celebration as the noble grouse or stag. We don’t need to be on a grouse moor to toast our quarry – a dozen dead rats despatched by terriers is cause enough.

Inevitably, however, some view these sports as second division because they are affordable and lack exclusivity. You will pay lumpy money to pursue trout in chalkstream Arcadia as everyone loves the wooden huts, the mown banks, the scent of water mint, the chorus of cuckoos and reliability of stocked fish. But for a mere £6 a day you can fly-fish miles of the Exeter Ship Canal for big pike and be within walking distance of two of the most enchanting pubs in England.

Accessible shooting is more complicated as landowners are naturally reluctant to allow strangers on their land with guns. And if they employ a keeper he will usually wish to retain the pigeon shooting and rabbiting as his perks to be distributed to his helpers.

Many of us, however, are fortunate enough to have a few acres or a paddock and while neighbours may squawk if we use shotguns on the rabbits the modern air rifles are effective to 35 yards and deadly quiet. Yes, a three-quarter-grown bunny may not have the glamour of a red stag but stalking him within range takes similar skill, especially now the hedgerows no longer crawl with coneys. Miss your beast and you might not have another chance for half an hour, so different from the time when most countrymen knew how to set the rabbit wires and many kept a hutch of ferrets.

And ferreting, done well, is as thrilling as most country sports, with the keen anticipation of action as the yellow hunter slinks earthwards, creating the muffled rumblings below before the explosion of brown fur as a rabbit cannons into the purse-net. It’s exciting stuff, yet few seem to ferret today – though the fierce little mustelids thrive in their new reincarnation as chic pets. The sport has declined, along with many others that require fieldcraft and, above all, time.

Instead, we shoot driven pheasants and catch stocked trout, both of which I love as much as any other sportsman. It’s understandable; we like the certainty of result and the manner in which such days can be packaged neatly within modern work schedules.

But when I walk the terriers, look upwards and see the rooks cawing I can’t help dwelling on our forefathers’ gentle enjoyment of ‘minor fieldsports’ as they carried home something for the pot.

The branchers joined their parents in a spiral of black smoke, yelling their indignation