Cheers, long ears

Neil and Serena Cross salute, respectively, the brown hare and the humble rabbit, the stars of myth and children’s tales, as well as many a tremendous sporting day

NDC

I have always loved the brown hare and wondered at her extraordinary turn of speed and agility since I first shot one with my father as a small boy. Since then, I have witnessed them in many guises and sporting settings, from the formalised hare shoots of East Anglia to walking up scrub hares in Africa.

Hares may not be legally sold in March, which remains the traditionally recognised time to spot courting hares boxing. However, the spectacle continues much later into the year. The arable country of East Anglia provides a perfect habitat for the hare, which originated on the wide open steppe before being brought to Britain by the Romans as both a source of food and a source of legend, based upon lust and fertility.

Today, the wild brown hare continues to carry both sporting and mythological significance. In Norfolk and Suffolk, some estates still hold an annual hare shoot in February, as a means of keeping numbers down on the crops and thanking farmers and friends for their help during the game shooting season. The culinary value of the hare should not be underestimated and although, sadly, out of fashion now, two of the finest dishes I’ve ever eaten were hare recipes that steered well clear of jugging. The first was a spectacular Wellington of hare loins, served perfectly pink, with a sauce of wild mushrooms, whilst the second was after a hare shoot in Yorkshire when we sat down to home-made ribbons of pasta in a rich hare ragout. It’s a strongly-flavoured meat but has a wonderful wild tang to it and, if treated with care and skinned and paunched whilst still warm, is quite delicious.

The hare has always been considered to occupy a league above the humble rabbit and was feted as a beast of the chase to be celebrated for its mystery, agility and flavour. I fully concur with these sentiments and having once exchanged a boot-full of hares for dinner in an extremely smart restaurant, I can absolutely recommend their versatility.

Following our four-bird Christmas roast, a stalking friend suggested we try a rabbit inside a hare inside a muntjac inside a roe, to be spit-roasted over a fire pit. If that all sounds rather excessive and medieval, why not try something harechested and Italian before the start of March? You’d be mad not to.

SFC

This spring’s project sees the building of raised beds for a new vegetable garden at home and although we are not flush with hares, we do have an increasing number of rabbits that need to be controlled. I was always rather scared of Mr Mcgregor when I was growing up, but I now find myself with a degree of sympathy for his plight as I valiantly try to keep the area pest free.

Although rabbits are now unwelcome visitors, especially in my garden, there was a time when they were actively reared for sport and meat. A Victorian ancestor once bought an estate purely for its prolific rabbit population, and whilst this might seem absolutely absurd today, I would have loved to have taken sight of the brochure to see how on earth it was marketed.

Looking into the quantity of rabbits shot I can well understand what attracted him to make this acquisition. Literally thousands of rabbits were shot each season, with their best bag being 2,656 over just two days in 1897. What makes this even more remarkable is that they shot in a party of five and concentrated solely on the rabbits, with only a handful of pheasants ending up in the bag.

Whilst we can only now imagine what a spectacle this must have been, the excitement of this kind of shooting seems to have been lost over the generations. Cast aside as too difficult and requiring more effort and fieldcraft than purely standing on a peg, it is no longer conducted in a formal manner. However, there are still some of us who are mad keen bunny-baggers. Our annual walked-up day on the margins of a Yorkshire grousemoor provides us with some of our most memorable sport.

Immediately after 12 August we go on a day-long maraud, starting with a linea breast advance along the fringes of the moor and ending with a night-time assault on the pastures surrounding the house. The ever-adaptable rabbits have learned to avoid myxomatosis by living above ground in the marsh grasses, from which they bolt in every direction when the line reaches them. It really is superlative sport and also serves as a necessary check on the burgeoning population, which enjoys freedom from mammalian predators on this well-keepered moor. So, although the hare might enjoy a reputation spiced by witchcraft, we should never forget the humble rabbit. As I write, the air rifle is being zeroed…