Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2020 i The Field

OSCAR WILDE famously wrote that “each man kills the thing he loves”. Newspapers have claimed the RSPB is about to do the same. No organisation has done more to raise awareness of wildlife declines but it is at risk of thwarting its aim of saving our wild bird populations by alienating one of the largest motivators for conservation: game shooting. Those listening to Kevin Cox, RSPB chairman, announce its review of shooting were left with the impression that it is preparing to oppose it. How likely is this? It appears unlikely it would oppose game shooting on ecological grounds. Only four years ago, the RSPB stated that lowland game shooting could “provide beneficial habitat management for wildlife”, including woodland sky-lighting, planting cover crops and creating conservation headlands. The Game &…

When fish-crazy Professor Henry Hughes of Western Oregon University came to England, his rods and reels stashed optimistically under Christmas presents for his wife’s family, this was the only escape he could muster, the first week of the New Year. But what can you catch in January, apart from the flu? We’d met by email when Hughes wanted to include an old story I’d written about chasing bonsai sharks in The Wash in an anthology of fishing writing he was working on. He was hoping I could take him on a similarly batty adventure. And now all I really had to offer were pike. Good in theory. The creaking-creel school of pike angling paints a romantic picture of hunting Esox in the depths of winter, galoshes crunching frostbitten grass, icicles…

When I was 11 in the early 1970s, I went beating at a nice farmer’s shoot at Limpley Stoke near Bath. I had a thoroughly enjoyable day and at the end I was given one of the new 50p pieces as payment; the adult beaters received 80p each. I was thrilled – enough to buy comics, sweets and crisps with money left over. The local butcher took the pheasants not claimed by guns or bought by helpers. He paid £3 per brace and sold them in his Bath butcher’s shop at £4 per brace. This was at a time when an annual income of £1,000 was not to be sneered at and a small terraced house in Bath sold for around £1,500. How different today. Beaters, even youngsters, can expect…

THOUGH it may seem strange to their human owners, dogs are generally happy in the fur they are born with and don’t really need to wear a coat when they venture outdoors. However, it is now almost de rigueur for city dogs to wear a coat when they go our for winter walkies, whether they need the coat or not. During a recent visit to India, I saw several pet dogs there similarly dressed up, a somewhat ludicrous sight. Not surprisingly, this enthusiasm for dressing up the dog has spread to the shooting field: Barbour, for example, does a smart line in waxed dog coats, matching those of the dog’s master or mistress. While I’m deeply sceptical as to whether a poodle needs to wear a parka for a stroll…

IT’S remarkable that despite the efforts of St Greta and her hair-shirted Fun Police, car manufacturers are still putting enormous time and effort into the production of ‘hot hatches’. The Golf GTi still sells well after all these years, Honda’s Type R is a favourite – the list is long. Joining in for the first time is Hyundai, with the ‘N’ version of the i30. The ‘N’ is for ‘Nurburgring’ (site of extensive testing) or possibly ‘Namyang’ (design centre) – or ‘no-one seems quite sure’. We tested the ‘fastback’ version and were immediately struck with how restrained the styling is. If you got rid of the N’s red flashy bits (10 minutes with a tin of black Hammerite) you’d be left with a relatively mundane elongated hatchback. Nothing fancy, nothing…

TAKE a closer look at Jonathan Pointer’s dramatic capercaillie on its lek and you may spot a red squirrel in the background. For Pointer, such details are important. He wants to tell the whole story in his work: “It is a subtle narrative – but fundamental. I won’t just do a straight portrait that doesn’t say anything about the animal’s habitat. Doing the background gives the whole story. “A lot of my paintings mention the season in them, and that’s deliberate. I want to get the viewer to examine the whole scene. With Summer Partridges you have the golden shades of the ripening crop, and you also have some of the key weeds – those traditional weeds that are being lost with modern agriculture, causing partridge decline. And you have…

THE Oxford University Clay Pigeon Shooting Club hosted The Oxford Challenge at EJ Churchill on Saturday 16 November. The event, founded last year, has already become a firm fixture on the university circuit. It drew an impressive 225 competitors from a smorgasbord of universities. Bristol University brought a crew of 35 (all sporting matching red trousers), while Faye Wills bravely represented Canterbury Christ Church University in a bid for solo glory. The purpose of the Challenge is to encourage shooting at all levels, from novices to Olympic-standard competitors. The novice category is for those who started shooting within the past year. It was won by Georgia Hayes of Liverpool, with an exceptional score of 36/50. Prizes were kindly donated by our sponsors: Eley, Browning, CPSA, BASC, Sporting Hares and House…

Being way out west – and Ireland is west to Englishmen – and that the country was a little wild, it wasn’t that remarkable that Clint Eastwood had joined our shooting party. Not the real Clint, of course, but his cinematic legend buried in our memory, the Man with No Name who’d inspirited us boys with his monosyllabic coolness, constant cheroot smoking and lethal ability to clear leather with his Colt 1851 Navy revolver before the bad guys pulled their pieces. Now no-one could call common snipe bad guys. In fact, they’re heroic to all in love with the undomesticated remnants of the British Isles inhabited by these buff-and-brown sprites: the windy and wet, boggy and plashed, boot-sucking places where the only meetings are with stern-gazed hairy cattle. But to…

Hunting has been put through the wringer in recent years and few know better than the Grove & Rufford (G&R) what it’s like to be on the wrong side of a hunt monitor’s camera. The convictions of three of its members under the Hunting Act were overturned on appeal last year. It is a testament to the hunt’s renewed health that the 2018/19 season was as good as ever, with rising subscriptions, excellent sport and a Peterborough champion. The thousands of people who lined the streets to cheer on Boxing Day were proof that this pack, with its varied country stretching across south Yorkshire, north Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, is back to its best. Much of this success is due to huntsman Paul Larby, in office since 2008. Growing up in…

There’s something so solid, so reassuring, about a labrador that it is hard to appreciate that there was a time when they didn’t exist. You can almost imagine Julius Caesar, black lab at heel, walking to the Forum. He didn’t, of course. Designed in Victorian England and patented in 1904, the labrador is a relatively new creation, only as old as the breech-loading shotgun that the first labradors were bred to work with. Most of our familiar gundog breeds were developed and refined in the 19th century, while the very idea of a breed was a later development. Ciara Farrell, the Kennel Club’s library and collections manager, explained the concept of pedigree succintly: “Pedigree, in the strict modern sense, developed from the mid-19th century onwards. It involves adherence to having…

I FIRST picked a fly rod up at the age of 12 and have never looked back. It’s not just a diversion to enjoy at the weekend but a real passion, something I have come to love. I am often asked: “How did you get into fishing?” My parents have a touring caravan and are in a caravan club that tours all over the UK. We were staying at a campsite close to Carsington Water in Derbyshire, where my dad was going out on a boat with one of his friends. Did we have any idea what we were doing? Of course not. But from that moment I was hooked. I didn’t catch my first trout on the fly until the summer following that trip to Carsington. It’s a day…

2008 BELLAVISTA ‘VITTORIO MORETTI’ FRANCIACORTA EXTRA  BRUT (£97, winedirect.com) Made on the banks of Lake Iseo in Lombardy, a quite remarkable rival to the finest of champagnes. DELAMOTTE BLANC DE BLANCS NV CHAMPAGNE (£50, Corney & Barrow) Sister house to mighty Salon and unashamedly revered by those in the know. 2009 FERRARI RESERVA LUNELLI TRENTO DOC (£58, winebuyers.com) A stunning Italian fizz from the 2019 Sparkling Wine Producer of the Year. 2009 DRAPPIER GRANDE SENDRÉE CHAMPAGNE (£77.50, The Champagne Company) Good grief this is tasty! Made in tiny quantities and snapped up immediately on release. 2010 NYETIMBER 1086 PRESTIGE CUVÉE (£150, Fortnum & Mason) England’s priciest fizz, as adored by collectors as it is by wine buffs. 2004 BRUNO PAILLARD ‘NE PLUS ULTRA’ CHAMPAGNE (£190, Hedonism) Aged for more than…

Club awarded for banishing balsam A small fishing club in North Yorkshire that has transformed management of the River Leven – including halting the spread of invasive Himalayan balsam – has won the Wild Trout Trust’s (WTT) Outstanding Contribution to Wild Trout Conservation Award. Hutton Rudby Fly Fishing Club worked with the Environment Agency (EA), Tees Rivers Trust and the WTT to transform the river through its Leven Wild Fishery Project, easing barriers and improving habitat. After hearing about a scheme to spray rust on Himalayan balsam, club member Scott Hansford persuaded CABI – an organisation that addresses agricultural and environmental issues worldwide – to fund a trial on its stretch of the Leven. The EA estimates that Himalayan balsam occupies 13% of riverbanks in England and Wales. Plants can…

TIME TO SPEAK OUT My patience is exhausted. With small but vociferous groups getting all the headlines I must take to task the Countryside Alliance and BASC, of whom I have been a member for many years. With their supposedly media savvy PR departments I cannot understand why they are not promoting more strongly our side of the argument and all we do, and getting headlines in the national press. The world is changing fast, we cannot stand still. Traditional hunting has gone, shooting is going the same way and angling will be next. Country sports as we know them will be finished within two or three decades unless our PR becomes more proactive and aggressive. M Randell Rugby, Warwickshire I read with interest the letter jointly signed by Ian…

This residential and sporting estate on the River Spey comes with 586 acres, including 265 acres of woodland and forestry, a pheasant shoot, roe deer stalking, trout fishing and a let farm. Set in the Lower Spey valley, its modern, eight-bedroom house is built, to the current owners’ specifications, in a classical Georgian design. The estate also has a three-bedroom cottage, three further uninhabited properties and a range of outbuildings. Construction of Cairnty House began in 2010 and was completed in 2012; it was very much designed for entertainment, be it for shooting parties or for house guests taking salmon fishing on the Spey. The reception hall has a galleried landing, while the drawing room has direct access to the terrace. Agent: Strutt & Parker Tel: 0131 718 4593 Offers…

“The vixen’s call promises spring, fecundity, regrowth and warmth” January and the depths of bleak mid-winter: the gradual change in the weather cycle is more noticeable this month than any other. Forty years ago in the Borders, a heavy fall of snow was inevitable but now we can expect anything from snow to bitter iron-hard frost, driving rain, a freezing east wind that takes the skin off your face, or a westerly warm enough to bring puzzled winter sleepers stumbling blearily from their hibernacula – be warned, I once had a terrier bitten by an adder in the middle of the month. Regardless of the weather, I do love the stark beauty of January; the empty hedgerows, the bare, leafless trees, their naked branches reaching for grey, brooding winter skies;…

They’re a totem of celebration, a symbol of success. It’s striking that cigars have retained their popularity, having somehow escaped the social persecution and prim disapproval meted out to cigarettes. Perhaps it’s because, even if you’re more than comfortably off, sitting down with a fat Cohiba is still a treat. But why is this? What is it that sets it apart from the humble fag? We’re not really comparing like with like. Cigarettes are effectively a mass-produced, quick nicotine hit while cigars are an organic luxury. “It starts with the product,” explains Eddie Sahakian of Davidoff. “They’re very different. There’s a shared provenance, of course, but cigars are a pure item of high quality, which take years to produce.” Whilst there are low-grade and machine-made cigars, what we’re talking about…

Fieldsports have evolved exponentially over the past three generations, along with ever more sophisticated clothing and equipment designed to increase the chances of success – although the adage “all the gear, no idea” often rings true. Where our forebears once waded freezing rivers with little protection, we now cast a comfortable line wearing sophisticated warm waders and Vibram-soled boots. In the shooting field, the traditional side-by-side has been largely usurped by the ubiquitous over-and-under, and the body protectors and ungainly crash hats sported by some who ride to hounds would have drawn gasps of incredulity from their elegantly turned-out predecessors. And yet I have noticed it’s often the rider wearing an ancient but beautifully tailored black coat and carrying a pre-war Swaine Adeney hunting whip who is up with hounds…

Biltong heralds from South Africa, where it was invented to preserve meat for later consumption. Now, brand-new company Wholesome Wolf has given it a game twist. Founders and friends Shon Sprackling, an ethical Sussex beef farmer, and Murray Spalding, a South African foodie, established the company to combat their shared hatred for intensive farming practices and food waste. “Murray and I are both keen foodies and enthusiastic consumers of meat and game,” says Sprackling. “We both really enjoy biltong but couldn’t find a product that we enjoyed. We decided to try and merge my knowledge of beef and game butchering with his love of the traditional South African snack but at the same time try and give it a truly English twist.” The original range was sold locally to pubs,…

THIS test gun is a splendid beast, a 31in-barrelled, 8lb 9oz, James Purdey & Sons over-and-under. Designed as an upmarket clay crusher and named accordingly, the Purdey Trigger Plate Sporting Clays Model is built on the new, all-London-made Purdey triggerplate action (which appeared in prototype form in 2016). Purdey continues to make a mechanically similar, but slightly less refined, over-and-under in collaboration with Perugini and Visini (its major action parts and monobloc are machined in England, sent to Italy for assembly before returning to the Purdey factory for proof, Teague chokes, finish and regulation). “I had been concerned about the almost 9lb weight but need not have been. I went the first 50 birds straight” The new London sporter costs £62,000 plus VAT. It combines CNC and spark erosion manufacture…

SOUP is one of the oldest types of food and is found across the world in almost all food cultures. Incredibly versatile, it can be anything from hearty, healthy and nutritious to rich, refined and decadent. It is also one of the best dishes to help use up a seemingly odd collection of leftovers in your larder and fridge. To make a great soup there are two important rules to abide by. Firstly, use a really tasty and flavourful stock – remember, it is this that makes up most of the dish. I try to keep a stash in the freezer, using old plastic milk bottles to store it in. I never use stock cubes. Secondly, you must season as you go along, as each batch of ingredients is added.…