Setting An Example At The Table

If you shoot game, accepting a brace at the end of the day is essential, says Deputy Editor Alexandra Henton. And why would you refuse, with so many tasty ways to reduce the current surplus?

- Alexandra Henton

AT the start of every winter Monday the conversation in The Field office revolves around two topics: the sporting fun we had at the weekend – often jumping a decent hedge and making it to second horses in my case, returning with a bulging game bag in the Editor’s – followed by a discourse on how we prepared and cooked game, who we fed and the recipes we’ve tried. As we’re both keen cooks there’s a degree of culinary one-upmanship but the good-natured game recipe trumps has a serious, almost evangelical message at its heart.

Every moment we spend in the field is done with an understanding of the sporting and conservational benefits of what we do. When it comes to shooting, taking your brace and doing something with it – historically a given – has, somewhere along the line, become optional. It isn’t. Taking home game is essential to the sporting contract we’ve made with our quarry: we are hunters who have taken lives in order to provide food. If it’s just about technical accuracy with a gun then shoot clay pigeons.