Game

What to eat in game season

Game is a perfect refutation to the sort of militant vegan campaigners who go around placing floral tributes on packaged meat. So long as shoots are responsibly conducted, game is as environmentally sustainable and ethical as meat-eating gets. But this year looks set to be a tough one for parts of the industry. Chiefly because of a severe outbreak of avian flu in France, gamekeepers in the UK have struggled to source enough birds to rear (90 per cent of partridge eggs and 40 per cent of pheasant eggs are imported from or through France). By some estimates up to 70 per cent of partridge shoots and nearly a third of planned pheasant

Our farm is a haven for lost souls

Laikipia He was turned out in a crisp bush ranger’s uniform and handled his assault rifle like a man hardened in the field for years to take on bandits and elephant poachers. ‘Ah Mario, what a pleasure it is to meet you again after all this time,’ I said. His severe military face collapsed into a beaming smile as he snapped to attention and slope-armed his weapon. He then relaxed and we chatted for a while on the roadside in our farming district, where I’ve been around so long now that I frequently encounter people whom I’ve known all their lives. Some, like Mario, even have a few wrinkles, greying

We have incurred the wrath of the shoot boys

Since telling the shoot we won’t let them use the land we rent, we have been beset by a series of unfortunate events. It began more than a year ago now, when we first dug in our heels and said there were to be no standing guns in the fields where we keep our horses. The lady who owns the land backed us. They didn’t help themselves by demanding to use it for free. The idea was, we pay the rent and move our horses somewhere else during the shooting season so they can shoot pheasants in it. I don’t think so. They argued that they had established a recent