August 2019

The Field

Champion of Britain's countryside heritage

The Field3 min read
Centralise Firearms Licensing
THE law permits citizens to possess firearms, provided that those who do so meet various criteria intended to protect the public. Only those with genuine need or requirement, a faultless record and who are deemed not to be a threat or danger are able
The Field4 min read
Art In The Field
WHO knows the origin of the phrase, ‘the call of the sea’? But we all know exactly what it means. It’s the feeling that Justin Tew captures in his nostalgia-dappled seascapes. Bathers wade out into Mediterranean shallows; umbrella pines shade the sho
The Field1 min read
In Brief
The Essex with Farmers and Union Hunt – a merger of The Essex with the Essex Farmers and Union – has bred 12½ couple of hounds following a successful first season. The hunt used bitches and dogs from The Essex to maintain Old English bloodlines. Houn
The Field3 min read
Field NotesConservation Without Rewilding
Leighton Hall in Lancashire, which can trace its history back to 1246, is a great example of what traditionally run estates are achieving for conservation – without resorting to ‘rewilding’. Extensive woodland management has boosted butterflies, incl
The Field2 min read
#TheField
Our June issue was bursting with archive gems but this picture proved a particular favourite, taken at an outdoor hunting supper during King George V’s tour of India, circa1911. Though more than a century old, Fielders took inspiration from the pith
The Field7 min read
General Licence debacle
IF you had to pick seven weeks of the year during which stopping the control of pest birds would cause maximum harm, 25 April to 14 June would be a good choice. Natural England’s revocation this spring of three General Licences for killing crows, mag
The Field2 min read
Faces
ANCIENT Land Rovers and gleaming sports cars trundled into the Yattendon estate for a charity clay shoot held in aid of PALS, a Berkshire-based charity supporting children with physical disabilities. This was the estate’s first such shoot and owners
The Field2 min readPolitics
A Partnership To Provide Quality Homes Of The Future
Landowners and housebuilders can profitably work together to create a proper new-home legacy, says Rupert Bates alongside a Community Management Trust that will maintain and manage the green infrastructure and amenities of the new sustainable develop
The Field3 min read
Giving Nature A Home In The Modern World
THERE are many similarities between the television personality Jeremy Clark-son and National Farmers Union deputy president Guy Smith. Both have a sharp wit, an ability to goad members of the Green Party and an interest in agriculture. However, the l
The Field4 min read
It’s The Silly Season
HOW do fish make love? Jilly Cooper once suggested to me that this was how I should kickstart a Field column. I thought of it recently, as I found myself again flicking on to ITV’s Love Island to watch a group of oily bodies flexing and fumbling unde
The Field7 min read
Letters
Defra’s reissuing of workable General Licences for pest bird control in England was driven not least by excellent joint working between our organisations. In order to keep the new licences in place, however, it is essential that everyone who uses the
The Field1 min read
Spice Up Your Life With A Turmeric Supplement
The Golden Paste Company, which offers a range of bioavailable supplements, has developed its range alongside leading nutritionists, scientists and experts in the veterinary field. These are some of the benefits your pets and livestock could enjoy, a
The Field6 min read
Grouse Over Pointers And Setters
During the journey between the Black Bull in Lauder and Rawburn Moor, 70-year-old Wilson Young regales me with shooting anecdotes in his soft, Border lilt and with an enthusiasm undiminished by nearly 40 years at the sharp end of a sport that is syno
The Field7 min read
North Yorkshire’s Moors In Their Glory
A combination of adverse factors combined to make the 2018 grouse season the worst in more than 30 years and led to an estimated 75% of let days across the uplands of Northern England and Scotland being cancelled. The winter was unremittingly long, c
The Field7 min read
Black Magic
As we came over the brow of the hill, a covey of 10 black grouse got up perfectly on cue; within a couple of hours we saw 18 blackcock and three grey hens. “I didn’t want to guarantee it, so that was very pleasing,” said Neville Gill, owner and manag
The Field7 min read
The Toughest Grouse
The uplands of northern England and Scotland have their brief moment of glory in August, as Britain’s 11 million acres of heather moorland – 75% of the world’s remaining resource – burst into honey-scented flower. There is no finer or more magnificen
The Field1 min readNature
Conservation Success
In England, black grouse are now restricted to the Pennines. Here, following the instigation of conservation measures at a landscape scale joint-led by the GWCT, including grazing reductions on the moor fringes and creating pockets of scrubby woodlan
The Field2 min read
Sporting Heritage
Blackgame was once a prized quarry of the moorland edge. Fores’s sporting notes & sketches of 1898 depicts a holy grail of sporting experience: “After you have gone out and killed your 15 brace, fed under a sheltering birch tree and ‘flasked’ at the
The Field3 min read
The Romance Of The Macnab
Macnab: the one word guaranteed to make any sporting sort mellow with that first-kiss-misty-eyed look. Many attempt the challenge but few complete it. The Macnab Challenge is without doubt one of the toughest, most frustrating, exceptionally exhilara
The Field7 min read
A Bespoke Pair Built For Grouse And Greys
No one is indifferent to a bargain – not even those fortunate few who shoot driven grouse regularly. With new London guns costing around £225,000 a pair, even the rich are looking elsewhere. Though no fat cat, one reader of The Field recently found h
The Field4 min read
Call The Vetwife
ON a quiet afternoon it’s worth spending a few hours with King Canute, Izaak Walton and Jane Austen, unlikely companions now gathered in death at Winchester Cathedral. Each came to mind in April after a visit: Canute when I contemplated the incoming
The Field1 min read
The Field’s Macnab Club
John Davies Joe Thompson John Fields Daniel Riddle Stuart Hudson Dean Hemmings Marc Sale Alex Brant Tony Terry Ruairidh Cooper Jackie Weller Arwyn Davies Chris Cook Janek Wichtowski Paul Martland Campbell Whyte Andrew MacInnes Joe Thompson John Field
The Field1 min read
Macrules
THE MACNAB MUST BE COMPLETED WITHIN ONE DAYLIGHT DAY • THE CLASSIC MACNAB A salmon on the fly, a stag and a brace of grouse. • THE REAL MACNAB A salmon on the fly and a stag, as the trio did in John Buchan’s John Macnab. They must be ‘poached’ in a
The Field7 min read
Battle Of The Sexes
It’s rare for members of the mounted field to ride up to the huntsman at the meet and enquire as to how many hounds are out, never mind establish whether their sport is to be provided by a bitch, dog or mixed pack. When Nigel Peel put it to his hunt
The Field2 min read
Casting Or Consuming In Oban
WHILE Oban is a mecca for the consumption of fresh fruits of the sea, there are myriad lochs across western Scotland where guests are encouraged to venture out to cast a freshwater fly. The Ederline Estate (www.ederline. com) is one, a working farm t
The Field5 min read
Oban Seafood Capital Of Scotland
In between crossings, the crew of Caledonian Mac-Brayne’s MV Clansman ferry swabbed the decks. On land, a few yards away, in the fresh and bitingly raw wind, the Chinese flag flapped above The Original Green Seafood Shack. On the quayside of the ‘Se
The Field3 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Recipes From Food And Fire
I’ve been fly-fishing for trout since I was 13 years old and have enjoyed many wonderful meals caught by my own hand. Now that I have kids of my own, I love teaching them how to catch and cook their own food; they really enjoy eating the fish we catc
The Field7 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Dirty Cooks At The Barbecue
If you are what you eat, I’m now a ‘dirty’ steak basted in a Simon & Garfunkel lyric of parsley, rosemary and thyme nestled on a bed of coals with a few whisky-smoked wood chips and looking forward to a dry rub. I am in the back garden of a cottage h
The Field7 min read
Reeling In The New Breed Of Fly-fishers
Ask most people to describe their image of a ‘fly-fisher’ and I’d hazard a guess that their response would go something like this: male, elderly (or at least approaching elderly), tweed cap, waxed jacket, wellies and so on. You know the type. We are
The Field7 min read
The Enthralling World Of Roman Vindolanda
If you want to learn from the past about our country’s current affairs, you could do worse than look back to Roman Britain – a fascinating world of continually shifting power dynamics. Arguably nowhere offers better insights into this world than the
The Field5 min read
A Botanical Treasure Trove
In Brideshead Revisited, Sebastian Flyte enjoins Charles Ryder to come with him to the Oxford University Botanic Gardens “to see the ivy” – saying he doesn’t know where he’d be without the country’s oldest horticultural resource. While few of us woul
The Field2 min read
History Of Botanic Gardens
“There are three things which have stimulated men throughout the ages to travel far and wide over the surface of the globe, and these are gold, spices and drugs. It is to the two latter of these universal needs of man that we may trace the origin and
The Field4 min read
Country Queries
Q I’m trying to find large handkerchiefs for men with a country theme. Can you help? I would be grateful for any telephone numbers. AC, Crewe, Cheshire A A large cotton handkerchief, available in six colours and measuring 54cm x 52cm, depicting p
The Field3 min read
Wièse Silver Hunting Hanger And Scabbard
THE term ‘hanger’ was used from early in the 14th century and came to be applied to all short swords that could be worn comfortably for hunting or travelling. By the close of the 17th century, in Europe, firearms had supplanted the crossbow, spear an
The Field4 min read
William & Son Pigeon Gun
THE test gun this month is a magnificent, 30in barrelled, 12-bore, pinless sidelock side-by-side pigeon gun by William & Son. It has side-clips at the breech, a concealed third bite (like some big-game double rifles), gold-line cocking indicators and
The Field4 min readMedical
Give Them A Booster?
IF you exclude hereditary complaints (admittedly a rather big if), Britain’s dogs have never been healthier. Advances in veterinary science and improved animal husbandry have virtually eliminated the diseases that once caused so many problems for all
The Field3 min read
Nicole Escue
I’M a Southern Belle born and bred. My father was a big-game hunter and primarily found his quarry in the Rockies, Canada, and Alaska. I grew up around constant talk of his next hunt, whether it was elk, big-horned sheep, caribou or bear. He was also
The Field6 min read
Souvenirs Of War
WITH these recent war anniversaries my mind has turned, as nobody else’s probably has, to a different aspect of conflict, a rather more sporting side: pillage and plunder. A skill we Brits developed into a near art form after centuries spent colourin
The Field4 min read
Making One’s Piece
I HAVE cooked for countless shoots and stalking parties at which guests stagger into the kitchen after a hearty breakfast, time running out before the gamekeeper’s and gillie’s patience expires, exclaiming that they couldn’t possible think about lunc
The Field2 min readAutomotive
Jeep Renegade Trailhawk
I DO hope the Renegade Trailhawk has a thick skin – it was attracting a fairly diverse set of comments in the week I drove it. The kindest was that it was the steroid-filled lovechild of a Jimny and a Fiat Panda. Other comments included: “funky” and
The Field3 min read
Four In A Bed, Excluding The Moles
WE seem to have had a surfeit of visitors this year. And it is only August. I say only August, because my tax brain, which currently overrides everything else, tells me that we are just four months into the new year. I was expecting a nice quiet year
The Field3 min read
The Best Party Poppers
MY oldest chum, Andrew Ross, is having something of a party this month. And when I say my oldest chum, I mean my longest-standing chum rather than the most ancient, although the poor sod is more than a little clapped out, the party being held to cele
The Field3 min read
Points Of Interest
The only decent place to stop on a motorway, after bouts of tiresome caravan dodging and overtaking the less mechanically able, is at the wonderful Tebay Services on the M6, or its sister site on the M5 at Gloucester. But there are swathes of country
The Field7 min read
The Art Of Managing Recoil
Many women who shoot have issues with recoil. They can be more conscious of it and, frankly, more nervous of it than men. A bad early experience can be really damaging. Where might one begin? Perhaps by noting that the right clothing, effectively pad
The Field3 min read
Top Shots’ Guns
“I have a pair of Perazzi MX20 (20-bore) 30in shotguns with custom SC2 wood and custom stocks and fore-ends for partridge and walked-up grouse. A pair of Perazzi High Tech Elles 12-bores with 32in barrels, again with custom stocks and fore-ends, fixe
The Field7 min readFashion
Field Fashionistas
If you thought that living hundreds of miles from the big smoke, surrounded by moorland, woods and fields would adversely impact your chances of founding a successful fashion business, you’d be wrong. I spoke to three rural fashionistas, based full t
The Field6 min read
Take To The Hills
When my Firearms Certificate (FAC) was granted last year it became apparent there was a gap in the fieldsports fabric when it comes to women and rifles. Having fired everything from a .22 to a .500 Nitro Express, I still felt unprepared to take that
The Field1 min read
Three Centuries Of Ladies In Racing
1711 Queen Anne starts Ascot races, declaring East Cote heath a good place for “horses to gallop at full stretch”. 1845 Queen Victoria introduces Ascot’s Royal Enclosure as an area for Prince Albert to mingle with Royal guests, including Nicholas I
The Field3 min read
Order Of The Bath
THE sporting day ritual is not complete until a steaming hot bath has been drawn. The post-sporting soak is not mere indulgence, however, it has proven health benefits. The heat gets your blood moving, which relaxes sore muscles, improves circulation
The Field3 min readFashion
Keeping Up Appearances
The number of ladies taking part in fieldsports is growing all the time, and they want kit and equipment that will ensure they can look good and perform well in the field. So whether you want to bust clays at a shooting school, face driven game on th
The Field7 min read
The Going Is Good
Horse racing is known as the sport of kings but really it should be called the sport of queens. Starting more than 300 years ago, racing in this country has been profoundly influenced by four British queens, along with a supporting cast of duchesses,

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