A grouse about missing pheasants

WE WENT TO YOUNG ALF'S THE other day for his first shoot. Alf arrived aged 23 from the London building trade and has taken to country sports. He has been threatening to have a shoot for several years now, on the basis that there seem to be a reasonable number of wild pheasants strutting about the place, which is always a good start.

Admittedly, his woods, mainly sitka plantations, were never planted for shooting, but the trees are young and there is still some cover between the rows.

And there are plenty of boggy and scruffy bits of gorse and old walls and fences and overgrown roads and forestry rides. The usual. Just to make sure there was enough sport to keep his guests amused, Alf had brought in a few hundred experimental poults at the beginning of last year, built two rearing pens in the woods and put out half a dozen feeders made from redundant cow-lick containers.

He had even driven nasty-looking spikes into the tops of strainer posts on the open-topped rearing pens to deprive marauding raptors and cats of predatory lookouts. Once the pheasants were big enough to survive out of the pens there had been a certain amount of "dogging in" with one of my sons. They would roam the marches with a pair of semi-wild dogs and try to teach the birds to stay in their woods rather than hoofing it across country to someone else's - pheasants are like cats, very disloyal.

After a bit the birds get the message (sort of) and learn to stay at home. Eventually Alf could put the day off no longer and we were summoned for The Shoot.

We had two beaters in the form of Alf's girlfriend, who is still making up her mind about bloodsports, a sister of one of the guns, two dogs, a clutch of Robertsons, a cousin, a ghillie from down the river (his bonnet festooned in Munro Killers and Aly Shrimps) and Alf, who is so effectively camouflaged he can be mistaken for an ivy-clad tree stump at 20 paces.

His parents said they were itching to come beating but had a longstanding lunch invitation. None of us, including Alf, knew what to expect apart from Alf's hand-made venison sausages, whisky macs and port at elevenses.

The sitka, between 6ft and 12ft tall and unthinned, were, we soon discovered, very thick in places, and wet. The day was blue, bright and cold.

Skeins of geese honked overhead. There was a lot of shouting for the two dogs (we really needed six), stick- tapping and swearing in the undergrowth. In theory, clouds of pheasants should have been screeching in steep ascent over the two guns sent forward. Instead Alf shot a hen pheasant going away and worried this would be considered bad shooting etiquette.

We assured him that for a host to shoot the first bird of the day and have his own dog pick it up is so appalling that he will be labelled a complete bounder and no-one will ever speak to him again.

For a moment he looked worried. At which point a woodcock appeared. By the end of the second drive we had seen more woodcock than pheasants, and they kept coming. As dusk gathered and a late lunch beckoned it was clear we had hit a woodcock day.

"I'm putting down pheasants, not bleedin' woodcock," moaned Alf. Whether they were passing through from Scandinavia on their way south or just lurking is uncertain. Diligent debriefing suggested we had seen at least 50 and shot seven. No-one could remember seeing so many on a pheasant shoot.

My cousin, who knows about woodcock, said they eat cow pats, which is why they are full of worms. Alf is a bit miffed about the non-appearance of his pheasants, which have probably run away or been eaten by a fox. But we all tell him, truthfully, that if he hadn't put the pheasants down in the first place we would not have been there for the woodcock. "Very generous of you. Come again."

[email protected]