Rites and wrongs of blooding

WHEN I shot my first pheasant I think my father said "Good shot" and that was it. We didn't go in for blooding - at least not for shooting a pheasant, which can hardly be considered a wily and cunning quarry even if it's hard enough to hit a lot of the time.

But times change. Blooding, from the verb to blood, as in I blood, you blood, he bloods, is an initiation ceremony. When a person, usually young, kills their first animal their face is smeared with the blood of the victim. It is a rite of passage that goes back as long as you care to let your imagination go, to the days when a young man delivered the final thrust of a wooden spear that felled a stag or hind; or maybe a mammoth, who knows.

Certainly Genghis Khan, not perhaps the ideal example, appears to have "anointed" his 11 and nine-year-old grandsons with the blood and fat of a goat they had shot with a bow and arrow.

And so it came to pass that we had a blooding the other day. She was 11 years old and out on half-term from school. She may have fired a gun before but certainly not on a driven shoot. We were all staying with a friend in Moray and she had expressed an interest in shooting the next day, especially as her 12-year-old brother was shooting with a 20 bore. The word went out for a .410 and a tiny but perfect single barrel gun was produced by a neighbour, along with an assortment of ageing Ely cartridges.

The gun, a poacher's weapon that can be folded up completely to fit inside a jacket or a car door, had a lever-catch on one side with which to open it. There was no safety catch, which is not as alarming as it sounds. Once the gun was cocked and ready to fire by pulling back the hammer it could be let back gently or the gun could just be "broken" open.

The day was a bit of an experiment - the first driven day of the season - just to see how the birds were going to fly and, if so, where.

But there was, as the keeper put it, "a wee bit of panic in the air". The weather had been impossibly warm and far from heading for the shelter and cover of the woods from which they could be more easily driven, the pheasants were still meandering about the landscape.

Six 200-bird days had been let this side of Christmas and unless the weather hardened up smartish there was a very good chance the birds would go walkabout instead of staying at home to be shot to make up the numbers. Hence the "wee bit of panic".

And so we sauntered forth in brilliant sunshine with a light breeze and the thermometer climbing - it hit 17C by lunch; shepherd's pie - and the two children looking suitably serious.

The first drive on this shoot I always slightly dread as the pheasants tend to be high and fast and there is nowhere to hide one's embarrassment.

I had just been bawled at by my host for not noticing a verminous jay going straight overhead when there was a pop three guns down the line. A completely dead, head-tucked-under, pheasant sailed through the air and thumped to the ground.

The 11-year-old, chaperoned by a parent, had killed it stone dead with her first shot on her first shoot. Her mouth dropped open and once she realised what she had done she calmly handed over the gun and did a little war dance.

Everyone cheered. Beginners luck or whatever, the shot had been perfectly executed. At the end of the drive the keeper came up and solemnly wiped blood from the bird on her forehead, cheeks and chin.

I think a boy would have done his best to keep the blood on his face for days. It was noticeable however that by lunchtime the bloodette had managed to get most of it off. I'm not sure I blame her.