Fieldsports builds friendships like nothing else

I write this from the coast of Kerala in India, where we are marooned by the war in Iran. Frustration that the world’s airlines have not yet found a way to bypass the conflict and get us home to delight in the first daffodils has given way to counting our blessings and trying to make the best of being stuck in paradise. Really, what’s not to like? Exotic birdsong and the rhythms of one of the Marari coast’s many religions being called to prayer can be heard above the weighty rumble of the Arabian Sea massaging white sands along the jungle’s edge. Blighty seems a long way away, and we are kidding ourselves that we would not be sorry if we never had to struggle through another Scottish winter.

And yet…

It’s the camaraderie of the shooting season I would miss. And so too, deep down, I suspect, would The Reluctant Hostess in the hammock beside me. After all these years of marriage she could do without the “good shot darling” bit, but rather enjoys the après. As time goes by the enjoyment of shooting, reflected in thank you letters both sent and received, focuses more on the “company” and the “craic” than on the “trigger action” and the size of the bag. The teasing of old friends, the schadenfreude, the banter over elevenses, the exultation at a grandchild’s first pheasant. The pooled connoisseurship of eight countrymen of advancing years commenting on the unfolding drama of the shoot: the kestrels and the short-eared owls quartering the moor before the first covey came through, the bird falling on the greenhouse, the roe deer exiting stage left pursued by our neighbour’s field trial champion. The warmth of deepening friendships and running jokes across a two-night house party.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise. There are fathomless anthropological reasons why we value the camaraderie of hunting in its widest sense above almost anything else. It is, after all, a re-enactment of that glorious moment when our primate ancestors came together to shake off monkeydom and reinvent themselves as H. sapiens. While the absolute requirement to put meat on the table has diminished, the community endeavour has gravitated to art form and nourishes us in so many other ways.

Columnists have always analysed the crucial ingredients that fuse together to form a good day’s shooting, but so often the day is made or marred on the day the invitations are sent out, and the all-important chemistry of the team of Guns is defined: the mix of new friends and old, the inclusion of the amusing if inaccurate at the expense of the deadly but dull or boorish, the avoidance of collision between the aspirant solar farmer and the implacable leader of the opposition.

Nor is the camaraderie in any way limited to the Guns. There is the friendship built up over the course of the day with the pickers-up, the two-way trust in the ability to mark birds and work dogs. The sharing of triumphs and disasters, deepening telepathy and fear of running out of cartridges developed with one’s loader. The profound relish of teamwork that only infantry platoon commanders and shoot managers experience with their respective teams when a plan comes together.

The hunting field and the riverbank

Nor should we forget the shared experience in the hunting field: the thrills and spills punctuated by the hurly-burly of a jostling, flask-swigging, mounted cocktail party. The gossip of a fashionable hunting country; the ribald, innuendo-laden wit. The gathering of the tribe below the ha-ha, the children being initiated in the rituals of the hunt, the village elders bent double by the accumulated injuries of seasons past, the stirrup cups and the mince pies. Later, the reliving of a white-knuckle ride across the vale around a candlelit dining table, the other members of the field, hatless and in their glad rags, looking surprisingly distinguished or dowagerish, or beautiful, or bald.

And what about summer days on the river bank? There may be few fish in Scottish rivers now, but that melancholy fact has, if anything, made fishing less of a test of stamina and lengthened the breakfast conversation over kedgeree and kidneys in the lodge – followed by laughter around the fishing hut, fuelled by gallons of Provence’s finest pink wine and steaks cooked on a campfire. The shared excitement watching the osprey stooping downstream and the intense glimpses of kingfishers and otters. The appreciation of the exquisitely polite rudeness of the ghillie commenting on our casting abilities. Or perhaps the water is so low that even the most enthusiastic ghillie concedes defeat and the house party bonds over different shared experiences: Munro-bagging, garden visiting, hacking around the links at “Royal Spey Bay,” or a magical day hauling up to the hill loch for a try at the brownies.

The pull of home

Could we really say, “Goodbye to all that”? No. We need to get home – even if we have to fly via Timbuktu – to book the poults for next season and fettle up the release pens, to pay the deposit on that fishing holiday, to make plans to ensure we can have a social life again. It’s our culture, and we would be lost without it.