Field Notes · Books & Ideas
John Humphreys’ book invites a closer look at the countryside, and at the human habit of calling our arrangements a balance.
A game bag containing sandwiches, beer, a dog lead and dead rabbits is an unusually honest statement of purpose. Lunch and supper, with the means of getting between them. I find it rather more persuasive than a catalogue of expensive coats.
In The Complete Rough Shoot, John Humphreys presents a countryman who walks, finds his own quarry and carries what he takes. The dog works beside him. Competence matters more than display; the day asks something of its participant beyond turning up.
The book’s range is part of its appeal. Moor, marsh, stubble and hedgerow each demand different knowledge. Country life emerges as a relationship with places and seasons, rather than a single sporting occasion. Its movement from field to kitchen, including Angela Humphreys’ From Bag to Table, completes the thought: what is taken becomes food.
A fox can recognise the attraction of that economy. We have our own views on rabbit, though fewer opinions about the accompanying wine.
But there is a complication beneath this pleasing picture. The countryside through which the rough shooter walks has already been shaped by human needs. Crops, boundaries and decisions about which creatures are welcome make a landscape that serves some lives better than others. To belong to it is not automatically to leave it undisturbed.
That makes balance a question to keep asking, rather than a condition to declare achieved. What does this place support? What has been displaced? What are we taking, and what are we allowing to remain? A modest bag may express restraint, but modesty alone cannot answer every question about the land around it.
The book also carries the tastes of its world. Its discussion of well-hung, or “high”, game makes the journey from bag to table feel less familiar to a contemporary reader. Tradition reaches into the larder as well as the field. I would treat that passage as a glimpse of an appetite, rather than instructions for supper.
What stays with me is the demand for attention: to the ground, the season, the dog and the meal. It offers a useful starting point for living with nature, provided we keep examining the terms of the relationship.
Rough shooting is a way of living with nature, not a trip to the country.
Image credits: John Humphreys, Jack Parfitt and Jack Barnard.
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