The Field

Champion of Britain's countryside heritage

The Field1 min read
The Field
Editor Alexandra Henton Acting deputy editor Madeleine Silver Features editor Charlotte Mackaness Contributing editor Sarah Fitzpatrick Production editor Sarah Potts Head of design Dean Usher Picture editor Max Tremlett Commercial director Richard He
The Field1 min read
Introducing…
Brought up in rural Oxfordshire and raised on a monthly dose of The Field, Rosie Macdonald was delighted when she was given the opportunity to run the Country Queries column in 2005 while juggling her four young children. More than 1,300 queries late
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Let’s Not Give Them License
IT’S NO exaggeration to say that game shooting has been through turbulent times in recent years and has faced all manner of challenges, from the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs to avian influenza with its impact on gamebird release and licensing.
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Kit To Covert
Email [email protected] Highgrove x Guillotine Built to last from extra-fine merino lambswool milled in Yorkshire with a moleskin Nehru collar and green satin lining. Style fit for a king. Price £450 Email customerservices@highgrovega
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Field In Focus
Former defence secretary and British Hound Sports Association (BHSA) board member Ben Wallace has claimed that hunt followers and saboteurs are not treated equally by the police. Wallace has called for England’s most senior police officer on foxhunti
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November Diary
23 October-3 November Petworth Literary Festival Petworth, West Sussex Tel: 01798 343055 petworthfestival.org.uk Until 3 November George Stubbs and Contemporary Artists Wentworth Woodhouse, South Yorkshire Tel: 01226 351161 wentworthwoodhouse.org.uk
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News In Brief
Researchers from the GWCT have developed a new drone technique to locate nests of this elusive wader and work with farmers to protect chicks from being killed by machinery or predators. Lord Hertford has been awarded the Royal Agricultural Society of
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Rory Stewart
THE LITTLE shooting I do is done in a kilt,” says Rory Stewart as he sits for his photograph to be taken. He’s being serious, too, one suspects. “Except on the rare occasions that I shoot outside Scotland, of course. I don’t bring it down to England.
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FIVE OF THE BEST Gamebooks
Fine Shooting Accessories A hefty book (27cm x 39cm) favoured by serious shots and those keeping estate records. Price from £595 fineshootingaccessories.com The Stamford Notebook Co Available in four colours with personalisation and gilt edging optio
The Field7 min read
Letters To The Editor
Letters may be edited for clarity or space I read the article on the decline of the insect population [News, October issue] having driven back over the border into Scotland, quite downhearted to be leaving my lifelong refuge and sanctuary at Doxford
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Country Estate Of The Month
THIS IS an Exmoor sporting and livestock estate of 256 acres that has been in the current owners’ livestock estate of 256 acres that has been in the current owners’ family for three generations. The farm forms part of an established neighbouring shoo
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Top Dog Awards
THIS YEAR The Field Top Dog Awards, kindly sponsored by Skinner’s, culminated in a celebratory lunch held at Defender Burghley Horse Trials in September. As the canine winners arrived, accompanied by their owners, it was the perfect chance for them t
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Seeing The Wood And The Trees
IF, AS American naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote, you walk in the woods and come out taller than the trees, then Jon Lambert must dwarf the nation’s forests like Gulliver in Lilliput. Lambert is a founding partner of Goldcrest Land & Forestry Gro
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Celebrating The Game Changers
NDC IT IS heartening to see Great British Game Week thriving after a decade of inspiring countless converts to the pleasures of game on the table. The great thing about this initiative is that it completely debunks the stereotypes that existed for so
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‘Dr Green’ Will See You Now
HOW DO WE look after the most vulnerable in society? It’s a question debated regularly in urban centres of government but quite a few answers undoubtedly lie out here in the countryside. Even those fortunate enough to be spared significant physical o
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Flowers Of The River
Dear Freddie, NOW THAT the season for brown trout is over, if you want to keep your casting up, I would recommend finding some grayling fishing down in your part of the country. I had a smashing day last Sunday on one of the beats of the River Nith o
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Set Your Sights On The Field
INCLUDED Digital access with your print edition Save up to 50% ▸ NEW Full digital access to prior and future issues when you subscribe to the print edition** ▸ Pay less than you would in the shops ▸ Never miss an issue ▸ Delivered in plastic-free pap
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Fantastic Four
Cloud shadows raced across the landscape below us as the south-westerly wind freshened, causing the first pheasants to lift high and curl over the pegged guns GWCT Fantastic Four Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire FOR MOST of us, being told that a shoot
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A Military Operation
THE MEETING of the Colne and Blackwater estuaries in North Essex forms an extraordinary coastal habitat, the Geedon marshes, rich with vast swathes of saltmarsh, deep patches of samphire, ancient oyster beds and Roman-era salt pans. The extensive sal
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Travelling In Style
AWELL-KNOWN motoring journalist once described a Ford Probe as being able to “snap knicker elastic at 50 paces”. Shooting brakes – the good old shoot bus – might not have quite the same dramatic effect but they do evoke great affection, warmth and a
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Eating Game Made Easy
▸ Hugh van Cutsem, chairman of the British Deer Society: “My favourite way to eat venison is to marinate it overnight (I never stop experimenting with ingredients), then lay it out on a grill over a fire. It’s cooked in minutes and after resting is u
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Going Wild For Great British Game
THE PHYSICAL beauty of game inspires poets and artists, and can stop most of us in our tracks. Hides in myriad tones of bronze, feathers in stained-glass hues and boar… well, a row of piglets trotting after their mother couldn’t be any more adorable.
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Wall-to-wall Excitement
I’VE GOT a broken shoulder and a broken wrist, we moved into kennels at 6pm yesterday and there is still stock out everywhere,” Andrew German, huntsman to the High Peak Harriers, told me when I arrived at their new kennels one bright November morning
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Talking Scents
HUNTING with dogs is one thing, and hunting with hounds is quite another. Dogs do things differently from hounds. Whether they are gundogs (spaniels or pointers, for example) or hounds such as foxhounds and bloodhounds, every breed and type of dog wo
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Scents And Sensibility
Clean booters: confusingly bloodhounds do not hunt the smell of blood but other scents caused by human movement. Their name comes from ‘blooded’, meaning ‘pure-bred’. Ground scenters: labrador retrievers, spaniels, trail-foxhounds and draghounds prim
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Heaven Scents: A Glossary Of Scenting Terms
▸ Breast-high: warming air allows scent molecules to rise up through evaporation and convection so that even ground scenters can carry their noses high. ▸ Dead ground: lower-lying, colder or wetter patches sometimes cause gundogs to lose the scent ev
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Angling For Success
IT IS NOT unusual for guns to have a lesson before the start of the season to get their eye in, while gundogs and hunt horses might expect a little training to keep them performing at their peak but, surprisingly, anglers are often less inclined to c
The Field5 min read
Top Of The Pups
THE THURSDAY of Defender Burghley is the stage for eventing’s equine greats to shine between the white boards in the main arena but this year their canine counterparts were given their turn in the spotlight too with The Field Top Dog Awards lunch, in
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‘A Long Way From Piccadilly Or Pall Mall’
MENTION Churchill and Africa in a sentence together and two contrasting images are likely to come to mind: the young, dashing reporter making a name for himself in the Boer War, and the rotund, cigar-chewing elder statesman on visits to British force
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School Spirits
AS A HORRIBLY homesick 11-year-old, I used to walk around the grounds of my convent boarding school, weeping and praying that by some miracle my parents would appear. My dusk perambulations took me past the nuns’ graveyard and, having been inculcated
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Country Estate
To see more of Steven Keating’s work, visit the Rowles Gallery, 53 Mill Street, Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 1BB. Tel: 01584 872123. Visit: rowlesgallery.com Painter Steven Keating channels his emotional response to the world around him into his art with s
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The First Civil Engineer
I’M FASCINATED by anniversaries. It’s not an obsession (annivomania?), just an interest I discharge periodically by referring to one of my reference books, which contains a list of ‘notable’ dates. It was during one of these explorations that I first
The Field6 min read
The Waiting Game
ALL COMES to those who wait” is what we tell our children as they scream for a sugar rush. Conversely, with my literary agent hat on, I tell my authors to sharpen their elbows if they want to see success. Take it from me, most celebs who stiletto the
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Entering The (gift) Lists
READERS might be intrigued to find that armour, as is associated with knights of old, could be considered a suitable Christmas gift. However, as is so often the case, fact can be stranger than fiction. This stunning blued and gilt foot combat half ar
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When They Pick Up An Injury
WORKING your gundog in the beating line, or as a picking-up dog, is seldom thought of beating line, or as a picking-up dog, is seldom thought of as a high-risk job. Well, it’s not usually for the handler but it can be for the dog. In 40 years of work
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- The - boot Room
Lesser Spotted Coated to produce a lovely patina, this galvanised steel boot washer with traditional Georgian styling would not disgrace the smartest entrance. Three internal brushes ensure a thorough job in up to 35 litres of water (drained by a bru
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Rifle Focus: Modern Classics
THIS MONTH we look at two special rifles: one old and rare, the other relatively new and special rifles: one old and rare, the other relatively new and frequently seen. They are the Sako VL63 Finnwolf deluxe lever action and the still current Mauser
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Country Queries
Send queries to Rosie Macdonald, Country Queries Editor, The Field, Future Publishing PLC, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR. For more, visit: thefield.co.uk Email [email protected] Follow Rosie on Instagram @dizzy_m I have
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A Tree With Royal Roots
I KNOW one should never wish one’s life away but I am heartily sick of this year’s gardening season and am thankful that it’s over. An extremely wet and cold spring badly held up the sowing of hardy vegetables and annuals and sent molluscs – especial
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Fodder
ITS DOWN-TO-EARTH name belies what a quite extraordinary enterprise this Yorkshire farm shop has become and what it achieves every day in championing local produce. Fodder is a Yorkshire Agricultural Society (YAS) project started after the 2001 foot-
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Elevenses Worth Pausing For
I was first introduced to cornbread when cooking for some American clients on a shoot in Wiltshire. At their request, I made a batch of cornbread for them to take out with their Elevenses. My first attempt apparently was “not bad for a Brit” but woul
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A Sense Of Closure
IMAGINE A Utopian world where all wines are sealed with screw caps. You go on Dragons’ Den seeking investment for what you consider to be a whizz-bang wheeze for a revolutionary new stopper. “So, what have you got for us today?” asks a Dragon. “Well,
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Rothay Manor
THE LAKE District has romance stitched into its reputation: those winsome trees perched stitched into its reputation: those winsome trees perched atop a rocky outcrop stir even the stultified into creativity. There are the Poets, of course, although
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It’s In Our Nature
Plenty has been written about Goethe and it is never enough. He has a claim to be as great as Shakespeare. In adding to the magic of the man, distinguished biographer AN Wilson has chosen to focus on Goethe’s meisterwerk: Faust. Of course Christopher
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The Field From The Archives
THIS SEASON has helped us perhaps more than any previous one to realise the strong position in the world of sport which is now held by covert shooting. It has shown us the almost complete failure of the partridge and the partial failure of the grouse
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Field Testers
1 Part of shotgun where cartridge is loaded (6) 5 British breed of red/white cattle; English county town (8) 9 Shoot – and dismiss (4) 10 Scottish seaside town on the Deveron… prohibition on fly-fishing initially (5) 11 Conservation body publishing t

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