Going for a Macnab

Ed Wills has long dreamed of bagging an elusive Macnab — a brace of grouse, a salmon and a stag in one day. Would it be third time lucky?

Better luck next time,” the stalker said to me, patting my shoulder, as I watched the winded stags gallop away over the hill.

That had been my second attempt at bagging a Macnab and I had failed. The previous occasion had seen me catch a fish before breakfast, grass a stag in the early afternoon and then fail on the grouse at sunset.

I cursed my luck and headed back down the glen to the lodge, where I spent the evening sulking in front of the fire with a glass of Talisker.

In 1925 literary great John Buchan wrote the sporting classic John Macnab, in which a cabinet minister, a banker and a barrister attempt to cure their boredom by warning three Highland estates that within 48 hours they will poach a salmon and two stags from each.

The classic version of a Macnab nowadays — for legal reasons most likely — is to catch a salmon on the fly, shoot a stag and bag a brace of grouse, too, in just 24 hours. You may have heard tales of southern sorts claiming that they, too, have achieved a Macnab with some combination of snipe, sea trout and roe, but you wouldn’t catch me drinking with those charlatans.

It was mid-October and I was sipping a rather-too warm whisky and looking out of the plane window as it propelled me north for my third attempt at a Macnab. “Third time lucky,” I muttered as I spotted the River Dee carving its way across the Highlands.

Touching down at Aberdeen airport, I jumped into the car that would take me to Braemar. The Scottish taxi driver — seemingly a keen fisherman — started giving me river reports. “There’s not many fish in the Dee,” he said sadly. “You could once cast a line and you would have had a 12-pounder easily, but you never know,” he continued, “there’s always a chance.”