Green And Pheasant Land

The pheasant has a long and colourful history in Britain — but what of its future, wonders Jeremy Hobson

- Jeremy Hobson

Always a bird for the table, pheasants have been taken by falconers and various other methods for centuries since their probable introduction by the Romans.

The first documentary evidence of the pheasant in Britain comes in 1059 when King Harold offered the canons of Waltham Abbey a “commons” pheasant as an alternative to a brace of partridges. After the Norman conquest the birds were protected and nurtured as a delicacy for baronial banqueting tables.

Primarily a food source, their potential flying ability was unconsidered — until, that is, the advent of gun manufacturing when it became possible to contemplate driven pheasant shooting as a sport.

In their book, Game & the English Landscape (Debrett’s, 1980), Anthony Vandervell and Charles Coles state: “This approximate version of the modern system of driving seems to have started about 1829… Soon, a small platoon of estate workers walked through the undergrowth towards the guns, who stood outside the woods to shoot birds which were flying higher and faster to other coverts.”

In 1909, Owen Jones wrote: “Provided it is a good one, I do not care a rap whether a pheasant is hand-reared or wild when I am shooting at it; and the better it is, the less I care.” In 1924, Sir Peter Jeffrey Mackie was of the opinion that prior to World War I “the rearing of pheasants had been overdone”.

“It had become artificial. In many cases a larger number of birds were reared than the land would carry. Complaints by farmers, and agitation, started by cranks, against all forms of rearing and game-preserving were the result.” Almost a century later, pheasant rearing continues — with similar comments.