A Shot In The Dark

Heading out with a gun in search of one for the pot on a dank November day, John Lewis-Stempel lets a pheasant get away, but bags a plump pigeon

- John Lewis-Stempe

I THINK the thing I like most about November is the feel of the trigger against finger, metal against flesh, which is a sort of metaphor for the first month of winter—cold meeting heat. I was out this morning with the Baikal .410. It’s my children’s shotgun, but it’s light to carry and has the allure of the illicit. The .410 is the poacher’s gun, particularly in the folding version, hidden beneath a long coat, or, in the case of Tom, the village milkman when I was a child in the 1970s, under the vinyl seat of the van for a passing pot at a pheasant. In Herefordshire, we call this a proper drive-by shooting.

The rain was thick this morning; it began as the sort of dollopy rain that collects on top of the cap before trickling down the back of the neck slowly. Like sweat. Not even the collar of my Barbour Beaufort, buttoned tight, kept the rain out. On the contrary, the collar was a funnel that directed the rain down my spine, so I was soaked to the bone.

The earth ached with sullen cold. I didn’t take the dog. Even the dense coat of a black labrador is permeable to such downpouring and, besides, there are times when you want to be melancholically alone in the element of rain.