Time to raise a glass

A flick through his game book prompts Laurence to reflect on the past decade and the days of superb sport that made it so memorable

Searching through my shooting journal, I have concluded that I was much more useful with a shotgun 10 and 20 years ago than I am now. I do not believe this is the inevitable result of growing old — one of my friends, who is five years or so older, has been shooting better in the past two seasons than at any time in the dozen or so years we have shot together.

Several other friends who are well into their 70s are still pretty handy performers. I have told myself there is still hope of improvement and I did manage to shoot fairly efficiently last year. But this is all beside the point, because it was not the wish to compare past and present levels of competence that led me to consult my journal in the first place.

I turned to its pages because I wanted to find out what had happened on two occasions exactly 10 years apart. The first of these was 21 December 1999, which was the year I started writing for Shooting Times. I knew I was out shooting on the day in question and the relevant entry told me that five friends and I spent the day at High Park, shooting 17 pheasants, two woodcock, two rabbits and a jackdaw. My personal tally had been six pheasants for 13 cartridges.

Scrounging

I could recall that the day had been soft and cloudy and I had brought the booze but had forgotten my lunch, so had been forced to scrounge sandwiches from generous friends.

The second day left much sharper impressions. To begin with I knew that I had turned up with both crisps and sandwiches as well as port and sloe gin. I also knew that the land had been deep in snow and some of my guests never made it to High Park. Those who did were lucky to make it back home because there were heavy snow showers throughout the day.