Where there's a Will, there's a way

A teenager gets a taste of walking-up game across the marshes — and shows his father how it’s done

- SIMON GARNHAM

Ya’ll have some sport on the marsh, Bor, if you like pheasants under ya feet and high duck. There’s a lot of birds on them saltings; get down there early doors and ya’ll have some fun. You can take a pheasant or two if they’re headed in the wrong direction.”

This was a generous offer from a gamekeeper in late October and not one that my son William and I were about to pass up. We’d spent a magical day beating and were debriefing contentedly over a winter warmer in the barn at the close of play. William was remembering with excitement how pheasants had burst out from under his feet and how duck had achieved remarkable heights to outfly the Guns. “I love it when a bird gets up and I love seeing them when they’re too high to touch; let’s go tomorrow and make our own sport. I’d have had those duck.”

When he shows this level of interest, I always try to foster it — if for no other reason than I want him to learn that high duck are not as easy as all that. So the next morning found us in the darkness feeling our way across the saltings and on to the tide’s edge.

Stars and a waning moon cast a molten silver glow on the rising waters. The reedbeds shone with a thousand glistening dewdrops and far off a dog barked in the cold silence. Further up the creek towards the open sea came the muffled croak of brent geese and the chatter of mallard. An egret called a rasping crow-like ‘krak’ from the water’s edge and dunlin trilled through the darkness. The world prepared to awake.