Why our game is still stuck in a class divide

Once expensive and with barbaric laws of protection, game is more affordable today but struggles to shake off its past, says Rose Prince

- Rose Prince

In one sense, game today costs a markedly different amount depending on who you are. For a paying Gun, that brace of pheasants you take home at the end of the day will be one of the priciest foods you can buy. A person who shoots in their own backyard, so to speak, gets theirs free, more or less. But for the consumer who sets out to buy something oven-ready, the price of modern game sits somewhere between buying free-range chicken or a good cut of lamb.

In terms of supermarkets, there are plenty of options. Aldi and Waitrose sell pheasant in season, the latter at £4.25 for two breasts. Last Christmas, Aldi sold pheasant as part of a luxury three-bird roast for just under £20. Like almost everything, you can buy game online or, even better, you can get it from a good old-fashioned butcher. A partridge at my local last season was £3.50 and a pheasant was a fiver.

Sometimes in the right sort of pub you may be offered a rabbit or two at a knockdown price (don’t ask) — but more about that later.

Old money

It is the case that once upon-a-time, game was bought and sold for an awful lot of money. Astonishingly, 50 years ago, grouse on the Twelfth could make £12 to £14 per brace before settling to £7 to £9 for the rest of the season. For context, the average salary in 1970 was £32 a week. Over the course of the season, £12 per bird dropped to about £8 depending very much on the numbers being shot.

That meant that poaching was well worth the risk and it’s hard to believe but grouse were netted commercially until the 1950s when the law was changed. In those days, game was for the rich, the pot hunter, or the poacher if he could afford to eat it.