B'eating on the job

Beating is a very healthy way to spend a few hours in the open and work up an appetite. Adam Smith reveals some of nature’s bounty suitable for snacking while tapping

- Adam Smith

Living off the land is a very green sort of thing to do, so any association with shooting may not appeal to those vegans among us. However, the reality is that beaters have all sorts of chances to top up from nature as they tap. Far more like snacking than foraging – a berry here and a nut there, rather than filling a hand-crafted trug with chanterelles – it’s still the ultimate additive-free fodder to add another dimension to your ‘ealthy hout-door ‘obby.

Obviously, this does not grant the right to drift out of line to browse the available nibbles, risking the keeper’s wrath, but if time and alignment should allow, there’s no harm in grabbing chances as they come.

So, let’s start back at the beginning with September partridges – with apologies to the grousers, but heather moorland does not provide much of nature’s bounty. Well, there are bilberries, whortleberries, blaeberries, whinberries and winberries, but they are all names for the same berry. Sorry. I must also apologise for the sad fact that by now much of what follows will have long been munched by passing wildlife. But at least next season you’ll be ready…

In a good year, hedgerow shrubs, bushes and copse edges will bend under the weight of hazelnuts and blackberries. Where the nuts are concerned, they will be milky, with easily cracked shells and a sour thin skin covering the kernel. Rub this off with a thumb and the cleaned nut will taste like no other hazelnut – and no way like the husky dry things others may by now have munched to help celebrate Christmas.

Time plays a part in this enjoyment though: wait for the shells to harden and go brown all over and the squirrels and mice will beat you to it every time. Pick when you can as you pass by – as long as the shell has started to turn from green to brown, the nut will have formed and it will be easy to crack.