The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year?

Sport around the festive period means different things to different people and here Robin Scott reflects on those special late December days in the field.

How many shopping days left before Christmas? Search me. I bought all the presents for friends and family back in July at a couple of country fairs. Job sorted. The same goes for the rolled brisket, ham, pork pie and giant rib of beef to see us through Christmas Eve to New Year. The order was placed yesterday. Nobody will go hungry. Or for that matter, go cold.

Much of my spare time last month was spent splitting logs. In fact I’m feeling pretty pleased and smug about things in the wood department – there’s a pile of ash and oak in one of the sheds Sherpa Tenzing would struggle to climb. It will last until April.

I just wish my Dad, my shooting and fishing mentor since I was five, was still here to enjoy the festivities. He loved all that’s Christmas. And for us kids the excitement kicked in four days or so before the event – plucking two or three brace of mallard and twice as many teal shot with his pal Bill on a flight pond outside the village. We ran a production line of sorts in that freezing cold garage of ours. They hate being reminded of it now, but my two big sisters were tasked with sorting the legs, back feathers and parsons’ noses while I set about the chest and underwings. It was down to me to carefully place precious bronze mallard and barred teal feathers into plastic bags ready for fly tying in February as well. Dad took care of the rest, including the job of singeing away stubborn duck down with a lighted piece of newspaper. Never done it? Then you’re missing out on one of the sweetest smells in shooting – second only to the heavenly scent of varnished paper-cased cartridges after being fired on a dank November day. Maybe a perfume maker will eventually bottle the essence and sell it through gunshops. It would fly off the shelves at Christmas: a whiff of either carries you back down memory lane to a host of happy memories.