It is all extremely civilized. There are moments when I feel ashamed of how civilized I appear in my houndstooth coat and rubber Wellies, as birds drop from the air in an accelerating arch across the sky. But what I do like is that I touch the birds. I collect each one and carry it by its feet to the game cart. I inspect it, feel its weight in my hands, and internalize the moment. I can almost taste curried pigeon and smell roasted pheasant smothered in apples and cream. I conjure in my imagination sherry sauce to drizzle on roasted woodcock, something I have never tasted but always dreamed of. I anticipate the moment when Annabelle and I will stand in the cold basement and pluck pigeon to take back to London for Thanksgiving dinner, and how I will have to hang my pheasants from a London fire escape for four days to age it well enough to eat. I don’t think I ever aged a bird from my Manhattan fire escape. Nor did I pluck and gut one an hour before I served it, while my dinner guests looked on in horror. This is all new and strangely invigorating.
There are six drives altogether, some in the morning and some in the afternoon, with a break for elevenses—a snack break an hour before noon. Our elevenses takes place in the conservatory, after we have hung the birds in the larder in pairs of two. Tom, Fergus, and I tie a loop around each bird’s neck and pull it snugly, then place one bird on either side of a wooden rafter so that they balance each other out. “You hang them by their head, not their feet; it’s the natural flow of food,” Tom says, contrary to French and American instructions I have seen for this.
The guns and the beaters file into the conservatory, and food follows them on silver platters—crisp cups filled with prawns and mayonnaise, mugs of steaming mushroom soup, sausage rolls, and Fergus’s Scotch eggs fried and cut in half, yolks oozing. There are Fergus’s famous Slogasms, sloe gin mixed with champagne, and more cherry brandy, too, which he uses to spike the mushroom soup.
Beyond the fogged windows of the conservatory, the dogs and their handlers run the span of green grass, while inside, silver cups pass from hand to hand, full of bubbles and pink liquid. I wonder how good people’s shots will be after this, then let the thought drift past, joining once again in the revelry and accepting another Slogasm.
The beaters and the guns are standing under the orange vines that lace the ceiling of the greenhouse. They pat one another on the back, laugh at the thorns and the mud on their tweeds, and exclaim, “Good show!” and “Well done!” And then at last, their bellies full, people set out on the next drive, and I follow, a hundred-year-old double-trigger side-by-side balanced on my shoulder.
No two drives are exactly the same on these hunts—different locations, weather, wind, direction of light, and the birds make every time new. And each community makes it different. The hunt in itself becomes a kind of cultural litmus test as it varies from region to region. This Ellington hunt plays on the “us and them” quality of the English shoot. But in the same way I played house as a child, there is an air of make-believe, as if I were stepping into a game of Clue or a Brontë novel. There is even the requisite bit of drama from time to time, such as when a muntjac, a beast that is best described as a kind of small deer with horns, spears the side of a terrier, and in the distance we hear commotion among the beaters, and the whole hunt stops as a dog is hauled off to the vet for stitches. There is still also that subtle hierarchy—this is the great estate and Fergus is the beloved patriarch of this domain. Despite all of this, though, there is an underlying sense of equality and respect between the villagers and him—they can be overheard saying that they like how inclusive he is with them, and he can be overheard saying, “If I were immersed in people just like me, I’d be pretty unbearable.” And so this ancient game of “the guns and the beaters,” continues until we reach the last field, strategically chosen because it is adjacent to the pub.
According to the villagers, there is a place on the Devon coast, a wonderful dreamy sort of place, where the birds can be seen flying off cliffs 120 feet high, and all you can do is stand in the moorlands and watch them in awe and forget to shoot. As I stand in the meadow now, I see a bird that I have never seen before, but I know what it is simply by how I feel when I see it.
“Wow, look at that!” I say, watching it fly by.
“It’s a dodgy woodcock,” Fergus says, observing through a puff of smoke from his green Gator.
The woodcock is small, with a needle for a beak and a thirty-mile-per-hour speed. I have heard stories about its delectable dark meat and have wanted to taste it, but all I can do is watch the moment fly by, quick as a flash, as I stand mesmerized by its acrobatic flight.
By the end, I have bagged several ducks and several pheasant, and there are pigeon and partridge in the larder as well, from other people’s shots. But the truth is, no one really knows which birds are precisely whose, and that is decidedly not the point of this hunt. It may be the most social hunt I have ever experienced.
The whole village walks back to the estate for three o’clock lunch that soon drifts into six o’clock. The beaters and the guns eat in separate rooms, another mark in the game of “us and them.” But after several courses have been served and consumed, the beaters enter the dining room where the guns sit, and line up around the table. They praise the guns for their great skill and their success and their general standing as superior citizens of the world. And after everyone has nodded and clapped, they file back to their room and we all continue to eat course after course of lamb and potatoes. Everywhere there is cut crystal and silver cups; and the sound of wine splashing, soon followed by crimson port; candlelight that twinkles over shakers of cinnamon and salt; and the gurgling of laughter that fills the room and echoes in time from the room that holds the beaters. We eat cheese and biscuits and I begin to hear the cigar cutters snipping and the ring of the cigar lighter popping on, and the flavors of cigars and Camembert mix with the smell of clementine on my fingers.
When the guns have had enough wine and food to make them generous, they file into the beaters’ dining room and line up in front of the granite mantle all the way to the end of the table. Someone leads the way in, saying, “We saw your work and it was impressive. We saw your dogs and they were fierce. And you looked nice doing it.” The room erupts in laughter. Someone else lifts a glass to Fergus for hosting the shoot, and carafes of cut crystal are passed quickly to fill the glasses for the toast. “May I drink with you?” Fergus asks, as the glasses are raised and tapped together.
The rest of the evening is an everlasting medley of food and drink and chatter and smoke. “Put a breeze behind the white wine,” someone says. “Good luck to you,” Fergus says as people begin to leave. “Love to Sue. Cheerio, then.”
Fergus turns to a young man next to him. “Why don’t you propose to her, for fuck’s sake?” He takes a thoughtful puff on his pipe and then, “If you’re going to make the girl move out there, at least do the proper thing. I’ll give you a month and check up on you. Get off the pot, for chrissake. You can’t keep these girls on the line for year after year after year.”
Around the room, chunks of ash fall and flake on the marble ashtrays, and I begin to feel a bit dizzy. My throat begins to sting from the cigar, when all I can do is wash it down with port, and just when the revelers begin to seem generally pickled, Fergus announces it is time to go to the pub again.
A crowd of young people, still in their Wellies, step out onto the gravel driveway and begin to head to the pub. Drowsy and finished with the bone-chilling cold, I join Fergus in his antique navy blue Bentley. He snaps on the radio while we wait for Magdalen, and loud orchestra music begins to roar. Cymbals clash and trombones bellow and vibrate in the crevices of the old leather-smelling interior, and soon we are driving away from the stone pillars, through the colonnade of conifers, over the clicking of the cattle guard, stopping to pick up one of the villagers who was the “top gun” of the day. “Is His Lordship still sleeping?” Fergus says over his cell phone. “Give him a kick and tell him I’m outside your front door.” And just like the story of the Hare and the T
urtle, the young people walk by making clouds with their steaming breath, while we wait for the villager who stumbles out of bed, still in his clothes, and skips out the door, into the Bentley.
Inside the pub again, the silver mugs dangle from the bar hooks, glittering, and the room smells of fried fish again, and of roasting nuts. Pickled herring on toast is the special of the night, but the villagers are here for pints. They stand in the twilight of their drinking, some looking weary, some invigorated with each successive sip.
The gamekeeper’s wife, Emma, the expert wild game cook in the village, sits besides the fireplace and I listen to her talk of curried pheasant kebabs smothered in yogurt, and layers of pheasant breast and cream cheese wrapped in bacon, and pheasant stir-fry. Her paintings of springer spaniels peer down at us from above the mantle, as her husband, Tom, leans in to give me notes on the dogs—that springers die half-trained, and Labs are born half-trained. We talk about the birds and how we will age them, whether the tradition of this hunt will include aging the birds until their skin is green as used to be done. “They used to hang them until their heads popped off,” Tom says, smiling. But for him it isn’t necessary. “People don’t like food high these days,” he says; “just put it in the chiller for three to four days.”
The villagers stand in a cluster in the pub, the beaters with grass stains on their knees, the guns with mud caked to their heels. They hold their pints high to their chests, and through an amber liquid crowd, I see the face of Fergus, sitting on a stool at the end of the bar, the long tendrils of his eyebrows in disarray, a hint of amusement in his azure eyes. The villagers buzz around him, and they talk about the strangeness of American politics, and the Oxford University Beagles and Hounds—a university hunting club. Shooting clubs are common in British schools, in the same way debate club or sailing is—it is considered one of those essential life skills that make you a well-rounded person. They ask why we don’t have shooting clubs in American schools.
It all brings me back to a very similar conversation I had in a place so very far off from here, the place my new British friends call “ArKansas.” Guns are one of the great American debates, one of the most singularly divisive topics. Once in Arkansas, sitting on a tree stump around a campfire, the Commish told me that he taught his daughter how to use a shotgun when she was ten. He wanted to demystify it, to teach her responsibility, to help her understand it was a tool to be respected and understood. But in America, guns are not associated with class, but with those who are less evolved—more “backwoods.” Here in the “backwoods” of England, however, shotguns and rifles are a symbol of class and sophistication. They are desirable and viewed as useful, tools with a purpose. To know how to shoot them well is to demonstrate that you are, in fact, evolved. Somehow that notion was lost on the journey across the Atlantic. Hunting in the United States became associated with some sort of white, middle-aged mancation—guys going out into the woods together to drink gallons of beer, tell dirty jokes, and occasionally shoot at something. But in truth, just like Texas Hill Country, this kind of hunting at Ellington is once-in-a-lifetime hunting—it isn’t easily accessible for an everyday omnivore.
I think about all of this as I walk slowly along the wet path back to the estate, listening to the conversation turn to another meal to come. It seems impossible that one could consume any more food and drink on this day, but there is the important matter of supper, which includes a bowl of drunken berries. Fergus is already making plans for the full English “brekkie” the next morning. But as is expected with the fragile human body, people begin to fall in and out of sleep on the couch in the library, leaning their heads on each other’s shoulders, breathing softly and sometimes heavily. Fergus sits with a girl’s head on his shoulder, puffing his pipe, wearing a faint look of amusement.
“Sleep, sleep, sleep,” he says, “Sleep, sleep, sleep mode. And when you awake, if you’re so inclined, you can have a light pastor dinner.” And we do. With cheeks ruddy and bellies full, we all fall asleep.
Curried Pigeon
Serves 4
The day of the British estate shoot, my college friend Annabelle invited me to help her “curry the pigeons.” I had never done this before. She told me that curry was recently voted England’s national dish. We unhooked two pigeons from the larder, brought them down to the stone cellar, and plucked and breasted them. She had always just removed the breast meat, but I suggested we pluck the breasts and leave the skin on, to improve the moisture. The results were worth that bit of extra work.
2 teaspoons salt
4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons hot curry powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 pigeon breasts, skin on or off, bone in
1. In a small bowl, combine the salt, garlic, curry powder, cumin seeds, and olive oil and rub the mixture into the pigeon breasts.
2. Place in a container and cover. Marinate in the refrigerator overnight or up to 3 days.
3. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Remove the meat from the refrigerator.
4. Place the pigeon in a baking dish and roast for 10 minutes. Remove and serve each breast on a bed of watercress, or slice the meat thinly off the breastbone and serve it on toast points with chutney as an hors d’oeuvres.
Also try: brant, coot, duck, gallinule, goose, grouse, prairie chicken, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, ptarmigan, quail, rail, snipe
Browned Woodcock with Sherry Sauce
Serves 2 to 4 as an appetizer
Woodcock should be cooked simply so that you can revel in the meat, which is so hard to obtain. I like to simply brown them and use a simple sauce based on the pan juices, for a little extra flavor. American restaurants and food stores are not allowed to serve hunted game, but in England woodcock is sold at all kinds of farmers’ markets and butcher shops. Sometimes they will even tell you exactly which woods it was hunted in.
4 woodcock, bodies plucked and insides removed, heads and beaks still attached
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup sweet sherry
1/2 cup game bird stock (page 212)
Pinch of cayenne
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Season the woodcock inside and out with salt and pepper. Dust it on all sides with 1 tablespoon of the flour. Secure the beaks between the two legs by tucking each long beak under a toothpick, which is speared through the thighs (this is the most traditional presentation, because it features the impressive beak).
2. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and brown the woodcock on all sides, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast for 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Remove the woodcock from the pan and set it aside. Place the pan on the stove top. Deglaze the pan with sherry and bird stock; let simmer and reduce for 2 minutes. Whisk in the remaining tablespoon of flour, until there are no lumps and the flour begins to bubble, 1 minute. Season with a pinch of cayenne and a dash of lemon juice. Let simmer and reduce for 2 to 3 minutes.
4. Pour the sauce over the woodcock while it is hot and serve immediately.
Also try: brant, coot, duck, gallinule, goose, grouse, prairie chicken, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, ptarmigan, quail, rail, snipe
Duck with Cherry Sauce
Serves 2 to 4, depending on the type of duck
When cooking a whole duck, it is important to consider the variety. A shallow water duck (e.g., mallard, teal, pintail, gadwall, black duck, wood duck) is ideal, one that has been feeding in grain fields, versus one (e.g., canvasback, redhead, scaup, and ring-necked duck) that has been deep-diving for fish. Any duck that is being cooked whole will also benefit from a brine (page 219), so that the breast meat and leg meat cook a bit more evenly.
1 whole shallow water duck, skin on
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons butter
3 shallots, minced
1 cup frozen or fresh cherries, pitted
1/4 cup vermouth
1 cup duck stock (page 212)
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Season the duck with salt and pepper inside and out. Cut 1 tablespoon of butter into pieces, slip them under the skin, and massage them throughout the skin.
2. Truss the duck with kitchen twine. Brown it on all sides in 1 tablespoon of the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan. Remove the duck from the pan and set it aside.
3. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter to the pan. Sweat the shallots and add the cherries. Deglaze with the vermouth and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, then add the stock and thyme and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Place the duck in the bottom of the pan on top of the cherry sauce. Put the pan in the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 425°F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the internal temperature is about 135°F. Remove from the oven and cover in tinfoil for 10 minutes, to help the juices retract into the meat. Then untruss the bird, carve it into joints, and serve with the sauce from the pan.
Also try: brant, coot, duck, gallinule, goose, grouse, prairie chicken, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, ptarmigan, quail, rail, snipe
Pheasant with Roasted Apples
Serves 4
There is something about pheasant and apples. They are simply meant to be together. The meat itself is a bit sweet and blends together with the muted sweetness of the apples and cream. It is a classic combination.
2 whole pheasant, skin off or on
Salt and pepper
6 pieces bacon or pork fat, cut into 1/8-inch-thick strips
2 tablespoons butter
2 large apples, cored and sliced into 1/4-inch wedges
1 tablespoon Calvados
7 tablespoons heavy cream
Girl Hunter Page 12