Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i The Field

The Wildlife Trusts, in partnership with the Northumberland Wildlife Trust, has bought part of the Rothbury estate and has launched a £30m appeal to try to secure the remaining acres. The Northumberland Wildlife Trust aims to enhance its rich natural heritage for future generations, create a sustainable future for local farmers and avoid the land being broken up, which would make public access more difficult. “We’re very excited to be part of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure a stunning area of countryside where people and nature can thrive side by side,” said Mike Pratt, chief executive of Northumberland Wildlife Trust. “We’re looking forward to working with local people to create an exemplar of how nature, farming and community are integrated.” The land already purchased includes the Simonside Hills and a…

IF COWS could talk. They have certainly been the subject of much heated debate recently, be it the future of the fields they graze in or the misinformation around the environmental effects of the methane cows emit. I am sure Sally Mitchell, a partner at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (GTH), a professional, agricultural and farm agency in south-west England, talks to cows; most likely the family’s herd of Hereford cattle in Dorset’s Piddle Valley or the livestock she auctions at Sedgemoor Auction Centre in Somerset. Mitchell’s parents’ farm was once all about dairy cows but is now home to their Hereford herd, as well as a livestock haulage business. Her first job in agriculture, after a rural resource management degree from the University of Reading, was trading milk quotas but Mitchell…

ON THE morning of 14 May 1931 a yellow Gipsy Moth biplane took off from the little dirt airstrip at the foot of Mbolo Hill near Voi, on the edge of the Taru Desert in Kenya. The pilot circled the airstrip twice in a flamboyant gesture to the friends who had come to see him off. Then, to their horror, the engine cut out and the plane nosedived, crashing in a ball of flames and killing the big-game hunter and conservationist the Hon Denys Finch Hatton. Finch Hatton was born in 1887, the younger son of the 13th Earl of Winchilsea, and grew up at Haverholme Priory in Lincolnshire. After Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, he followed many of his contemporaries out to Kenya and investigated farming opportunities promoted by…

SPORTING adventures are thrilling, and whisking overseas just adds to the lustre. My sporting trips tend to result in enough material to perform a comedy skit, from boar hunting on the estate of a nascent Bond villain to getting hooked in a tree when hunting in Ireland only to find, four fields later, the bottom of my breeches had remained stuck as my mount had bounded forwards. Salvation came in the shape of an old hunting pal with sufficient safety pins attached to the bottom of his stock to make suitable repairs on the hoof: an excellent wingman. Browning’s recent invitation to pop across the Channel and test its new 825 shotgun [see Gun review, page 102] in the field proved to be three days of a significantly enhanced version…

“I SAID 11 o’clock, not 10 o’clock” came the anguished admonishment from my guide, Carlos. My cast had struggled ineffectually against the warm onshore breeze and landed behind our targeted fish. Carlos pushed tetchily on his pole as I drew the line impotently through the pristine water. The group of permit had disappeared now, passing shadows moving purposely from the clear water to the opaque, where the colour merged to sapphire, always fleeting, beyond range and out of reach. We hunted for them again along the sandy flats, the sun hot on my bare feet as I stood at the bow, the line pensively held in my left hand ready, the crab pattern dangling in the Caribbean breeze, an outstretched claw in mimicry as last defence – surely irresistible to…

Sporting artist • Under the hammer • Royal Armouries • Sporting dog • The boot room • Gun review • Country queries • Gardening • Farmshop • Cookery • Wine • Travel • Books • Field testers • The Last Hurrah THE golden age of equestrian art in the Georgian period was less concerned with the horse than it was society and status but today Romy Elliott would like it to be about the horse. She describes her studies of horses made on a visit to Uruguay: “The animal is the focal point, and I like my dogs and horses to be really grounded. Historically horses are painted in profile but I want the less celebrated, though no less important, moments of life around these animals. It is about the…

YOU CAN’T, so the saying goes, teach an old dog new tricks. That’s rubbish. Even mature dogs are remarkably quick to learn new things, even different behaviours, if given the chance. We have a gate leading from our back garden to a footpath. My six-year-old spaniel had always been allowed to walk straight out on to the path as soon as the gate was opened. However, when we decided that she should sit before walking through, she started to do just that within a matter of days of being taught. So now, with the shooting season at an end, it’s time to ask whether your dog has performed as well as you hoped or if there is room for improvement. Most peg dogs, for example, live up to their name…

THERE’S a simple solution to forgetting about the nausea-inducing fear of lurching towards a Leicestershire hedge with a gaping ditch behind: catching the steely eye of the old guard whose singular raison d’être is upholding the hunt’s etiquette. The terrifying wrath of straying into hunting-deadly-sin territory (‘Don’t ride a kicker!’ ‘Don’t leave a gate open if you’re the last one through it!’ ‘Don’t ride over seeds!’ and so on) will make the black runs of hunting feel like a gentle blue in comparison to getting the etiquette wrong. And so it’s always been: hunting held high as a bastion of civility. ‘There are people who affirm that manners in the hunting field have not improved of late years, and the younger generation are supposed to be the worst offenders,’ The…

IT WASN’T until the later years of the last Labour government that the Hunting Act finally passed. In the end nothing could stand in the way of hundreds of Labour MPs who had scented blood and were set on a ban. Not the independent Burns Inquiry. Not the huge demonstrations in London. Not the House of Lords, overruled in a disgraceful exercise of the Parliament Act. Not even the Prime Minister, whose government had supported a middle way of licensing hunts, only for it to be voted down by his own MPs. In his memoir, Tony Blair said that the hunting ban was ‘one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret’. The passing of this execrable legislation was indeed the triumph of raw prejudice over reason and a reminder…

More than £280,000 has been raised by a plucky group of cyclists who pedalled from Blair Castle to The Savoy in London via a number of eventing venues and estates, including Chatsworth, Blenheim and Burghley, battling snow and gales. The ride was organised by Tom and Piggy March to raise money for Spinal Research and the British Eventing Support Trust in memory of Tom’s sister, Caroline, who died in March 2024 having been being paralysed in an eventing accident in 2022. The pair were joined by seven other cyclists and a host of guest riders on the route, many from the eventing world. British Eventing Support Trust chair Ian Stark, who didn’t let breaking his thumb on the penultimate day stop his cycling, said: “I’ve hated it, I’ve loved it;…

Phil Ellis [right], a gillie from the Scottish Borders, has been given the accolade of Tweed Forum River Champion. While his primary role is guiding anglers on the 1.3-mile, double-bank Tweedswood beat, Ellis has engaged in tree planting and invasive species control work in his own time to help improve the river environment, providing habitat that supports biodiversity and aids the Atlantic salmon population. “Phil exemplifies the spirit of this award,” said Tweed Forum chief executive Luke Comins. “His passion for conservation is inspiring, and the work he does on the ground is making a real difference.” An element of Ellis’s approach to riverbank management is to only strim access paths rather than mowing the grass. This has allowed insects, voles, shrews and barn owls to thrive. Crucially, insects provide…

AS THE CalMac ferry pulls away from Ullapool on its route to the Hebrides, there’s something misleadingly delicate-looking about the Isle of Harris, lying hazily purple on the horizon. On the ground, things are a little starker: hair-whipping winds, knee-deep heather and sinking bogs ready to catch you out. And it’s here that American Augusta ‘Gusty’ Clarke managed to bag her Macnab last August, in the shadow of Amhuinnsuidhe Castle on its 50,000 acres of craggy wilderness. “The Macnab is a challenging and incredibly gratifying experience,” she reflects, buoyed by the grit of the estate’s head gillie Adam Hunt (plus lavish supplies of Irn-Bru) to see her through the long day. “I’ve been fly-fishing for most of my life and I started hunting in Montana in my early twenties but…

HUNTING traditions and customs vary the world over but none are more admired than those of Germany and Eastern Europe. Germany has a rich hunting history that can be traced back to the eighth century, and its sporting heritage is resplendent with ceremony and ritual, honouring the hunter and, more importantly, the quarry. It is hard to pinpoint who began the Jagdliches Brauchtum (hunting customs) but they play a crucial role in hunting’s history and, arguably, its future. Germany has many Jagdschlösser (hunting lodges) peppered throughout the country. These lavish and usually very large buildings – some still standing date back as far as the 15th century – were constructed by the aristocracy and used as hunting residences but also for the celebrations that followed. Such grand structures and their…

CHOBE NATIONAL Park is famous for its huge numbers of elephants and a rich variety of other species but there is only one place where you can stay in the heart of this wilderness: Chobe Game Lodge. Located in the north-east of Botswana, for many of its guests it is the gateway from which they explore this extraordinary country. Visiting in 2024, when the country experienced its driest year in more than four decades, the approach is slow-going where roads have turned to deep sand and the incongruous sound of munched crisps turns out to be baboons and impala eating the dried leaves. In stark contrast, the heady fragrance of tree pollen, soft humidity of watered lawns and vivid green of an oasis of towering mahogany trees and palms envelops…

OLDER READERS of The Field may remember Kenneth Williams’ rustic character, Arthur Fallowfield, in the comedy radio programme Beyond Our Ken, whose stock phrase was ‘The answer lies in the soil’. No doubt this apparent idiocy was greeted with merriment but we now know that it is no less than the truth. The answer to human and planet flourishing really does lie in the soil. For example, fungi and bacteria do the work of enabling nutrients and water to be taken into plants through their roots, in exchange for sugars made by those plants through photosynthesis. Can anything be more important than that, when you think of the crops on which the world’s population depends? Moreover, plants capture atmospheric carbon from the air and sequester it, via their roots, in…

NO SPORTING rivalries are more profound than that between these islands and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Well, apart from England versus Germany in football, naturally. The competitive edge runs deep. And for those armchair sportsmen and women who revel in such things, there is plenty of Antipodean/Saffa action to enjoy over the coming months. Glass of icecold vino in hand, of course. Having just departed New Zealand after their three-match Test Series, England’s cricketers need to hit the straps when they welcome South Africa for the Metro Bank One Day International Series and the Vitality IT20 Series. I know which team my money is on. Then there’s the Women’s Rugby World Cup, where sporting enmities are just as ingrained, and (hold on to your hats!) the British &…

Crossword Across 6 Norfolk Royal residence (11) 8 Sight strip on gun barrel’s top (3) 10 Horses with a dished face, high tail carriage – stamina for the desert (5) 11 Coots are protected on this Irish Sea location (4,2,3) 12 Pit in which badgers deposit their droppings (7) 14 Source of protein for pheasant chicks: scent is awful! (7) 16 It activates a firing mechanism (7) 18 For example, eider, merganser (3,4) 21 Another word for the crosshairs on a scope (7) 23 Gun store formed by ministers? (7) 24 Light flesh of e.g. pheasant (5,4) 26 Defined stretch of river (5) 28 Golden colour of a horse’s coat (3) 29 Collective term for a flock of starlings (11) Down 1 Knobbly salad potato: nay, a variety (4) 2 Preparing fly for fishing (8) 3 Bitter-leaved salad plant – oddly veined (6) 4 Sheepdogs –…

Hunt officials’ accounts hacked by security expert Bath magistrates’ court has sentenced an animal rights sympathiser, who had previously worked with the police and National Crime Agency, to a suspended prison term for hacking offences. Abi Waddell, a cybersecurity expert from Bristol, used her IT skills to gain access to the email, social media and cloud storage accounts of hunt officials and supporters from across the country in an attempt to tarnish the reputation of hunting. Prosecutor Jane Cooper told the court that thousands of individuals were affected by the crime. Some of the victims include officials connected with the Westerby Basset Hounds, Taunton Vale Harriers, South Dorset Hunt and Llanwnnen Farmers Hunt. Polly Portwin, director of the Campaign for Hunting at the Countryside Alliance, welcomed the sentencing. “Email and…

By Alex Keeble, game and wildlife adviser for the GWCT As temperatures drop and food becomes scarce, looking after our farmland birds becomes increasingly important. Best-practice game management has many positive impacts on declining bird species. As an example, a combined suite of measures at the GWCT’s Allerton Project demonstration farm in Leicestershire increased the abundance and breeding density of species such as blackbird, song thrush and whitethroat. Game shoots also include diverse cover crops focusing on plants such as kale, quinoa and cereal mixtures, which offer the greatest value to farmland birds. Supplementary feeding for gamebirds in late winter/early spring has been well proven to benefit nesting songbirds and wild game. Our research has shown that if a hen pheasant with access to grain loses her first nest, she…

THE CHYKNELL estate is set in the rural county of Shrop-shire and extends to 201 acres of arable land, pasture and woodland. There are sporting rights across an additional 427 acres and another 684 acres currently let, providing a shoot across a total of 1,312 acres. Centrally located on the estate is the main house, which has 11 bedrooms. It is Grade II listed with formal gardens and grounds, including two ornamental lakes. The hall has been extensively renovated, combining original features with modern upgrades. There are a further five houses and cottages on the estate, plus an outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court as well as a range of traditional buildings. Chyknell Hall, accessed along a private driveway with parkland trees, is six miles from the market town…

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BETWEEN the honey-stoned town of Stamford in Lincolnshire and the more modern purlieus of Peter-borough are two significant estates. The one, Burghley House, has the world-famous horse trials and the other, Milton Park, has been home to the Fitzwilliam foxhounds, known as the Fitzwilliam (Milton), and the descendent family the Naylor-Leylands since before their records began in 1760. In between is the small thatched cottage at Helpston once home to the 19th-century farmlabourer poet John Clare, a tenant of the Fitzwilliam’s, known in Jonathan Bate’s superb biography as ‘the poet’s poet’. It was to Milton that the colourful and cheerful RS Surtees Society members, both mounted and on foot, were invited for a February weekend hosted by owners and Fitzwilliam Joint Masters Sir Philip and Lady Isabella Naylor-Leyland. The modern…

YOU EITHER pull yourself together or leave now!” It was seven o’clock on a January morning in the 1990s and heavy grey clouds loomed low through the windows of the Canary Wharf trading floor. Tears pricked my eyes as I glanced out to the forest of high-rise buildings and back to my boss. In that moment I opted for adventure and in 1999, armed with a grant from the Royal Geographical Society, three girlfriends and I set out to become the first people since Marco Polo to ride 5,000 miles of the Silk Road on horse and camel, from Merv in Turkmenistan to Xian in China. Of all the countries I rode through in the most colourful of decades that followed our nine-month trip, it was Kyrgyzstan that enraptured me.…

THE COLLECTION of the Royal Armouries houses many magnificent and decorative pieces, some of which are associated with well-known historical figures. Such is the case with these splendid pistols acquired by the Tower Armouries in November 1956. They are of the highest quality and were clearly intended for show rather than for everyday use, and were made by the London gunmaker Henry Hadley in about 1755, probably for Charles Spencer (1706-1758), 3rd Duke of Marlborough, but if not him then certainly George Spencer (1739-1817), the 4th Duke. Hadley, whose birth date is unknown, first appears in the records in 1735 when he was summoned before the Court of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers accused of carrying on the trade of gunmaking without serving the appropriate apprenticeship. Although found guilty, he…

I RECENTLY put several new Browning 825s through their paces at Sandricourt, a grand sporting estate near Paris. The 825 retains the same basic mechanism as the 725 but with aesthetic change and some functional and mechanical improvement. The bolting, hammer ejectors and back-bored, monobloc and steel-proofed DS (Double Seal) choked barrels remain. However, the action fences have been remodelled, the top-lever slimmed, and the safety and fore-end latch made a little more ergonomic. The fore-end iron is less angular where wood meets metal, and the mechanical single trigger has been improved (with a higher pivot internally) to function even with very light loads. There are new engraving styles too. As with the 725, the action of the 825 is about 1/8in shallower than a 525 or B25. This enhances…

LINCOLNSHIRE produces an eighth of the UK’s food, and at Doddington Hall’s farm shop this abundance is celebrated with the very best the county has to offer. There’s everything from gingerbread and gin to a smorgasbord of cheeses. But even closer to home – just a stone’s throw from the magnificent hall – the 21/2-acre kitchen garden minimises further those food miles. The kitchen garden has been a key feature at Doddington since the hall was completed in 1600. Today 96 varieties of 45 plant types are grown and it yields barrowfuls (equating to 41/2 tonnes a year) of fresh vegetables, salads, herbs and fruit for the farm shop, cafes and restaurant. “Growing up at Doddington, I learnt to cook using what was in the kitchen garden as the seasons…

THERE’S a tendency to hail a set-up that’s a ‘home from home’ as the height of comfort. But what a farce that is. All any sane sportsman who has spent a windswept day in the field is dreaming about is laying their head on a pillow in some sort of sanctuary that’s blissfully devoid of the trappings of home. No clutter; no surprise moulting dogs orwhining children hiding in your bed; no groaning piles of paperwork. Step forward The Great Bustard: a newly revamped pub on the Great Durnford estate in the bucolic Woodford Valley north of Salisbury, where the curtains in the 10 pared-back bedrooms (each named after indigenous British birds and two of which are dog friendly) are made from the sort of enviably spotless cream linen that…