Hunting diaries

THERE are many of us who just live for the present — or at least that is how we explain it to ourselves. To record an event or enjoyable time in text just seems like an extravagance: a self-important waste of time that would be better spent in actually participating in another memorable experience.

There aren’t many of us, however, who on reflection in later years don’t wish they had kept those very records and had saved the wonderful memories in print.

Many schoolboys will have their first experience of hunting diaries as a huntsman of a college beagle pack where it will have been a prerequisite of the position to fill in the official diary. College packs change huntsmen every year, but the meets usually follow a similar timetable.

It makes fascinating reading to see the insight of different people into the day, many of whom now hold senior positions in hunting.

In December 1994 the Stowe Beagles met at the