A story of fur, feather and fin

The renowned sportsman Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey once wrote: “A wild day’s sport and a mixed bag afford far more satisfaction than many a modern game preserver will admit. The change, the uncertainty, has somewhat to do with it.” His words are as true then as they are now, where a mixed bag away from the modern driven shoot can bring great joy and satisfaction after a long and often hard day in the field.

I was getting rather weary of the pessimism of the past 18 months and, like the protagonist in Buchan’s great work John Macnab, I too was suffering from a spell of ennui. Not a man for binge-watching TV boxsets, I felt a Macnab would be the best cure for the lack of sport over the past year and a great way to begin the season.

By trying