Who wrote this? "As culture advances and as the soil proportionately becomes devoted to the plough or to the sustenance of the tamer or more domesticated animals, the range of the huntsman is proportionably limited: so that when a country has attained to a high state of cultivation, hunting becomes little else than an amusement of the opulent. In the case of furbearing animals, however, it is somewhat different: for these continue to supply the wants of civilisation with one of its most valuable materials."
The same writer tells us that William the Norman was so passionate a hunter with hounds that in order that the "umbrageous retreats of his forests might be made more extensive, whole villages were depopulated, places of worship levelled with the ground . . ." And the writer goes on to birds, "the taking of which is known as fowling." The Greeks and Romans liked "little roasted feathered game". A Monsieur Soyer is quoted as stating that some modern nations, the French among them, formerly ate the heron, crane, crow, stork, cormorant and bittern. One Belon has it that in spite of its revolting taste when unaccustomed to it, the bittern is, however among the delicious treats of the French. All this is from Mrs Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, first published in 1861.
As the game season is on us it is worth recalling her opinion that "game is less fat than poultry or butcher's meat, and is generally thought to be very nourishing. It is also easy of digestion and is valued in the sick room as well as on the table of the epicure." The Kentons, authors of Raw Energy also give a nod to game. In the shops, of Dublin anyway, you may now find mallard, teal, wigeon pheasant (of course), pigeon in the form of pigeon breast which seems to go on for a long time. No woodcock yet, say the poulterers, they tend to come at the end of November. None mentioned snipe but they will be there. Guinea fowl is thrown in when you ask. "Not that it's game, but it's a change."
When you take pheasant, how wild are these birds? Not much more than twenty years ago a letter could be written to a sporting magazine in England in which the writer states, in relation to a team of guns, probably six," I do think that 1,000 pheasants in a day is too many and 2,000 is revolting." At the other end of the scale is a notice in a shop "Free range geese". A favourite choice for Christmas dinner.