From shooting teal to shooting stars

TEAL are such pretty little ducks — hardly as big as a wood pigeon — it’s sad to think of them stuffed inside a widgeon which is stuffed inside a mallard which is stuffed inside a goose, and the lot then put in the oven and roasted.

That was a Victorian sportsman’s recipe. There was game in plenty then — indeed I’m sure it was possible for a shooting party to ‘bag’ all the ingredients in a day’s shoot in Ireland or Britain as recently as the 1950s.

In India, at Bharatpur in Rajasthan, I recall seeing a series of white marble plaques recording the great ‘bags’ of the era. Lord Linlithgow, then Viceroy of India, downed 4,273 birds in a day on November 12, 1938, and holds the dubious distinction of the world record for shooting duck.