With so many friends who shoot and fish, I never need to buy much game. These kind souls are endlessly generous with pheasant and partridge, mackerel and, sometimes, brown trout. But venison? Not so much.
For this, the best of meats, I must rely on the butcher’s or the occasional roadkill, though the latter does invite domestic comment of one sort or another. Once, late at night, I had to despatch a large and severely injured roebuck with crowbar and knife.
My daughters have never had me down as much of an alpha male, but when I returned that night, dripping with the blood of a wild animal, one of them threw her arms around me, crying excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy, that is the most manly thing you’ve ever done!”
All…
