Country Diary: a car-boot haul of 1970s sporting books, a Saturday stick and the white pheasant

I went to a car-boot sale last weekend. Partly because I dream of finding a diamond among the crud, partly to get the Christmas shopping started in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, but mainly because you can often pick up some interesting stuff for not a lot of money.

I came away with a handful of books on sporting themes, for example, which cost me a couple of pounds. They were mostly published in the 1970s, which is half a century – and two generations – ago, which to anyone under 30 might as well be the Middle Ages. But there’s still interest to be had here.

Newfangled syndicates and 10am starts

Writing about shooting parties in the 1950s, one author laments the creation of newfangled syndicates and the arrival of “shooters who know much of business but little of the ways of the countryside”. What he would make of Guns buying a day’s shooting by the peg, goodness knows.

I was mystified by repeated references to shooting days starting at 10am until I worked out that the late start was to allow the beaters to assemble. Why so late? They mostly arrived on foot or by bicycle. Cars were still rare among workers whose jobs on local farms were seldom further than a couple of fields away. But if you were beating on a neighbouring estate and left at 8am to cover some miles along the lanes as the sun rose, you’d need a couple of hours. Especially if it was frosty or misty.

The Guns might arrive in cars, although fuel was rationed until 1950 – and again in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. Some of us still remember that ration books for fuel were issued in 1973, although they were never formally used. I may not be the only one who considers diesel at around £2 a litre – compared to between 10p and 15p in 1973 – to be a form of rationing, even if it doesn’t come with a booklet and a rubber stamp. So far. Are these the same 1970s to which the PM is keen for us to return?

A staghorn-topped stick from a friend’s shed

Elsewhere, I got pinged a WhatsApp from a friend who retires, from time to time, to his shed to dress sticks. Attached was a picture of a fine staghorn-topped staff with a pronounced scar up its length where a honeysuckle has wound up it. Do I fancy it? Do I ever! You can never have too many sticks. This one is too handsome to be a working stick, though. Its role will be for market days or game fairs. It’s a Saturday stick. Like a Saturday hat.

I visited him a few days later and a deal was done. We agreed the price while I was leaning on the stick and then we mardled some more while he trimmed an inch or so off the bottom to make it a perfect fit and added a ferrule. We discussed the difficulty of acquiring horn of all types now that 6in of antler or cowhorn can be sold in pet shops as a dog chew for £13.

The white pheasant

Also, I’ve seen the white pheasant! He burst out of the wild bird cover at the top of the wood ahead of a Chinese water deer the dog and I disturbed as we came round the corner. He was well feathered up and looking fit. Pheasants don’t feature much round here until Guy Fawkes Night, so he’s set fair for the time being while we focus on the partridges.

Giles Catchpole is a freelance journalist as well as a keen Shot and angler, and he has written several humorous sporting books