Shooting your supper

For the first time, KILIAN DOYLEkills something for his dinner. As a lapsed vegetarian, does he feel guilty?

A SPRINGER spaniel plonks the flaccid pheasant at my feet. With a tail wagging so hard it’s in danger of coming off, it’s probably the happiest dog I’ve ever seen. The bird, on the other hand, looks less impressed.

As I pick it up, blood trickles down my fingers onto my palm. I’m transfixed, startled at the sanguine nature of it all. I look away to stare into the black, flickering eyes. It’s an important moment for me. And, I dare say, for the pheasant.

As it gasps its last breath and goes limp, I realise that I’ve crossed a personal threshold. I am now a hunter.

It’s the first time I’ve shot and killed something for my dinner. Did I, a lapsed vegetarian, feel guilt or shame? A smidgen. But I console myself with the knowledge that it had been bred with this very outcome in mind and had enjoyed a pampered life. Better to have lived well and lost than never lived at all. Anyway, it was his own fault for being so delicious.

My epiphany came on the edge of a copse on the massive Dromoland Castle demesne in Co Clare. It’s the ancestral home of the O’Briens, the direct descendents of Brian Boru, who was no stranger to killing himself. I’m sampling one of the hotel’s tailored two-day packages for game shoot enthusiasts. These are highly bespoke, priced to individual guest’s specifications, and the last word in country luxury. The hotel itself exudes five-star class, the rooms are opulent beyond expectations and the experience to be had at its falconry school is truly magical.

Best of all, you can fish and shoot within the grounds and eat what you catch. As I find fishing about as exciting as chipboard, I opt to go shooting instead. Before unleashing me on the unfortunate fauna with a 12-bore Browning shotgun, the genial Don Walshe of Dromoland Game Sports guides me, a complete novice, through the basics of shooting.

The rules are few but firm: never point a loaded gun at anyone you don’t want dead; only aim at a target if it’s framed in the blue of the sky; avoid ground shots and keep the safety on until your target is in sight. Obeying them will ensure you don’t blast your fellow hunters or random golfers who might wander off the championship course into range.

Events vary from the large driven shoots at the start of the season to relaxed strolls in the woods at the tailend such as I’m enjoying. Walshe, being an enthusiast himself, goes to great lengths to ensure hunters get the best challenge, importing super-athletic Blueback pheasants from the US.

The driven shoots are rather grand affairs, where 10 guns pay upwards of €2,000 for a day’s shooting with a full team of beaters and dogs to flush the birds out the woods. The estate is stocked with tens of thousands of different birds, so the daily haul can be in the hundreds.

The less-formal late season hunts are a different prospect. Not only are the birds less plentiful, but those that have survived have only done so by being wily critters, well versed in evasive tactics such as tearing along close to the ground or skittling through the canopy. Hitting a late season cock pheasant fleeing at full belt takes great skill. Which is why nobody was more surprised than me when I hit one.

Despite the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I have to confess to being a tad conflicted when I did. Like many people in the modern world, I love eating meat but have become dissociated from its source. It’s difficult to reconcile the plucked, trussed and vacuum packed chickens on supermarket shelves with the real thing. But I reckon if you want to eat flesh, you should have the moral courage to be prepared to kill for it.

It may sound paradoxical, but killing an animal yourself teaches you respect for it. The problem is, you can’t really go stalking round the hills of Wicklow throttling lambs or running amok on a Limerick beef farm with a chainsaw.

These birds are most definitely destined for the dinner table and the hunters aren’t just a bunch of chinless, sanguinary toffs, killing inedible prey for “fun”. Not one is wasted. They’re gathered up and sent to Dromoland Game, one of only two wild game processing plants in Ireland, which supplies restaurants and hotels, including the Earl of Thomond in the castle.

Which is where we retire for dinner. Under the steely gaze of the generations of O’Briens whose paintings adorn the walls, we are treated to executive chef David McCann’s “Eat on the Wild Side” tasting menu.

Unfortunately, as game needs to be hung before it can be eaten, I didn’t get to eat the actual bird I shot. But I’m consoled with oysters from Clarenbridge, sea bass from Liscannor and partridge, pheasant, pigeon, duck and venison from the estate itself. Everything is exquisite and proof – if proof were needed – that food is at its best when the ingredients are of the finest quality, sourced locally and treated with respect.

At first, I balked when my shooting partners encouraged me to follow tradition and suck the brains out of a grilled woodcock’s skull. But then I remember I am now, officially, a killer. May as well be hung for sheep as a lamb.

* The Eat on the Wild Side package costs €2,500 per person to include a half-day shoot with Don Walshe and his team, overnight accommodation in a deluxe room and a full Irish breakfast. Also included is a game shoot lunch and one dinner in the Earl of Thomond Restaurant. The price is based on per person (or per gun), the falconry would be an additional extra. On average the cost of a falconry lesson with master falconer Dave Atkinson is €60pp. To book or enquire, contact Dromoland on 061-368144.