It is one of life’s little mysteries that, outside the circle of those involved in game shooting, so few pheasants are bought and eaten, in a country where between 15 and 20 million birds are reared each year. I have sometimes wondered whether the association of pheasants with wartime food — during the winter of 1940 the shooting season was extended into February to provide an additional stock of meat — may provide part of the answer. This may once have been so, but surely not now. The more likely explanation has to do with a fear of the unfamiliar, and of breaking a tooth on a random pellet which may still be in the body of the pheasant — or possibly a distaste for birds that have been gunned down in a revolting blood sport (rather than strangled to death or electrocuted, as happens with chickens).
Most supermarkets, perhaps fearing expensive legal actions from customers with broken teeth, are reluctant to sell pheasants. So what is happening to the millions of birds shot every year? Some, of course, are eaten through the season and stored in the freezer; others are exported to France, Belgium and Germany, where there is a ready market. But the price obtainable for a brace in the feather is so ludicrously low that there have been dark rumours of large numbers of pheasants being buried at the end of a shooting day.
The Game Conservancy and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation have been doing their best to promote game as low-fat, high-protein, healthy meat. How could anyone resist the offer from our local farm shop this month of three brace of pheasants, plucked and dressed, for £10 — little more than £1.50
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