1981: it was chilly that early November morning, but dry. A fine mist was gradually disappearing but enough remained as the rising sun broke though to suggest this was going to be a reasonable day for photography.

I was on an estate at Normanby, near the town of Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire. There was to be a pheasant shoot and I met the head gamekeeper, a cheerful chap, who gave me the lowdown on how he expected the day to pan out. Before the arrival of the shooting party there was much organisation to be done, he had colleagues to brief and hired local help to instruct.

The estate was extensive; a mix of forest and scrub, parkland populated by deer and arable farmland (on a visit to the area in the summer of 2018 I noticed it now hosts a wind farm, too); the job of the gamekeeper was to ensure a healthy environment for the wildlife population and, in the case of game birds, limit predation in order to maintain a harvest-able surplus for days like this one.

I don’t intend to get into the current ‘cruel sport’ debate as this is my looking back to a slice of country life; pheasants shot provided dinner for the party, provided a domestic supply and any surplus went to the local game market (see my earlier blog for a taste of that).

It all went very well; the local help ‘beat’ the scrub, the dogs behaved and the guests were happy. I got the impression that the gamekeeper and his team were having a thoroughly good time – it was a grand day out.

For the tech-minded, the camera used was an Olympus OM1 c/w Zuiko lenses. Film stock was Kodak Tri-x Pan