As I grew up, I developed into an organoleptic junkie, a sensory addict, particularly when it came to mouth-feel. I constantly craved new textures and flavours. When I tasted wild meat for the first time at age fifteen – venison, cooked rare – I found it heavenly. My mother called me, affectionately, “Carnivore.”
I came also to believe strongly that we shouldn’t hide the knowledge that the meat we eat was once alive. When I moved to Toronto in the early seventies, I became a food activist without knowing it. I loved Toronto’s open-air Kensington Market, where you could choose the live chicken you wanted for your evening meal, and see for yourself it was healthy and good. In the mid-eighties, I was incensed by a proposed by-law that would abolish the killing of live fowl. The politicians framed it as a public-health issue. But I, like many, felt they were simply offended by the handling and killing of live food in public, a way of life for the generations of immigrants who had occupied the market. The prudishness of the politicians reminded me of people who could only make love with their eyes shut.
The stag hunt was scheduled for a week in September. I flew to London, then drove north through England and Scotland to Inverness with a friend from Canada who has lived in Suffolk for the past thirty years. From Inverness, it was a further three-hour motor trip to Loch Choire. When we reached the remote northern highlands, we turned off the single-lane road onto what was barely a track, leading to the lodge. There was no sign of human life, just lots of sheep dotting the landscape, and then, finally, not even sheep. What I didn’t know as we approached the lodge was that we were virtually surrounded by deer – fifteen hundred of them.
I quickly assessed our accommodations, which were plain and homely but devoted to comfort. The lodge was gloomy late-eighteenth-century all the way: three storeys, a low-ceilinged kitchen, and a pantry out of Dickens. The furnishings were formal, and rather ugly; there was a generous wall of books, a massive fireplace, and an amply supplied bar. I had hoped for something a little more majestic, reality, as usual, straining to keep pace with my fantasy life.
We were sixteen in all: my group of friends from England plus three others. Among us were a doctor from Norfolk, two couples from Florida, a man who sought out unknown culinary delicacies, and a titled lady. Our hosts for the week were the informal Master of the Revels, John Hildreth, and his wife, Lucy. I felt sure I was the only Jew ever to have stayed there. I assumed my natural state: the outsider.
The lodge’s large parlour, with its tall paned windows facing out to the lochs and the hills beyond, seated us all comfortably, and it was here that the guests gathered nightly for drinks before dinner, and again later for conversation or a game, both usually involving more drinks. I had expected to be enthralled by the talk about the deerstalking, but I found it tedious – it was technical, and I had no frame of reference for bits of hunting trivia such as the ideal gauge for a clean kill or the recoil of a new rifle. I was especially disappointed to learn that, despite the steep fees paid to the lodge by the friends who had invited me, we would not be consuming any venison. While the successful hunter may take home the rack of antlers, all the game is shipped to Germany, where it fetches a very high price. Apparently, the revenue contributes to the upkeep of the lodge, but you’d think they could throw in a piece of meat.
Not everyone was a hunter, and most of the party found other things to do. There was walking, reading, painting, talking, or fishing.
Early on the first morning of the adventure, our host had scheduled a fishing trip. The group rose at dawn. I had not slept well, and I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to do on the banks of the river, but I was determined to be part of the activities. One young man, Richard, a friend of the Hildreths’ son, caught a handsome salmon. This caused a flurry of excitement among the guests because he could now pursue the Scottish hunting game called the “MacNab” – consisting of the capture of a salmon, a grouse, and a stag in under twenty-four hours from one estate. The game is named for a book of the same name by John Buchan, a Governor General of Canada from 1935 to 1940, though the Canadian provenance seems long forgotten.
We returned to the lodge for a dream English breakfast – sausage, bacon, toast, eggs, and hot and cold cereals. Afterwards, John Hildreth came up to me with a chart of the guests’ activities, and suggested I accompany young Richard on his MacNab quest. I was delighted. I could observe without doing, then go on to hunt a stag of my own if I so wished.
Our professional deerstalker was a Scot in his sixties named Albert. He had that particular wiry strength of a man who has lived his life out of doors, and an air of bitterness as a result of being surrounded, I imagined, by men who claimed all the credit for bagging their stags, never acknowledging his role. Our odd threesome – Richard, Albert, and I – set out at nine in the morning. It was my introduction to the land. This estate had been the stomping ground of Mary, Queen of Scots. How had she managed, even on horseback? The ground was uneven, boggy, and bubbling with deer shit. There were few trees. The hillsides were marked by cretaceous rocks blackened in patches by lichen. To my eye, from a distance, they looked like deer.
