There's nowt so odd as folk. People who shoot, and people who know the novels of John Buchan, may be acquainted with the term "Making a Macnab". It refers, apparently, to a challenge thrown down in one of the Buchan novels, or a bet which was that one John Macnab, could not, in one day, catch a salmon, shoot a brace of grouse and shoot a stag.
Anyway, in the English Field for January, there is a letter from a man who did it this year. He writes to the magazine that he was staying at the Inverpolly estate in Scotland, and that he fished the nearby Polly river (couldn't find it on the map). On his very last day, and early in the morning, he caught his first salmon, "after a considerable struggle." It was 4lb. He went back to the lodge for his breakfast. Then someone suggested he might try for a Macnab
So, after breakfast, he was on the way to a place called Stac Polly, where the stalking was to take place. In a short time the pointer dog had put up two brace of grouse. "With my first shot I surprise everyone, including myself, by accounting for one-and-a-half brace - only missing the fourth bird after the confusion of hitting the first three." It was still only 11.30 a.m., writes the follower in the footsteps of Macnab, and from then on "I had what I can only describe as some of the best stalking I have ever had. The wind changed direction on every level and there were stags and hinds all around us. The beast was finally shot at 6 p.m."
Well, now, he might at least have written about the "noble beast"or something of the sort. But anyway, all three items he bagged are good, wholesome food. And you wouldn't grudge Michael Lynch of Penarth, South Glamorgan his triumph. All on his last day.
From a stag to the humble rabbit. In Meath, several rabbits have been found dead, no obvious gunshot wounds or marks of predators. No signs of that awful myxo. Could it be that we have here what the same Field calls "a new and silent killer - viral haemorrhagic disease? (VHD)" The same Field says that the rabbits thus infected die on their burrows within about 36 hours of infection. In Australia, the Government is deliberately releasing VHD to curb the rabbit population. The Meath victims were out in the open.