Kill it and eat it: getting back to nature at Dromoland Castle

Nick Bradshaw got invited to join a shooting party at Dromoland Castle and away from the office he discovered the hunter that lurked within.

On the whole I’m not a killer. Sure, I’ve witnessed killings on Death Row in Texas. Nothing unusual there, I think you’ll agree. And there was an unfortunate moment in my childhood when I was walking my dog (her name was Mitzi – my ma’s choice, not mine) and we startled a cat that responded by running in front of a lorry.

The cat died, and I felt awful bad.

But on the whole, and like most people (hopefully), I’m not one of those who gets pleasure out of snuffing out life.

Yes, I’ve witnessed executions, but no, I couldn’t have administered the lethal injection. And I still get shivers thinking about the ginger moggy twitching on the road in front of my eleven-year-old self.

So I’m not the sort of person who’d normally think about going on a killing spree in the woods of Clare. But hey, you’ve got to step out of your comfort zone once in a while.

Besides, I am a weak man who crumbles when faced with the change to indulge in some luxury R&R. So when the chance to experience a day’s shooting came attached with a two-night stay in the five star opulence of Dromoland Castle, my overnight bag was packed and my best suit was quickly dispatched to the dry cleaners, who gave it the quick once over at a generous discount in return for a SUBTLE PLUG.

The package I’d been given the chance to sample goes under the name of ‘Eat on the Wild Side’ and it goes something like this: I’m to stay in the luxury surroundings of Dromoland, enjoying the castle’s gastronomic delights and drinking the good stuff from the extensive wine list… and I’m to head out into the depth of the Dromoland estate to kill some of the food I’m to eat.

Staying in my luxurious room in Dromoland, dozing in a huge bed over which hangs an enormous portrait of some prominent member of the O’Brien clan, I felt I’d made the right decision.

Dromoland offers old-world charm and service combined with all the mod-cons (flat-screen TV – again huge, a place to dock your iPhone). It’s a pretty unbeatable combination.

The reception: slightly plusher than Rathmines Travelodge

The next morning, however, I wasn’t so sure. After a very deep sleep I stumbled down to breakfast where some of my shooting party had assembled, among them Don Walshe, the man in charge of shoots at Dromoland.

They were all dressed for the part, tweed everywhere. Over breakfast (again huge) they regaled each other with stories of memorable night shoots where they’d encountered local bulls, plus talk of the ones that got away in Dromoland’s well-stocked lake during one of their fishing trips.

It was, as I’d expected, another world. But to be fair, the people in it were very welcoming and encouraging. They would look after this novice – a pair of new green wellies had been delivered to my room overnight, ensuring that at least my feet would look the part during our day out.

What they didn’t know was that I was secretly hoping that I’d be abysmal. If I got back at lunchtime having had a good walk punctuated by me firing a few shots in the air, then I’d have been quite happy. It was a cool but sunny day and going for a brisk stroll in the countryside always beats sitting down in front of a computer in the well-appointed offices back at JOE Towers.

With trousers tucked into my wellies I was ready to set off. A trip to the spa at the end of the day for a back massage will be my reward for a day’s hard wandering around Dromoland’s woods and scrubland.

Safety

It had been made clear over breakfast that the day would be a fairly relaxed affair, but once the guns come out, things get serious. Safety is paramount and I’m shown how to load my gun in a way that won’t have me accidentally aiming a loaded weapon at.

This will not be a day when anyone does a ‘Dick Cheney’. The only ones who will end up getting shot during the day’s trek across the Dromoland estate will be the pheasant, partridges, snipe and ducks who fly into our line of fire.

Guns and shot are handed out and we make our way to the first killzone of the day. Only six of us are shooting today, but we are accompanied by a huge team whose job it is to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Aside from the six of us shooting (known as ‘guns’ in the country pursuits fraternity) there are the beaters – men with dogs who will flush out the birds that might otherwise be happy to scratch around on the ground all day; there are men to load our guns, there are more men with dogs who are trained to bound into the undergrowth and bring back to us any birds (the dogs not the men).

To finish things off there’s the man with the trailer where the day’s kill is strung up and taken off to Dromoland’s state-of-the-art processing plant.

For months before we turn up, birds will have been bred, hatched and fed by Dromoland’s gamekeepers – the feed alone costing a five-figure sum. Woodlands and scrublands are tended in a way that provides the perfect environment for the birds to prosper.

(One positive by-product of keeping game birds on the Dromoland Estate is that the environment is attractive to a number of rare songbirds. Needless to say, you’re not allowed to shoot these.)

With such a high level of personnel involved, it stands to reason that forming a shooting party is an expensive affair. For ten people to spend a full day shooting, during which hundreds of birds can be killed, the cost is around the €20,000 mark. Even so, those organising the shoots are lucky to break even during a season.

Shooting begins

Having reached our first location, the beaters head into the bushes with their dogs and us ‘guns’ line up and get ready to take aim and fire. After a couple of tense minutes the first couple of pheasant fly past. I fire my first few shots and miss every time. I may be wrong but I think one of the birds flew past me a few times, mocking my poor attempt at marksmanship.

It’s at that point that something weird happened. I actually shot a bird.

Suddenly, rather than see the shooting as getting in the way of a good walk I got seriously fired up and was eager to do it again and again. To feel the butt of the gun kick into my shoulder and to see the feathers fly above me felt almost primal. For the first time in my life I was a hunter-gatherer (OK, the dogs were doing the gathering, but you get my drift).

And to think that when I'd spent more than two years of my student days as a vegetarian.

But these days I’m a meat eater, and like many people who eat meat I’ve never killed my own dinner. On one occasion I’ve had my dinner killed for me. It was in a lobster shack just outside Cape Town and required me to peer into a murky tank of crustaceans and point, Caeser-like, to the lobster I wanted to be killed, cooked and presented to me on a plate.

Other than that, though, I’ve always got my meat from the butcher.

I was surprised at how I took to the task of dispatching the wild game. I’d taken to shooting like a duck to water, and the water is where the ducks better stay, because if they fly into the air I’m very likely to take a shot at them.

The morning fled by just as the various game birds fled by – some destined to live another day, some destined to end up on our plates.

And talking of plates, lunch was served in the small panelled bar back at the castle. Game stew (naturally). Lovely.

The afternoon turned out to be a rare treat. Rather than shooting at birds we were taken off to meet the estate's master falconer. Dave Atkinson clearly loves what he does and it’s not every day you get to be within a couple of feet of a Peregrine falcon or to have a hawk land on your gloved hand.

Quite some bird

I got to watch one young, majestic, hand-reared Peregrine do its thing – swooping and gliding high in the sky above the greenery below.

Dinner that evening is prepared by head chef David McCann. There’s a long menu of game and locally sourced goodies. Just as I’m about to order from it I’m informed that I’ll be eating all of it.

I contemplate asking that someone be on hand at the end of the night with a wheelbarrow, so that I can be poured into it and wheeled to my room. This being Dromoland, they would have probably have done their best to help me out.

In the end, after a long and unsurprisingly rich and tasty meal, I manage to make it to my bed unaided.

Unfortunately, and despite a couple of kills, I’d not been able to eat the actual food I’d killed. EU rules means that everything killed on the estate has to be shipped off to the processing plant where a stringent process is carried out before the birds are wrapped, given the food inspector’s stamp of approval and brought back to the Dromoland kitchen.

It’s a pity, but even without the EU’s regulations the birds wouldn’t have been ready to eat on the same day as they’d been killed as they need to hang for a few days in order to be served up at their peak.

And besides, I did get to take home a reminder of my stay in the form of a tray of pheasant, partridge and duck, which was waiting for me on the morning I checked out.

Despite my initial trepidation I’d recommend giving this shooting and five-star living malarkey a go. The only downside is that you do have to leave it all behind and go back to your regular day-to-day life.

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 delicious game shoot lunch and one dinner in the Earl of Thomond Restaurant.

On average the cost of a falconry lesson with Master Falconer Dave Atkinson is €60 pp.

To book or enquire those interested can contact Dromoland directly on: 061 368144