Life lessons from a deer stalker

In some ways talking to people exclusively about one subject is a liberating experience. We have all been to parties where hipsters spout off about the latest pop-up restaurants in Dalston, or world traveller types insist on telling you at length about their encounters with pygmies (I like to think they have secretly eaten one) all of which leaves you feeling inadequate and open to drinking too much as an escape from the conversation.

The greatest difference I have found between the countryside and the city is even though the countryside contains far fewer people, your friends and acquaintances fall into strictly defined categories. There are the people you bond with over machinery, hay making, whist down the pub, or traditional country pursuits like shooting and fishing, but the essentially solitary nature of the work means there is hardly any crossover. Instead, in a city like London, where there are a thousand different professions, a common appreciation of the rituals of office life acts like a social glue that binds everyone together in shared frustration. 

By contrast I spent a happy evening chatting to Bob. Bob is a self-confessed stalker but you would only be in danger if you were a deer, a fox or rabbit. He is a crack shot, one of the best in Devon, and knows an awful lot about guns. This is what we always talk about when leaning on the fence as the sun goes down on the valley. I secretly covet his superb collection of custom-made rifles, with their Second World War-era Mauser bolt actions and Swarovski scopes.

The evening had gone just like any other. I watched in awe as Bob unleashed a fusillade of near constant shots into the vegetation targeting the critters that had been devastating my mum's peas. He never misses and we had just finished paunching the 18 rabbits he had bagged that evening when, much to my surprise, he asked me about my own relationship, and not with firearms: 

"It finished just after Christmas rather messily," I said.

 "I am sorry to hear that. I have always found women to be such strange creatures," (presumably because they aren't really into shooting deer, I thought) "They never seem happy to let you go off on your own and do things." It is always awkward when someone bears part of their soul to you over a basin full of rabbit guts, so I asked whether what sort of .22 ammunition he likes to use in order to bring us back to safer ground.

Thinking about it later, though, it seemed the most profound statement about the human condition I had heard in a long long time...

"Miss Potter, you say?"