The Guide to Game

“England’s Last Wilderness”

In today's health-conscious climate, game is increasingly concidered a wholesome alternative to intensive bred domestic animals which are pumped with antibiotics. It comes from lean and health free-range animals which are low in fat and cholesterol.

View the Game Season Guide

Most wild game has 5% to 7% fat, whereas lamb has 25% and a piece of prime beef can contain as much as 45%.

When you eat game with a puree of vegetables at Rules, you are consuming a meal that is not only low in fat and calories, but high in fibre and protein too. And where as domestic meat and poultry tend to have a rather predictable taste, game offers a huge range of subtle flavours, reflecting the varied diet of animals in the wild.

Because Rules has its own estate, it is able to exercise its own quality controls and to determine the best way to treat Game, for instance the best hanging times to produce the best flavour.

Game, once viewed as the food of the landed gentry is available to all who visit Rules and is today’s healthy alternative.

Conservation Role of Gamekeepers

The role of Estates that employ a gamekeeper in conserving many non-gamebirds is worth a mention here. Many songbirds and other bird species have dramatically declined in recent decades, but studies show that land managed by gamekeepers is where  many of these species are thriving by protecting them from starvation and from attacks from predators such as foxes, magpies and crows. At Rules' Estate Lartington Hall Park  we rear only birds from eggs incubated on the Estate and as a result we are predominantly concerned with the management of our countryside  for our wild pheasants and partridges, woodcock, snipe, teal and wild duck. In so doing we create conditions that benefit other birds too. We deliver a very considerable net conservation gain and without this work, the prospect for many  declining wild bird populations would be much worse. The most noticeable beneficiaries are the resident seed-eating finches who take advantage of the pheasant feeders and cover crops. Many species would decline if predator control was stopped.  In the upland moorlands, the home of the Red Grouse, gamekeeping involves burning heather and controlling crows, foxes and stoats and as a result Lapwings are at least twice as common on grouse moors. On the North Pennine moors' there are at least 700 pairs of golden plover and 3,900 pairs of curlew.

In conclusion, a gamekeeper on an estate such as Rules' at Lartington Hall Park, makes an often unappreciated contribution to the richness of bird life in the countryside. Intensive farming and forestry means that wild birds often struggle to find shelter and food in modern crops. Conservation is not just about creating nature reserves. It must also be about economic land use and how this can be made to support increased biodiversity. Source material "Singing Fields" by Dr Stephen Tapper.