When Laurence Catlow, a classics master at a Cumbrian boarding school, sees a beautiful pheasant in flight, he wants to reach for his gun.

In this diary of his sporting year, he asks himself, between days on the local rivers and shoots, why this is so.

His answers are surprising, controversial and convincing. They provide an articulate response to the anti-fieldsports arguments, and he presents them in an entertaining, frank and amusing manner.

Throughout 1995, Laurence's diary records his hopes of buying some precipitous shooting ground in the Pennines, his fishing days on the Eden, Wharfe and other rivers, the arrival of a second gundog and days spent together on shoots. All this activity is interspersed with Laurence's quest for his true motives in killing what he most loves. He looks at foxhunting, vegetarianism, man as a hunter, man as created in God's image and man as a creature doomed, himself, to die.

Nearly 25 years later, this diary remains highly topical, thought-provoking and original. yet its tone is also very human and it comes from the pen of a true nature-lover.