A guide to Scottish game from expert Ben Weatherall of The Blackface Meat Company, one of Plateau's best suppliers of game.

“You are what you eat. If you’re a type of wild game, that means you are lean and fit, because if you’re not fit you’re not going to survive,” explains Ben Weatherall, who together with his brother, Percy, runs The Blackface Meat Company in Dumfries.

Often associated with rich sauces and buttered root vegetables, wild game is actually low in fat precisely because it needs to be so fit. The flavour of meat is entirely determined by the game bird or animal’s diet, so blueberries for grouse and, perhaps less desirably, mud for widgeon (see below).

Guide to game:

Grouse
In season: 12 August-10 December

Grouse, explains Ben, need heather. These plump, partridge-like birds not only live in the heather, they also eat it. In fact heather forms the main part of their diet, bringing a purplish hue to the meat.

Rather like many of us, the birds are also partial to blueberries, which ripen on Scotland’s heather hills at the end of August, further contributing to the purple colour. Ben declares their meat to be not only lean and rich in flavour, but also positively healthy.

This is a real bumper year for grouse, due to the combination of a harsh winter to kill all the bugs, a good spring on the east side of Scotland and a healthy breeding stock.

Look for smaller, young grouse, which hatched in the same year and are more tender than the larger breeding grouse (over a year old).

Mallard & Teal
In season: 1 September-31 January

Mallard eat barley and watery plants as well as the insects and shellfish they find in ponds. They are the best-tasting of the wild duck breeds, explains Ben, better than, say, widgeon, which dabble through the mud in the bottom of ponds, making for a slightly off-putting muddy flavour.

Teal, meanwhile, is Britain's smallest duck, which feeds in shallow splashes, making supply unpredictable and governed by the weather. “We can’t ever get enough of them,” explains Ben, who adds that teal’s flavour is similar to mallard, but a little more delicate.

Of all the game types, wild duck contains a lot more fat in its skin to keep the water out, so you don’t need to work hard to ensure the meat moist remains when cooking.

Partridge
In season: 1 September-1 February

There are two species of partridge shot in the UK, the redleg (or French) partridge and the English (or grey) partridge. English partridge are much less abundant than French.

They live in lowland arable country and tend to be fed by gamekeepers, so grain makes up around 90% of the partridge’s diet, says Ben. It also feeds on leaves, seeds and insects and compares in flavour quite closely to organic corn-fed chicken.

Pheasant
In season: 1 October-1 February

Like partridge, pheasant can be found in lowland, arable country and particularly around woodland. Most are bred in captivity, then released into the wild. The pheasant’s main diet is grain along with wild foods like acorns and kale.

Unlike the more clean-living grouse, pheasant has a slight tendency to drunkenness, brought on by overindulging in beechmast – the angular brown nuts of the beech tree, explains Ben. This temporary state is usually identifiable by seeing pheasants that are unable to walk straight and certainly unable to fly.

Woodcock
In season: 1 October-31 January

Woodcock is a wading bird with short legs and a long, straight, tapering bill, which it pokes into boggy ground in search of worms, beetles, spiders and small snails.

The woodcock season starts on October 1, but very few are shot until after the full moon at the end of November, when the migratory birds arrive from Sweden in quantities. Flying across the North Sea makes for tougher meat, so woodcock benefits from slower cooking than, for example, grouse.

Rabbit
In season: available all year round

Blackface sources rabbit all over the south of Scotland, although it tends to be shot in greater volume on the lowlands, explains Ben. They are shot either on night shoots (lamping) or by using ferrets to flush them out.

The texture of rabbit is similar to chicken and it has a subtle gamey flavour.

Venison (Scottish red deer)
In season: stags are in season from 1 July-20 October; Red deer hinds (females) are in season from 21 October-15 February

The main species of deer used for venison is the Red Deer. The vast majority are  found in Scotland on the heather hills of the West Highlands. Although the shooting season for stags starts on 1 July, in practice most stags are shot during September and October.

Red Deer is shot at between two to five years of age in numbers necessary to maintain the herds.

“The aim is to manage the population and weed out stags that maybe have switch antlers (antlers with no tines) that would cause damage," says Ben. “They’re looking to protect the big, heavy stags, which will continue to breed.”

Buying game:

Go to a respectable butcher for game and ensure it doesn’t contain too much shot. It is also worth making sure the game hasn’t been hung for too long (you can smell if it has!).

Examining the breast bone of any game bird will tell you how to cook it: soft and pliable will mean the meat is good for roasting; hard and unyielding means you should cook it long and slow.

Further information:

Click here for a game pie recipe from Bruce Wilson at Paternoster Chop House, or here for roast partridge from Allan Pickett at Plateau restaurant.

Find out more about Blackface and Ben Weatherall here.