A day’s foraging, fishing and wild-fowling for supper

A few years back I met up with my ultimate foraging match, Jonathan Young, editor of The Field magazine and a serious hunter-gatherer. The purpose of the day was to forage, hunt and fish for our supper, so, in order to fit that lot in, we had to be up way before the crack of dawn. We started the early September day by wild fowling at 3am and lay in our waders and Barbours in the Blackwater marshes, waiting for the sun to come up and the opportunity of bagging a passing wild duck. As it got lighter, I realized we’d been literally lying in beds of samphire, which went on for acres and acres in the creeks off the estuary. After Jonathan and his son had shot a couple of mallard, I was not quite into shooting yet, so we picked enough samphire for supper and some small sea beet leaves from alongside the estuary for a salad. I wasn’t sure what type of salad, as we only had three ingredients for dinner so far.