Wing Shooting on Top of the World

A hunting guide holds the morning’s bag. credit: photos by Brian Gomsak

The leaves were turning and the second-growth hardwoods were in color. We were driving up into the Blue Ridge country and at each switchback we had another more dramatic view of western Virginia. It took a while to reach the crest of the mountain, and when we got there we paused to admire the most striking view yet.

And, also, the golf course.

“Maybe we should have brought our clubs,” I said.

“You gotta be kidding,” Marsha, my wife, said. “If you can’t keep it in the fairway, you are dead.”

She was right, of course. And she did not have to add that I couldn’t keep it in the fairway. The layout did, indeed, look … er, challenging. If you put your drive into the rough, you’d need a belay to go looking for your ball. Still, there were a couple of foursomes out on the course and we watched them for a few minutes. Then we made our way back down the mountain a couple of miles. We came to a break in the wall of rhododendrons and took the turn that led to our cabin. It was called Otter, for some reason. A small deer, standing a few feet away, spooked when we parked.

The cabin was large, warm, and well stocked. We opened the Cabernet that had been left thoughtfully on the counter, poured two glasses, then stepped outside to watch the sunset. You don’t like to say that anything is “perfect,” but as getaways go, this was looking pretty close.

The mountaintop resort we were visiting goes by the name of Primland and covers some twelve thousand acres. It is just off the Blue Ridge Parkway on the Virginia side of the line. We’d flown into Greensboro and we drove past the birthplace of General J.E.B. Stuart on the way in. One of the road signs pointed the way to the NASCAR track at Martinsville. If you were measuring it in miles or hours on the road, we weren’t that far from, say, Richmond, or even Washington or Atlanta. But the cultural distance was vast. The country here felt older and more fundamentally rural than any place I had been in a long time. It was also ineffably Southern. Before he was killed at Daytona, Dale Earnhardt would come here to hunt pheasant.

The celebrity endorsement and the view cinched the deal for us. We drank the wine and watched as the sun set behind a distant ridgeline. Then, we changed clothes for dinner.

When Primland was recommended to us, one of the selling points had been the food. We’d been told the chef was fabulous, and I’d made the usual noises even though I was skeptical. Everywhere you go these days you can count on fulsome talk about the food.

But the venison was, in fact, very good. And Britton Saylor, the chef, wasn’t shy about his secrets. He explained how he had filleted the backstrap, then seared it to keep it from drying out. And how he’d made the sauce from veal stock, sun-dried cherries, and raspberry vinegar, then patiently reduced it to a demi-glace. The ingredients were simple enough — even I had heard of everything he used — so it had to be the preparation that made it as good as any venison I had ever eaten.

When we’d finished dinner, Saylor sat with us and had a glass of wine while he and Marsha talked about sauces and his time cooking in New Orleans. He had worked his way up through the ranks and there was no denying he was very able. We’d have pheasant tomorrow night, he said as we were leaving, and even though I was a long way from hungry, I found myself looking forward to it.

The night was clear and cool with no moon. There were hundreds of stars, some brighter than any of the electric lights burning feebly down in the valley. It was hard to leave that view of the heavens and go inside. But we had a busy morning ahead of us.

There is a story about William Faulkner, who, when sitting for a Paris Review interview, was asked about what he required in the way of life’s pleasures. Not much, Faulkner answered. A little tobacco and a little whiskey.

“Bourbon?” the interviewer asked.

Not necessarily, Faulkner said. “Between Scotch and nothing, I’ll take Scotch.”

Likewise, between preserve birds and no birds at all, I’ll take the preserve hunting. And it can be good or bad depending not so much on the birds — they will be there, guaranteed — but on the other components of upland shooting. That is, the country, the dogs, and the guides.

There was no denying this country. From the first field we hunted, we could look out and see the unmistakable profile of Pilot Mountain, off in North Carolina. The ground between hardwood ravines had been cultivated and planted in milo and millet. It looked right.