You've got to hand it to the English magazine The Field for running a competition on Sporting Bores - and printing some of the results. As you might imagine, Anon plays a part, and it's hard to say where exaggeration goes over into fiction.
Or just a good story. The prizewinner, a woman, (Anon) starts off: "I should have seen it coming. He complained bitterly about meeting the parson to arrange our wedding. It would mean he had to miss the last drive on one of a plethora of shooting dates he had that season.
And the wedding date was set to occur after the shooting season and before fishing started. Originally, it appears, he wanted the honeymoon in Botswana, a month discussing, with professional hunters, buffalo hunts they had been on. But he settled for the Caribbean, where marlin and bonefishing could be had. Writes the wife: "I could sunbath." Apparently he hasn't changed, or changed much; "A day without sport is a day wasted." And sports means, of course, guns and fishing tackle and things killed. She ends by explaining, with heavy humour, that she wishes to remain anonymous in case she should appear in his meticulously maintained game book under Various. Ha.
Another prizewinner claims that on a two day shoot, the accompanying bore or expert, stopped at every spoor to identify what sort of animal had left it right down to the length of its tail and the number of antlers.
Then the joker of the shoot had his revenge. He pocketed a black pudding from breakfast and dropped in surreptitiously on the trail. He then asked the expert what animal was responsible. Down on one knee, the said expert examined the fumet (cxcrement) and gave it as his opinion that it came from a roe deer with a slight cast in its left leg. (Come on, now.) At which the other replied "Oh, do you really think so", and promptly ate it. Taking the Mickey in a rather emetic way.
Well, the editors of The Field knew what they were doing. There's bound to be a cascade of letters claiming "I can give you a better one." And who says that gunmen and horsey men and their spouses have no imagination or sense of humour.