Episode 602 - Leon & Sanjay || Eat Wild In The UK

Summary

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The Origins Foundation Podcast

Episode 602 – Leon & Sanjay || Eat Wild In The UK

Date: October 28, 2025
Host: The Origins Foundation (Robbie)
Guests: Leon Challis Davis & Sanjay Bhattacharya (Eat Wild UK)

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Episode Overview

This conversation features Leon Challis Davis and Sanjay Bhattacharya, prominent figures with Eat Wild UK, an organization aiming to connect the British public with wild game—primarily venison, pheasant, partridge, and mallard—by making these meats more accessible, appealing, and understood. The discussion delves into the culinary, cultural, and conservation aspects of wild game in the UK, challenges with perception and pricing, and how COVID-19 shifted food habits. The dialogue connects broader themes of conservation, accessibility, community, and the modern reinvention of wild food culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Eat Wild UK: Mission & Approach

• Ambassadorship and Outreach
  Leon is the Scottish ambassador, engaging the public via country fairs, workshops, schools, etc. The aim is exposure and demystification of game:

  "It's less about preaching to hunters... it's just really trying to boost the UK exposure to game." —Leon (11:04)

• Convenience and Consumer Appeal
  Game needs to be approachable, such as in the form of burgers, sausages, or easy-to-cook curries, reflecting Britain's preference for convenience foods:

  "Is it better if we say, right, this is what it's really... would people buy more venison if I'd already made it into a curry, for example?" —Leon (11:40)

• Team Structure and Culinary Focus
  Eat Wild UK is more than just Leon and Sanjay; it has a CEO, a board, and food-focused ambassadors. The organization links conservation to catering, bringing wild game to British tables (14:25–15:21).

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2. Changing Perceptions: Conservation, Quality, and the Modern Diner

• Evolution since COVID-19
  Sanjay attributes a shift towards higher-quality, ethically-sourced meat to the pandemic:

  "As COVID hit, we had more time on our hands. We did a lot more cooking... we started seeing pop-up online butchers, people bringing their produce, showcasing what the British countryside has to offer." —Sanjay (16:16)

• Game as Nutritious & Sustainable
  Wild game has superior nutritional content and lower environmental impact. Despite a legacy of “gentry sport” perceptions, there's a move to show its merits to the modern consumer, including the fitness community (17:08–18:00).

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3. Addressing Waste and Improving Access

• Old vs. New Practices
  The perception of waste from large shoots is outdated; with industry changes and advocacy from groups like Eat Wild, game birds are now far less likely to be wasted:

  "I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say over the last six, seven years... I hear of none." —Sanjay (21:03)

• Making It Usable
  Instead of presenting game in daunting forms (whole birds in feather), estates now process it further—sausages, packaged breasts, etc.—making sharing and cooking easier (23:10–25:14).

• Community Benefits & Ripple Effects
  Donating prepared meat to food banks and locals multiplies the positive impact:

  "I'm very interested in the impact of what you just did to somebody else or... to the local economy." —Robbie (25:14)

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4. Cultural Dynamics: Diversity, Language, and Entry Points

• Paths into Hunting & Cooking
  Both guests came into the field through food, not hunting traditions. Their diverse backgrounds (Jamaican/Welsh, Indian/UK) highlight how the field is opening up:

  "The shooting community has been the most welcoming group I've joined." —Leon (31:20)

• Terminology
  UK hunters prefer 'shooting' and 'stalking' over 'hunting'; the latter is associated with horseback hound pursuits (fox, stag, etc.), not gun hunting (38:06–39:16).

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5. Economic and Supply Chain Barriers

• Pricing and Gentrification of Game
  Venison, in particular, remains costly—partly due to the limited number of processors and the long-standing perception that it's “posh food”:

  "People see wild meat as a gentry sport... meaning whatever they're shooting becomes more expensive because they've shot it." —Sanjay (43:49)

• The Value Chain
  There’s potential for better margins and affordability when estates sell directly to the public rather than via game dealers, but scaling and infrastructure are hurdles (44:38–47:06).

• COVID's Acceleration of Direct Sales
  Pandemic lockdowns pushed more meat sales online, encouraging farm-to-table models and wider consumer access (44:38–47:06).

• Advocacy for Lower Prices
  Bringing prices in line with high-quality beef could broaden appeal:

  "As soon as it comes down to a price that is the same as high-quality beef mince... people will try it." —Leon (60:18)

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6. Chefs, Media & Public Education

• Chefs as Game Advocates
  The higher-end chef community values the unique qualities of wild meat, and shows strong support for ethical harvesting (35:58–37:42).

• Terminology Matters
  Avoiding off-putting words like "culling" in favor of "harvest" helps public perception (41:05–41:33).

• Recipe Accessibility
  A barrier is lack of familiarity with processing and cooking game—Eat Wild UK addresses this with approachable recipes and video guides:

  "A lot of the recipes have... actual videos... especially when it comes to frying out spices or marinating. It's really easy to visualize." —Leon (69:15)

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7. Innovation, Community, & Future Trends

• Innovative Products
  Leon is developing new venison-based products (e.g. venison nduja), and there’s experimentation—from squirrel tacos to mallard stir fry—bringing game into new culinary territory (12:15–12:50, 70:43).

• Online Platforms & Social Reach
  Eat Wild UK leverages TikTok, Instagram, and interactive maps to connect consumers with recipes, suppliers, and inspiration (69:15–70:43).

• Generational Shift & Celebration
  Changing attitudes is a slow process, requiring generational exposure and normalization of game as a celebrated, everyday meal (67:19).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the Mission:

  "Connecting conservation with catering... that showcase conservation efforts that people do within the British countryside."
  —Sanjay (16:16)

• On Modern Practices:

  "More and more big shoots are moving towards ready prepared birds... even giving people packs of breasts, sausages..."
  —Leon (23:10)

• On Community Impact:

  "I'm very interested in the impact of what you just did to somebody else or... to the local economy."
  —Robbie (25:14)

• On Pricing Paradox:

  "If you look at any sort of meat... what's the one that you are willing to give away for free the most? And it's venison."
  —Robbie (61:15)

• On Recipes & Cooking:

  "There’s some amazing stuff here... partridge momos, Kali merch car... coconut and tamarind curry... These are really excellent recipes."
  —Robbie, Leon (68:34–68:55)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [11:04–12:15] – Eat Wild UK’s mission and focus on product development
• [16:08–18:00] – COVID-19's impact on food quality perception and shift towards wild game
• [21:03–23:10] – Addressing “bird dumping” and waste in pheasant shoots
• [25:14–27:18] – Impact on local community, food banks, and ripple effect of game use
• [31:20–33:50] – Personal background and diversity in UK hunting/shooting culture
• [38:06–39:16] – British terminology: hunting, shooting, stalking explained
• [44:38–47:06] – Processing, pricing, and the effects of COVID on supply chains
• [60:18–61:15] – The importance of price for mainstream acceptance
• [69:15–70:43] – Eat Wild UK's online resources and viral social videos

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Where to Find Eat Wild UK

• Website: eatwild.do
• Features include recipes with videos, interactive map of stockists, and more.
• Instagram/TikTok: Search Eat Wild UK for cooking demos, tips, and more.

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Summary Takeaway

The episode offers a vibrant, enlightening look at modern wild food culture, conservation, and culinary tradition in the UK. Leon and Sanjay advocate for wider accessibility, affordable pricing, and cultural integration of game, with a pragmatic focus on education and community benefit. Through the voices of chef-advocates and the host’s global perspective, listeners gain a nuanced view of the challenges and future possibilities of eating wild in the UK.

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Transcript

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[Robbie]

Leon Challis Davis and Sanjay Bhattacharya are two individuals that are part of the Eat Wild UK scene. They both are by day job chefs and so this conversation's all about UK venison, it's all about UK pheasants, it's all about recipes and cooking and perceptions around venison and why is it being used more in the UK and the system of the uk. But it's just a fascinating insight into what's happening in the United Kingdom, a place that you may not have hunted before, you may want to hunt there. And you know things like you can go on a Facebook group and buy yourself some pheasant or buy yourself some deer and go get it and use it. It's just a foreign system to most of us in America and most of us in the world. And so I thought having this conversation with Leon and Sanjay from Eat Wild uk, I know that you're going to enjoy the podcast, have a listen, enjoy it, share it, and maybe go get some venison out of the freezer and try something different with it once you finish listening. Enjoy. So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting.

[Leon Challis Davis]

It brings awareness to non hunters that it's more than just killing animals. How do I start it?

[Brittany]

Brittany My name.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Does my hair look okay?

[Robbie]

My name is Mike Axelrod. Start again. Yeah, I hated it too. Braxton, you said something in the car to me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And, and a feminist that works for a non profit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game for the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to a hunter. So I love these kinds of podcasts because the typical American audience that we have, we have a pretty global audience to this podcast, but a lot of them are Americans. They don't typically get a rich biodiversity of accents on, on this podcast. And you've got three accents that are going to throw you for a loop. I will start by saying I went onto your guys website and all I read was spice, tendery pheasants, succulent pot roast partridge, indulgent arisini and you had me.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Okay. Okay. Good, good stuff.

[Robbie]

Sanjay and Leon, welcome to the Blood Origins, or I keep saying Blood Origins, the Origins foundation podcast. It's so new, the name change. I keep forgetting that we've changed our name. Super excited to have you guys. Thank you, Manny for introducing us. Manny is my UK connection of getting all of these guys in the UK hooked into our podcast. Manny texted me this morning, super excited, Sanjay, that he's looking forward to taking some hinds with you on the hill.

[Leon Challis Davis]

He said he's very keen to come up to Scotland and get stuck into the Red Deer. That starts in a couple of months. But I think he'll be knocking on my door a bit sooner.

[Robbie]

Oh, I'm sure. Just tell him he needs to shave his mustache before he gets up there. Mustaches, they frighten the deer as I understand it.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And I is very good.

[Robbie]

Tell him I told him I told.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

You that that's quality. That's a solid mustache.

[Robbie]

It is a solid one.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And you know, he, he wears the sort of, you know, he, he and I sort of indulge ourselves in, in the sort of faux Indian hunting culture of Shikar. The idea of going off on a proper a hunt and it's something I, I want to explore a bit more. I mean I, I do a lot of my cooking is focused on sort of Indian game recipes and similar. But I want to know a bit more about sort of what rituals they used to involve in the hunt. You know, were there any sort of like nice pre hunt sort of traditions or post hunt celebrations? You know, that's something the Germans and the Brits do very well. But yeah, I think I might explore those a bit more with Manish. I suspect they'll involve whiskey and cigars to start, I think.

[Robbie]

Well, what I'd love to, I'm visualizing in my brain here is you know, two Indians getting into like a old school Mini Cooper in the middle of downtown London and going for Shikar, you know, and stopping at the pie shop and getting a pie and you know, attempting to talk Hindi. But they've got this huge UK accent on it.

[Leon Challis Davis]

No, it's, it's a, definitely a, a bit of a culture shift for both of us to come up to the Highlands, put our tweeds on and get up on the hill. But you know, it's something that Indian hunters have been doing for quite a long while. There's always been a connection to Scotland and, and the idea of getting out. I think in the Victorian period it was still a very prestigious thing to join a hunt for a stag up here.

[Robbie]

And Leon, if people are watching this on YouTube, African American that has a UK accent that naturally seems to like to hunt and cook at the same time.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, I'm actually, well, I've got a. Or Jamaican I am. So I'm, I'm Welsh born and bred, born in Wrexham. But yeah, that's the best bit. And, but my, my dad is, yeah, he's, he's Jamaican. So I have this English, Jamaican, Welsh heritage all rolled into one. So it's a bit weird but it's decent, it works.

[Robbie]

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[Leon Challis Davis]

Pretty close. Bhattacharya.

[Robbie]

Bhattacharya.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Okay, very good though the H is silent.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah.

[Leon Challis Davis]

So I am the Scotland sort of ambassador for Eat Wild. So my job up here is to try and get out to all the sort of country fairs or schools or places where we can engage with the general populace. That's, that's the whole focus of Eat Wild. It's less about preaching to hunters and saying, hey, did you know there's this new recipe that you can do for venison or pheasant or partridge. It's just really trying to boost the UK exposure to game. You get people trying a meat that they might not have tried before and often in a nice familiar context. So whether that's, you know, buttermilk, fried pheasant or venison burgers or venison sausage rolls, something that's nice and approachable. And then separately, I also spend a lot of time sort of developing new product ideas for game, whether that's venison salami or my current one is a venison inuya. So sort of soft, spreadable. Yeah, spicy sausage. And I'm really trying to work on what's the best format that we can produce game in that'll make it the most accessible but also appealing to consumers. You know, are we doing it wrong by focusing on sort of substituting it for minced beef, for example? Is it better if we say, right, this is what it's really, you know, would people buy more venison if I'd already made it into a curry, for example? Is there something in it that actually the UK is so dependent on convenience foods and ready prepared meals. So that's a little bit of a sort of personal project.

[Robbie]

Are you a chef by training? Is that your background chef? Is that what you do as a day job?

[Leon Challis Davis]

It is, yep. So I'm a private chef. As a day job. I do cookery workshops. I do butchery for a couple of local estates, all venison, so processing their meat for sale. I do classes where I teach people to butcher, teach people where their meat comes from. And then I'm still working at the minute on my main project, which hopefully, fingers crossed, comes online later this year, which is going to be a community deer larder. So a poetry for venison with a focus on giving the meat back to the local community. Amazing. So that's my main focus. We've had a couple of big stumbling blocks, mostly to do with red tape. And the amount of funding required to overcome that, but I'm pretty confident we'll get there. We've had a really good response from the local community. But then going back to sort of how I got into it. I actually did a degree in biochemistry at university. I had sort of scientific background. I think it's put me in good stead when it comes to sort of spreadsheets, but not much else. And I quickly realized that my main passion was food. So I went back into doing, into doing pure shop things.

[Robbie]

Leon Chalice Davies, the other half of Eat Wild uk. You guys are the only guys in Eat Wild uk, correct?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

No, no, no, there's big team.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Big team.

[Robbie]

Oh, a big team. Okay, sorry.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah. So we've got, we've got a CEO, which is Louisa Clutterbuck, she sits at the top. We've got a board as well. So we've got a chairman is Alan Banion, who's. He set up the Game birds scheme with St David's vets back in a long time ago. Alan did that. We've got another board member, Tim Bonner, who's the Countryside alliance CEO. We've got Dylan Williams, who is Pressing Guy, he's on our board as well. And we're currently looking at restructuring and adding additions to that, that board. Then we have myself, I'm culinary director for Eat World. And then we have like, Sanjay, other ambassadors within the business as well.

[Robbie]

Well, I apologize because again, just looking at the website, I read a bunch of Indian recipes and then I saw Leon's photo and I was like, okay, I got the two guys.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Well, there's, there's definitely a section of us that are more focused on the food. You know, primarily a food focused group. But, but we've tried to get people who pretty much cover the whole of the uk. Now, for anyone who's free to go to a game fair or go to a show or, you know, give out samples of bits and pieces like that, I think we've, we've, we've definitely not benefited from Louisa being on maternity leave the last couple of months because she has done so much work before that. And it's amazing until you lose someone at the top, you think, God, we really need that sort of person just to spur on conversation or to help with those bits. But pretty confident we'll get back to doing more this season.

[Robbie]

So, Leon, if it's not sort of Wild Game cooking focus, what is the real focus of Eat Wild uk?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

The, the real focus is marketing and development board and I'd probably Say that, that connecting conservation with catering, that's the sort of like, you know, the format is that as a, as the UK gets bigger we, and food gets ever more prevalent and popular in life, we are seeing so much. You know, if you, if we go back and I hate to talk about C word Covid that, that we've, we've really moved. People are really looking at their food quality and their, and what they want to eat. Over the last few years they've really started to look. They know pre Covid 2019 there was, I think no one really cared much about what they read. There was a small percentage of people in the UK that really cared about. As Covid hit, we had more time on our owns. We got, did a lot more cooking. I think that kind of nipping to the shop and buying your, you know, beef mints for like 4.99 from Waitrose wasn't good enough for a lot of people. So we started seeing pop up online butchers. We've seen people doing market stalls in streets and, and, and all of those people bringing their produce onto that and showing, showcasing what the, the British countryside has to offer. And I think that there's so many more people now looking at the quality of their meat than ever before. So we really need to connect what, you know, we all know the benefits, right of venison, we all know the benefits of pheasant and partridge and malloc. The nutrition levels, the protein levels, selenium levels are all higher than your standard, standard meats. Um, and I think that we are now starting to see people actually, and certainly in the, in the fitness community, people starting to look at those protein levels. You know, I think every other video I see on Instagram, for me, my algorithm is obviously food shooting obviously and, and some other stuff as well. But, but I always come across someone making some kind of dish going there's 40 grams of protein in this and you're looking at, was it 30, 30 grams of protein? A hundred per 100 grams in, in Venice Malone, which is always 29.30 actually, but it's colossal, right? So people are really starting to, to look at that and I think that we as a business eat wild. We're trying to make that connection and we see that in the UK from trends and from what we eat out, what we see on tv where we go a lot of that makes an influence, subconsciously makes a massive influence of what we have at dinner. And I think that if we see more wild meat on menus across the board. So if Pret stopped doing chicken, bacon and avocado sandwich and did pheasant, bacon and avocado, you'd probably start getting people making that more at home. I think that if you saw the likes of Greg's doing a, a pheasant sausage roll, you would probably start, you know, those types of things. Both our main objective is to get, is to connect that showcase conservation efforts that people do with within British countryside, which is a lot of that comes from deer management and big shoots across the uk. We can see that and we know about that. We've got the facts and figures and then connect contract catering, catering in general, to understand what the conservation has to offer, what we do. I mean, you know, Sanjay's classic example of deer management he does up in Scotland on, on the estate that he works upon and you see that every day. And I think a lot of people don't understand at all the general public of what we do for the British countryside. You know where the biggest privately fund or privately funded conservation project in, in the UK comes from shooting. £1.9 billion comes from shooting into conservation in the UK and that's just from, from birds and the odd venison, sorry sort of deer and venison projects that are going on as well as colossal.

[Robbie]

Leon how does the, how does the story and the narrative around the idea that you have these big pheasant shoots in the uk, it's a very different system for bird shooting in the, in the uk. How do you guys deal with the narrative of these guys with these big bird shoots just wasting the resource.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

So, so that for me personally, that is really probably pre 2019. So pre2019, yes, there were lots of reports of birds being shot and dumped. I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say over the last six, seven years, certainly since the British Game Assurance and Alliance and Eat Wild came around as really, really. I hear of none. What I hear of about large volumes.

[Robbie]

That's awesome.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

I, I will be honest and tell you that I think years ago there was large volumes. We talk thousands of bird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there, there is some around still and it's been, it's been shown and documented by the NGO National Gamekeepers Organization. A guy called Tim Weston showed a presentation to me this year where there have been reports of bird dumping and I think that is individual guns being told by the estates or the shoots that they're on to take their game because they're the ones that have been persecuted in the past and they don't want that anymore. Now they're telling people to take game, they're getting rid of their game correctly and they're telling people to take game as well. So they're doing the right jobs. I think those individual guns will pull over on the side of the road on their 2, 3 hour journey home and be like, you know what, I don't really want these 10 birds so they'll shift them out. I think it's isolated and individual cases and, you know, let's not, let's not cover it up. That that has happened and it has been reported. However, things like Eat wild. What Sanjay does, many of the other ambassadors through World do is promote using game and wild birds in dishes so that people don't have the thought process of getting rid of them. The thought process, actually this will be a banging mallard stir fry tonight.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And I do think a lot of estates have also changed sort of the dynamic with guns in the more and more the big shoots are moving towards ready prepared birds, not just sort of plucked and dressed, but even giving people packs of breasts. I've even seen places giving out sausages, giving out more interesting things for people to use, which I think is good in two ways. One, it shows people what they can do with it, you know, oh yeah, you can make pheasant sausages. You know, I did a curried pheasant sausage this year and people are like, I just never thought you could do that. Two, it gives them something that is then easier to share with their own community. And that's, I think, something that, you know, the classic British image of a shoot happened and around the village a brace of pheasants, a pair of pheasants tied with string would just be left on a door handle. That does happen in some smaller places. Very rare nowadays. It's the sort of thing that a photo would go up on social media and people like, oh, dead birds just hanging off a door handle, you know, that would cause a riot in some areas. But if you can give guns or estates meat in a format that is easier for them to distribute, that's more palatable to people who are used to their meat coming in plastic packs with a used by date on it that they have to do as little as possible with to sort of transform into a healthy meal, I think that's something that estates have really latched onto. They've been willing to spend a little bit more money on their end processing their own birds, setting up, you know, inspected premises where they can pack everything, getting the team involved because they realize there's actually a lot More money for them to make in that regard than just paying for game dealers to take the birds away. I think that balance of sort of cost and public opinion has shifted enough that especially some of the really big estates have realized, hang on. We can use this as a chance for good local prisoners. Giving out pheasant to food banks, giving pheasant breasts away to locals that also guns will appreciate themselves.

[Robbie]

Yeah, I think you're onto something there. You know, it's. You know, when you. You try and get people into hunting. Let's just use that as an analogy. You're trying to limit the barriers of entry to that. Same thing with eating wild venison. Or dare I say that was a bit of a oxymoron. Eating wild, essentially. Right. So it. It. It makes complete sense. And I'll use myself as an example, right. If I go to my freezer today, which I did yesterday, oh, I need to cook something for dinner tonight. I'm pulling out the sausages that are already made.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah.

[Robbie]

Okay. I've got a big elk tenderloin sitting there frozen, and I'm looking at it, and I go, mm, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna mess with you because you're an hour job. You're an hour and a half job. Even more. Cause I have to defrost you. But the sausages. Oh, you're ready to go. I'm grabbing you. I'm gonna use it. I can put on the Traeger, the pellet grill, knock it out. Big meal for the family. All good. So I think what you're doing is incredibly smart. Like, I think the estates. You know, I think the. The mentality of the estates. Number one, giving a more usable product to the people leaving the shoots would stop them dumping, which is the number one thing that I think we're interested in from a PR perspective. And two, get them using it, which is obviously good, and giving it to their friends and family and whatnot. Is that big, like, ripple effect in the pond? Right. That's constantly. What we're interested in, is that ripple effect in the pond. But then the pr to communities, to food banks. You know, this is where I live. This is the world I live in, is that I'm not interested in you shooting anything. I'm very interested in the impact of what you just did to somebody else or to the wildlife or to the community or to the local economy of the. Of the little town that you were just shooting next to because you went and had a beer in the Pub.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

All of that is so impactful as a, as a, a community or an industry that it actually, like you say, ripple effect. People look in upon other industries looking at ours and seeing the fault. But then now they're starting to see the positive and they're starting to see all the good that we're doing. I took a contract caterer around a Purdy award winning gold award farm in Gloucestershire a few months ago in peak season so that they could see all the hedgerows, the margins, the birds, the, the wildlife, the wildflowers. So there was so much going on. I think they were quite overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed. But you know, there's a skylark, there's a yellow hammer, you know, here's all the insects and, and, and the, the wildflowers, there's wild fennel growing. And I had a few, a few of the culinary team with us as well. So they were sort of, well, they're part of the culinary team and they could see that the fennel grown, it was amazing. And all of that was because they have a, a bird shoot, because they are farming correctly and he raised beef down there as well. And because they manage the countryside in the right way and people are looking in on that and they get to see what they're doing and that's our British countryside. And that's why we should be proud of what we do and the heritage that we have.

[Robbie]

Yeah, I think that that narrative again, that's the thing that I don't know. You know, I, I, I knew it from the beginning that there was just so much more to hunting than just killing something. And when I started looking around, I was like, well, why isn't anybody talking about this? Like, and this was, you know, seven years ago. Okay, so five years ago we turned ourselves into a nonprofit. And it's just like, man, we have, we have such amazing impacts, we have such amazing stories. Like, why are we not just putting this massive feather in our cap and yelling from the rooftops and you know, to your point of taking somebody around a Purdy estate, a contract caterer should be taking the bloody, you know, environmental editor of the Guardian and saying, what would you prefer here?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, yeah, it is. And showcase. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Sorry, Sandra.

[Leon Challis Davis]

No, no, I was gonna say, I think, I think the interesting thing for me, you know, I started shooting a decade ago, so when I was in my 20s.

[Robbie]

So you didn't grow up a hunter in the, in Scotland?

[Leon Challis Davis]

No, no, not at all. So none of my family are from a hunting, fishing, shooting background. Like my dad likes a bit of. A bit of sea fishing. We've always been very food conscious. You know, we've been a family of very keen eaters, very keen chefs. We've always been interested in where our food comes from. And I think as chefs, there's this natural progression from, oh, you like cooking with high quality stuff. Oh, you're going to grow some of it yourself. Every, every chef wants to have their own garden. Oh, well, you can go and catch that fish and cook it yourself. Well, the natural progression always tends toward being more and more involved in. In the food that you're cooking. And for me, that has to culminate with shooting something, butchering it, serving it to your family. There's. You cannot get more sort of fundamental than that. So when I got into shooting, that was what I knew I wanted. Sort of the end of my journey to be. You know, I shot my first stag up here two weeks ago. My family came up to stay last week and I did the heart as little kebabs. My whole family got to enjoy the meat from my first stag. And that for me is a.

[Robbie]

So your whole family? Mom and dad and stuff like that?

[Leon Challis Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Mom, dad, my wife. We don't have a huge family, so one heart is. Is enough to go around. And we had some other bits and pieces as well, of course.

[Robbie]

But what did your mom and dad say about that? Since they didn't grow up hunting or.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Hunters, I think they can really appreciate, you know, they were. They. I think they were hesitant for a couple of reasons when I started. One, the natural sort of unfamiliarity with guns and firearms in the uk. My grandfather was in the navy, so my dad had sort of experienced a little bit of military life in India. My mum had no familiarity with guns, though she had spent a lot of her life in the countryside, so she knew about shooting and similar. We grew up in the suburbs in Oxford, so it wasn't as if it was sort of around us. So there was hesitancy about guns and safety and the community in particular. I think rightly so. They were concerned about what reception I would get, not just as a. As a young person, but as a young mixed person in the uk. You know, what would the shooting community be like? I'm happy to report that other than two totally isolated incidents, the shooting community has been the most welcoming group I've joined. And I. I have a lot of hobbies. I've joined a lot of groups from a lot of different backgrounds. Shooting is wonderful because you have that primal connection to what you're doing that binds you all together, you know, and it's not in the uk, it's not a big competitive scene. You know, I don't think you have people competing for public land in the same way or going out after trophy bucks in the same way. It is a more. It's a smaller community, that's for sure, but in the us. But I think it is a welcoming community because it recognizes that it does need to bring more people in. I think Perhaps maybe in the 70s, 80s, it was a bit more isolationist, but nowadays people have realized that it's something that can be popular with young people and they're keen to get young people in from all sorts of different backgrounds. And in those. In those 10 years that I've been sort of quite active, shooting, stalking, hunting, whatever you want to call it, I've seen a huge change in the narrative around it. Partly that's to do with, I think, the greater infiltration of shooting and conservation into social media and the message getting out better, I think, especially through chefs. Chefing and cooking in the UK is a really respected sort of branch of our culture.

[Robbie]

Yeah, globally, I believe, too. Right. You've got these super influential chefs that are absolutely, essentially all from the uk.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Really well above its weight now, especially given the sort of, you know, cultural history of food that the UK gets tarred with sometimes. You know, I just think that's such a. Such an irrelevant thing. Now, those chefs who are now all celebrating venison, all using pheasant in popular TV shows, on YouTube, on their TikToks, those are the ones that are really engaging really well with people my age. And it's only a step away from, oh, you've seen a chef make a venison pie. Well, where can I get some venison? Now? This is my big bugbear is for a lot of people, it's still unaffordable, it's still a premium meat. But if you get onto Facebook and you go on to one of these groups where people are selling carcasses directly from stalkers to the. To the general public, something that we can do in the uk, that's been a huge success, and I have no doubt that that will have brought a lot of people into the world of eating game meat, but then also just into the wider sort of shooting fraternity. Because once you have a chat with someone who stalks and you think, oh, well, maybe that's something I'd like to go and do myself. Once you've skinned your own carcass you're only a step away from, you know, as everyone says, the hard work starts when you pull the trigger. If we have people in the UK who are comfortable skinning and butchering deer, they are the ones who'll get into shooting really, really easily because they're not afraid of what happens after that point. They know how they can make the most of that carcass, all the tasty things they can make with it for their family, for their community.

[Robbie]

Interested in the, in the chef community, what is the. And again, you know, I don't expect you to speak for the chef community here, but I'm interested in understanding, I would think that the chef community that works in a meat product kind of community, not your vegetarian chefs, not your vegan chefs, but those that are working with meat, would be okay with hunting. Should and is that pervasive? Like you're not, you're seeing that as the chef's community.

[Leon Challis Davis]

I've, I've never seen any chef not appreciate the hard work that involves in getting pheasant, venison, partridge, duck, wild meat to them. You know, I'm lucky. I've worked in higher end restaurants, but I think that is where game meats mostly sort of used now, gastropubs, higher end dining, it hasn't yet moved its way down to the chefs who perhaps don't have as much love for their ingredients. That's just how things are always going to be. You'll have a, have a certain group of restaurants where most things come in vac bags and get reheated and that's cooking. But for the chefs who get to play around with their ingredients, perhaps they're getting deer in the skin or they're at least getting pheasants in the feather and they get to actually process the whole. You know, that's something that you only get to do in the UK with game. You know, I don't think I can, I can't even think of. It's legal to supply chickens in the feather to, to restaurants in the uk. It's probably something that's just not possible.

[Robbie]

Yeah, I don't think so.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Whereas you can get grouse on 12 August delivered to your restaurant. And I, I can remember my first 12th as a chef in the back plucking grouse that were going to be used that evening.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Wow.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And that was a really cool experience. I'd never seen a grouse in the wild, let alone handled one, plucked one, cooked one. Of course we did one for, for everyone to taste. That was a really Important part of sort of working in, in that restaurant. I guess there are some chefs perhaps who just aren't interested in, in the actual act of hunting. But I don't think there's any, any sort of objections from that community as to, to where that meat comes from.

[Robbie]

Leon, I assume you're a hunter.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

I do shoot. Yeah, I am. I was shooting last weekend.

[Robbie]

So let me ask this question, because you both have answered me the same way. When I asked you, Sanjay and Leon, you are a hunter. You didn't answer me back saying, I'm a hunter. You, you responded back to me saying, leon, I'm a shooter.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, yeah, so, so hunting, I think, is a very American terminology and certainly, probably, probably anything continental that isn't British. We don't, we don't really say we go out hunting. Whereas, you know, Sandre said earlier, we stalk, we stalk deer, so. And we shoot birds. That is kind of how we, we become a thing.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And remember, it comes from the, the sort of more traditional British use of the word hunt. Hunting is done from horseback.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yes.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And you're either hunting foxes, stags, otters, bands here still. I mean, you get our band, but that's the traditional. So if someone said, oh, are you in the hunt? That will be your local group who have a pack of hounds of scent working dogs. Yeah, they all have their own horses and you are part of a formal hunt.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

So.

[Robbie]

Got it.

[Leon Challis Davis]

It's like faux pas in the uk if you ask someone, oh, do you hunt? And you say, oh, yes, I, you know, I shoot deer. Well, they're actually really asking, do you ride?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Do you ride horses?

[Leon Challis Davis]

Do you, do you ride horses? Can you join if you were asked to go and do what we do now, which is scent hunting?

[Robbie]

So, you know, okay, shooting and stalking. Differences between birds and deer. I like that.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah. So I, I, I shoot. So I birds, predominantly all year round.

[Leon Challis Davis]

You've been stalking as well, And I do stalk, yeah.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

And, and yeah, for me, going back to your question. Well, about chefs, certainly when, you know, I started cooking in 1998.

[Robbie]

So you've got a chef background too, Leon?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

I was chef 20, 25 years now. Amazing.

[Robbie]

Okay, Okay.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

I started at rosette level and worked all my way up to 2 Michelin Spa and worked with some phenomenal chefs over the years. So, yeah, been very, very lucky. But, you know, I've got a, my whole family's got a background. My nan's a chef, my auntie's a chef, my uncle's a chef. So we're all, we all come from that. But what I'm sort of getting to is that, you know, 20 years ago when I first started, I was pretty much sent down to the butchers to work with them, see where all my meat came from. I was sent off to go and look at fruit and veg markets. I've been. There's a one in France which is quite renowned, which is in Paris, which is the international market. It's. It's not just raw veg, they've got meat, fish, dairy and everything. Is the biggest food market in the world. I think it is. It's just outstanding. And you get an appreciation of where all your food comes from. So there is always an appreciation for anyone, anyone. Whether you're eating wild meat or eating whatever it is, maybe as a chef you have an appreciation of that product. So I think there is no doubt that chefs don't have a problem with. With any. At the end of the day, it all has to be floated. Right. Humanely dispatched or whatever you want to use as the word harvest. I'm trying to get everyone away from culling the word cull. I hate the word cull because we do a lot of culling and it reminds everyone in the UK of badger culling. And that's always a bad word to talk about. Yeah, it's a. Exactly. Tb. So I hate the word culling and I think you can use. Yeah.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Also makes people think of sort of some sort of enclosed space where you just go in and pick out yeast. Yeah.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Just, you know, shoot stuff for the sake of it. And it's not what it's about. We harvest it. You know, we harvest those carcasses and, you know, yes, we do shoot duck, but we are harvesting pheasants and mallard etc and things like that. So a lot of word terminologies work a lot better for us in the UK because we want to get people attracted to understand it and sort of, as you were saying before about meat out of packets, getting people to really understand what wild meat is, is. Unfortunately, we do. We see a lot of people selling carcasses that are whole and that birds are whole or in feather. And I think we need to, as a country, if you want to see wild meat really take off, we need to see it in everyday brands. We need to see it on high street and that. We need to see it in packets because people are used to packet cooking these days. You know, we had a really nice stage. Like I was saying before COVID during COVID everyone making their own breads. I mean, you Couldn't buy yeast, I don't think anywhere in the next 20 miles near me because people making so much bread but, but they got to really understand their meats and you know, more grass fed, more organic meat was bought during COVID than ever before. That number has dropped off now because people are going back to their old ways in that sort of sense. But what we have seen is an uptake of quality. We're now seeing butchers busier than ever before with opening people opening butchers left, right and center. Yes, we do know that some are going under but it's more of the quality ones that are surviving because people are going to. And the fair price ones. There are some absolutely extortionate butchers in London that have got, you know, really big money for venison fillets. Colossal. You know, 60 pound a kilo for fillet which is just wild, you know. Yeah, it's, it's interestingly that that's the.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Same price at our local butcher in Banquery. You know, this is a small town of couple of thousand people in Aberdeenshire where the venison traveled all of 20 miles to get there and they're at 55 a kilo for venison. Philip?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, it's, it's true, it's, it's. And this is, and this is where we're having a problem in the UK and I think this is half of the problem is that we, people see wild meat as a gentry sport sport and I'll add that now people see it as a sport and they see it as a gentry sport. So gentry being the upper echelons of money that meaning whatever they're shooting becomes more expensive because they've shot it because they're, it doesn't make any sense when actually if you roll back, you know, time and time, ages before we were doing this on large levels, it was quite normal to, for everyone to be eating peasant and, and pigeon and, and partridge and, and mallard across the uk.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Let alone rabbit and, and all the sort of classic poverty foods.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Aaron, you know, there's some really amazing.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Brilliant is what I should say. I think, I think it's interesting that you mention the sort of COVID impact. One of the bits that I think isn't highlighted enough is that Covid really decentralized the market for a lot of smaller producers of meat in the UK because customers adapted really quickly to online shopping and delivery. Cold refrigerated delivery of meat, of cheese, of products that they simply couldn't get in the shops or they didn't want to go out. And they started having those delivered a lot more. And I was working in, in that business at the time and I've seen the impact that that's then had on a lot of estates who have managed to diversify and who will now sell you half a deer butchered by post at a much better price than you'd be able to get in your local butcher. And I think those sort of movements that not only provide people with meat at a better price point, they encourage the use of the entire animal, not just the loin, the fillets. And they provide a direct link between the estate, the people, the stalker, so that the hunter who's doing the manual work and the customer at the end. You cut out a lot of the middlemen that are taking a cut, but also unlinking that process. You know, when you have your guests over for that dinner, you can say, oh yeah, this is venison from there, from that estate. And that I think is really. Yeah. Or from this specific person, which I think is a really powerful thing. But it was something that Covid definitely accelerated because pre Covid, there are only a couple of butchers doing delivery by post. There were a couple who'd been experimenting with it for a long time, but it wasn't popular. You said a lot of concerns from folk about meat arriving too warm or anything like that. But also the technology improved a lot during COVID Courier networks are quicker, more robust now. It's a really saturated market. There's a lot of people getting involved in the, in the online delivery sort of ecosystem because they've realized that they can make a better margin than going through their traditional processes. And I think that's a really, a really good thing for the consumer and the supplier. So, yeah, it's been really interesting to see the answers.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Sorry, Russ. Yeah, I, I, I couldn't agree more. I think that, you know, we, we see a company which you over in America, a lot of people know Mike Robinson.

[Robbie]

Yeah, I know him very well.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, Mike is a good, good friend of mine and you know Dearbox.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Look at, look at what's doing, what a phenomenal job that is. And there are others popping up as well. You've got Curtis Pitts doing amazing stuff down in Devon and you've got a new, brand new processor opened up here in the UK in Newbury Oakland Park. There's just, there's more about it now than ever before. And I think for anyone that's out there that is wanting to try wild meat, there is never a Better time than now because it's, it's really starting to come to the forefront in, in news that was announced recently. You've got Levy who are an arm of Compass. Compass is quite huge in the States as well. It's Matt, it's the biggest contract caterer here in the UK. They look after I would say probably 60, 60 of all sporting stadia in the UK. Your football, your cricket, tennis, rugby, horse riding, polo events, things like that. They look after all those big sporting events. Various events across the uk. They've just agreed to start pushing venison across their menus, removing beef entirely from their menus. Going on a sustainable carbon journey.

[Robbie]

Yeah, but that's, that's almost like flipping, you know, 180 degrees the, the other way versus like man. There's nothing wrong with beef.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

You know, there's not.

[Robbie]

Come on.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

I totally agree and unfortunately this is, this is a problem we have in, in, in the UK's ill informed people not understanding the, the, the basics of, of carbon footprint here in the UK and also of, of that impact on, on life. You know, if, if you were to, if you were to really put it all in a box, we should only, you know, we should only be eating anything that's 20 miles within, within the, where you're sat. But you know what? We, we can't do that across the country. It is impossible because of the fact that we have shut down so many dairies, we've shut down so many growers, people aren't growing the fruits and veg that we used to have anymore. You know, so much land that was arable is now not. So there's loads of different factors so they have to explore it. But what they should be looking at is environmental impact and we should be talking more as stalkers, shooters, hunters, whatever you want to call this as a community. We need to talk more about the environmental impact that we have a positive gain on the UK's British countryside than, than, than any other industry doing, doing conservation efforts. You know, it's it, it. There's a guy, I tell you who should talk to Rob. There's a guy called Ian Coggill.

[Robbie]

He used to be talk to Coggers. Coggers is amazing.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, he is because he spoke to Tarquin as well, which is another great friend of mine that they talk absolute truth. And Coggers's point of view on so much stuff is just truth.

[Robbie]

I feel, I feel actually blessed that I can call him. I, because Emily at the end called him Coggers is like oh I want to call you coggers. He's like, you call me coggers? I was like, okay, I'm going to call you coggers, dude.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

That dude's so funny. We, we did Tarkin's event a couple of years ago and it's my first ever time up there. I've been up there a few times taking people up there as well. And we're all sat around and talk. Was calling him coggers and he was coggers. Was calling him tarts. And I was like, I like this. And then we, there was only a few of us left around the dinner table and he went, leon, what's your nickname? And I was like, yeah, you, you don't want to know that one. It's a bit of a weird situation. And I ended up telling him and now that's what he called. Every time he sees me, he's like, all right, Honor. And I'm like, all right, coggers. Yeah, we have. But he's not draw and he's hell of a guy. But, but, but the point being is he talks truth. And I think that, you know, it's for me, the, the only way that we are going to get people to eat more venison, pheasant, partridge, mallard, whatever it may be, is to get people to understand the positive impact it has on our British countryside. And all the, the positivity of that is going to help those sales move it forward. You know, there is no one else out there doing the red regenerative growth projects of, you know, trees and countryside and hedgerows and the animals and all of this is data that anyone can get hold of through the gwct and you know, it's just so influential, it's crazy. And I think chefs understand that more. Once you show a chef, you know, taking a couple of Michelin stars, a very famous Michelin starred chef and his team to, to a processor a few months ago. And I just said, come and have a look at this. Come and have a look at that. Showed him all his amazing carcasses. This is brilliant. But then took him on a bit of a journey and he come out of it going well, why? I don't know. We should have more, you know, pheasant on the menu and partridge on the menu because of, because of what we're doing. And he just, he got it straight away. He totally understood what, what we need to do. But it's getting people to talk out about it. That's what, that's what needs to happen.

[Robbie]

Next yeah, well, that's why you're on this podcast.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Yeah. I do think the other, the other piece that we touched on earlier with, with pricing, I unfortunately am just a really big believer in sort of price sensitivity for customers and that the. One of the big things holding present partridge venison back is, is the perception of its value. So as you were saying earlier, the idea of it being a gentry or posh in inverted commas meat, and I think that's something that we're shifting quite well at the minute. We're making it more accessible. We're taking it out of just being venison Wellington venison loin with, you know, fine gravies and similar. We're making it a bit more approachful, a bit more accessible. You know, venison kebabs, venison curries, pheasant, you know, sausages that they remove a bit of that element from the association with, with poshness. But I think the bit that is coming and it will, it will happen naturally with the market. As people are investing money in these processing plants, in these new game handling, they're making everything more efficient. The price of game in the UK needs to come down. Now, I have more experience with venison than anything else because I do the processing for our farm shop on a Highland estate where I know the financials and I know the sort of the margins that we can make on an animal. But I'll give you a sort of case, case study that I do use a lot for people. So a 50 kilo hind, so a female red deer, if we were to sell that to a game dealer, the price has always been a pound a pound. Now, okay, as far as I know, that's been the price since about 1980, a pound a pound. So that's one pound sterling for one pound of meat, which would make that carcass worth about 110 pound. Okay, now 110 pounds back in 1990, early 2000s, was, was a good taking actually for a carcass. Now it's a lot less. So that's if we sold it on. Now, if I do my job well and I butcher that carCass, so that's 50 kilos with the skin on, but with the head, the feet off and all its guts removed, that's the condition that we weigh them in. I can get about 40%, 45% yield. So somewhere between 20, 25 kilos of meat off that. And I won't bore you with all the individual details, but as a shop, as our farm shop, where we sell directly to the customer, you know, no middleman between our gamekeeper who shoots it, me butchering it and it going on the shelf and being sold. That has a retail value at current prices of about 300-350lbs without any modifications being done to it. So that's, that's a good.

[Robbie]

Oh, so you're not. You're just leaving it as is. You're not processing it into a sausage, you're not processing it, processing it into anything. But, hey, it's off the bone here.

[Leon Challis Davis]

It is, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's for me, doing what I would consider the lowest value cuts. So high value cuts, things like doing haunch stakes, whole roast haunches, something where there's a bit more work to make it look a bit nicer to the consumer. We keep to really simple things. Vacuum sealed pouches of mints, dice, and I'll cut the loins into stakes. And if people want, you know, a whole haunch or a whole shoulder, I'll do it by request. So that's already tripling the value of that beast for us. Now, that's something that the minute a large proportion of that margin is taken by processes before it gets into supermarkets, which is why supermarkets have to sell things at the price that it is on the shelf.

[Robbie]

Sure.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And that's fair enough. I understand where margins do need to be made and that that's one of the costs of sort of setting up those businesses. The only challenge for me is that up here, and for a large part of the population in the UK of hunters estates, we have a very limited pool of venison processes. Very, very limited. And I'm talking. There was maybe two options for us across the entirety of Aberdeenshire. Who can cope with what we want? Regular collections and a price which does tend to mean price go up.

[Robbie]

Yep.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And that they make sure their prices go up. You know, one, one thing that I was particularly aggrieved about during COVID the price of venison never came down. You know, the price of venison, despite the main outlet for venison being restaurants that all closed. You know, those wholesale retailers never dropped the price of venison to sell it to the consumer. They weren't interested because they can keep it frozen, they can keep it on ice, they can actually just turn around to the estates at any point and say, we're not buying, we're not coming to get those carcasses, or if we are, we're not paying. And that's a dynamic that doesn't exist in other meat processing industries in the uk. There is always a buyer for lamb, you know, beef, chicken. There's always a buyer. Now, you might have to take less, but no one else can turn around in the busiest period of the year. So the first couple of weeks where we can start culling stags or culling hinds. I know you hate the word, but that's the sort of estate mentality is. Right, we've got the first two weeks to go. Let's get it done before they get any wilder, before the weather gets any worse. If that dealer rightly so fills up on capacity. No, we're not taking any more. And that is a real challenge because that means that there's good, nutritious local meat sitting that doesn't have a route to market. And I really strongly believe that if those processes scaled up capacity or if other processes entered the field, that you had more capacity for it. The. The price would drop and their margins would drop slightly, but the volume of sales would pick up so much that the overall picture would be better for them. They wouldn't be struggling to shift the lower value cuts, they'd be making more money on them because they'd be shifting a. A greater volume.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Leon Challis Davis]

If we increased the market for venison. And again, I'm a. You know, that's. That's something that I know more about compared to pheasant or partridge. I know the market. There's a bit more sort of flexible, I think, because the processing is easier.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Really.

[Leon Challis Davis]

That, I think, is what's missing at the minute. We've done a lot of groundwork. Chefs have done a lot of work. Groups like Eat Wild, there are other groups out there have done work in getting the consumer onto the idea of using this meat. And venison sales are going up in the uk. It's a great thing to celebrate. Venison sales. Game sales are increasing year on year, but we haven't got the capacity boosting at the same rate to match that demand and to bring the price down to make it more affordable. And I think it's something that would be a huge PR victory right now, would be if a game processor or a supermarket would be able to say, hey, help beat the cost of living crisis. We've dropped the price of venison to make it more affordable.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Mm.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And as soon as it comes down to a price that is the same as high quality beef mint, you know, I'm not trying to match bottom shelf reclaimed meat. I want to. I want it to be a High end product. But if you can get it down to the same price, people will try it.

[Robbie]

Yeah, for sure.

[Leon Challis Davis]

They'll have a go at it if it's not twice the cost of beef.

[Robbie]

Yeah, well said.

[Leon Challis Davis]

And that's something that, you know, I do get a bit of flack from, from game dealers for. I know that there's a lot of costs in their businesses that I don't see. You know, the cost of diesel is huge for them. You know, the price of diesel goes up, it costs them that much more to collect. The, the dreaded B word of Brexit means that we have fewer butchers available, you know, skilled butchers to process those deer. The cost of everything has gone up when it's come to refrigeration and transport. But I do think that they need to do some work on boosting the market, which they can do quite easily by dropping the price.

[Robbie]

Yeah. You know, it's funny, one of the analogies I use, you know, when people say, oh, venison is this sort of hoity toity? Very well, we don't really have that thought process around it in America, but the idea sort of sticks with the UK too, is that if you look at any sort of meat that you get, what is the one that's probably the most expensive for you to get, which is probably venison, okay, to go hunted and whatnot, but what's the one that you are willing to give away for free the most? And it's venison, right? You're willing to say, hey, I've got this, I've got this, I've got this. You can have it, do you want it? I have never in my life heard of someone going to the grocery store, the supermarket, buying 12 ribeyes cheaper than they would to get the, the hind off the hill and coming home and calling up their buddies saying, guys, I got a bunch of ribeyes, who wants one?

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, it's absolutely baffling. And you nailed it there. It baffles me still now that we give away so much pheasant, partridge, mallard, pigeon and venison online on this, on this website, which is called Giving up the Game. It's got about 49,000 followers in the UK, which I think is quite, quite good. It's fantastic. Check it out. And the amount of meat that's like, I've got a freezer full of mallards, who wants it? And then puts a postcode and you're like, what?

[Leon Challis Davis]

Okay.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

But I think it's all that I think is a Processing thing. I think people struggle to process. Hey, take our breasts. I think videos that, there's some amazing people on Instagram that do videos of processing bird of just taking the, the breasts and, and the thighs out. You know, the rest isn't we, I think we as a nation we see like we don't really think about it. We'll go, oh, we need to process this down to the carcass so it looks like a, you know, the chickens you buy on the shelves, you know that it's all completely de feathered and, and all the, the, the guts are out. I think we have that perception in the uk. That's how we need to process game. But actually you only need to take the breasts and the thighs out. Everything else is, is, is irrelevant unless you want a whole roasted bird. But you know, a lot of people don't understand it. Chickens are pumped full of 7% water and salt solution. Every chicken in the UK, unless you're buying, certainly shop bought and a lot of restaurant bought unless you are buying a farm grade High welfare 90 day Somerset Saxon chicken is, they're normally all full of water solution. So we have a misconception of what our meat should really be. And pheasant is, people call it too dry or it's too gamey or one, you need to be processing the birds one or two days after being shot so that they're, they are super fresh. You won't get any gamey flavors from, from fresh birds. And two, a lot of people, we don't hang birds as well, so forget about that. We don't hang chickens or turkeys, so forget about hanging birds personally and I think too as well, we don't need to have it's dry because it's running around all the time. It's not at levels and the water levels because it's been pumped full of water, but it's, it's doing its job. So it's gonna be a lot because.

[Leon Challis Davis]

It'S four, six months old or you know, even a couple of years, you know.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, sold, exactly. So it's, it's not, it's not, you know, Chicken in the UK is 12 weeks, sometimes 812 weeks from chick to plate. And I think that a lot of people don't need to understand that they can grow longer, that they take a.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Lot something that, that you know, going back to, you know, I've got a lot of friends in the farming community. I want everyone to enjoy good beef, good lamb, good chicken, good pork. I think something that the shooting community hasn't done quite as well is, especially when it comes to, say, nutrition or similar, is we always compare ourselves to the popular beef, chicken, pork. Whereas game needs to stand on its own. Right. You know, and I think I agree with Leon. I think there was a lot of, you know, oh, pheasants, too gamey. That's what I, I always hear from people and I'm like, well, you just, you heard that. But I doubt most people have actually really tried it. It's just something that they've heard, oh, it's a gamey meat. In the same way a lot of people might find lamb, oh, it's too gamey or it's too strong and say, well, when was the last time you actually tried cooking yourself? And not one overcooking it, which, you know, gets rid of any juiciness that it might have. Or for me, if it's got a strong flavor, perfect. That means it's great to go with other strong flavors. You know, if you go to India and you have a chicken in India and these are totally different caliber of birds, they are much stronger flavored. They're much more comparable to pheasants in UK and they're much better suited for a curry or for slathering in a really nice spicy tandoori rub and grilling because they've got their own flavor that can carry through. But I think, I think we need to try and move on a little bit from the, from the constant comparisons to, to the farmed alternatives because we're never going to get it to be exactly like farmed options. We want to highlight the things that it's better at. The, you know, yes, it is going to be lower fat. And for people who are fat, you concerned about the amount of fat in their diet, great. That's a reason for them to pick it up. What I'd love to see is people buying it because it is pheasant, not because it's better than chicken, but because they enjoy that taste, they enjoy that product. And again, I think that, and it's something that Leon and I definitely have struggled with is you have to put it in a format that people are going to try it.

[Robbie]

Yeah. And it's a generational shift. Right. That's, that's something that's going to, it's not going to happen in six months, six years. It's a generational shift of, of being fed as a kid pheasant. You're just used to it as a grown up kind of scenario. Leon, tell me, tell the folks, where can they get more information. If people are in the UK, where can they get more information about Eat Wild UK? Yeah.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

So we've got an abstract Internet address. WW Eat Wild Do. That's it. Don't add any more UK's or dot coms or orgs or net whatever else, which I've had a million, you know, I. People email me, they finally get through and they go, I've sent you four emails, I put.comuk.net.org and I've gone, yeah, but I, I text you my email. Yeah, but it didn't have a bit enough to. I said, no, that is it, that's all it is. So Eat Wild do. And on there, there will be a whole bunch of recipes that Sanjay, myself, Louisa, we've had some guest chefs do. We've had Sarah, we've got some amazing. There was some really, really cool stuff on.

[Robbie]

Dude, there's some amazing stuff here. Like, yeah, partridge momos, Kali merch car. I don't even know what that is. Fizz and sati sticks, carnata pheasant, coconut and tamarind curry day.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Really interesting recipes, which I think is, is key. Like, they're really good.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

They'Re a special.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Occasion dish, a lot of them, which I really like because it's about celebrating what, what you've got. And you know, I think, I think they are really excellent recipes.

[Robbie]

I need to get, I need to like, take a little advice myself and try and start doing this because as I said, I'm just like a. Take the sausage out the freezer and cook it.

[Leon Challis Davis]

A lot of the recipes have then got actual videos on the cooking on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook as well. And I think a lot of people I found, follow those sort of recipes, especially when it comes to frying out spices or marinating. It's really easy to visualize when someone's showing you, right, this is how you spatch cocker pheasant or this is how.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

You take the breasts off before you're.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Going to do this. Because obviously the hope is that people might use those recipes when they've been given a brace of pheasants or when they've shot a brace themselves. So it sort of ties the whole thing together quite nicely.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Yeah, there's, there's loads of stuff on there and I ask everyone to go and have a look. And also on there, which is quite cool, we've got a little feature which is stockist and this stockist is like a little map. So we were working with a company, Anthony Hell of a great big barn is powered by big barn and it's got a little map. Now, there are plenty of other people on here. There are loads of stockists, but it gives you. You can look away.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

I live in Bristol. I'm going to zoom in on Bristol and I can find that. There's a stockist that there. I want to go over to Wales. We've got Suffolk, Norfolk, etc. So, yeah, there's loads of stuff. The website's great to look at now, as Sanjay said then, tick tock, Instagram. We just had our first video reach a million views.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Major.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

So Louisa wanted to do squirrel. It's a pest here in the uk. It eats really nice. Actually. I did a couple of squirrel tacos with the lads a couple of years ago when we're out shooting. It actually is a really nice meat. I know a lot of the US and Americans would consider it to be a rat potentially. Or for us, it's a tree wrap. But it eats well. That's just hit a million views. There's loads of stuff. Yeah, there really is. Get online and have a look.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Cool.

[Robbie]

Eatwild co. I'll end it by saying one of the famous dishes here in the south is chicken, chicken and dumplings, but people that are very wild game focused will replace it with squirrel. So squirrel and dumplings and it's an excellent meat to go in that dish. So, Sanjay, Leon, I know that there's a bright future in front of us. I wrote a bunch of notes. So thank you for coming on. I really appreciate the both of you. I appreciate Eat Wild uk. Go check them out. Eat Wild co and please let us know how we can help you. That's what we're built for. We're built to communicate narratives around hunting. We're very good at it and I'd love to help you do that.

[Sanjay Bhattacharya]

Thank you very much.

[Leon Challis Davis]

Yeah, Robbie, thank you very much for having us on.

[Robbie]

Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening. As always. Leave a review, share it with your friends and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.