Today is perhaps the holiest of holy days among sportsmen and women in the UK. It is the Glorious Twelfth of August, the day the shooting season opens.

Pannage is the practice of letting pigs freely roam around a forest so that they can feed on fallen acorns and other nuts. In medieval times it was beneficial to the forest since all those pigs rooting around would help turn the soil and since they were basically gorging on nuts, the pigs would quickly fatten for slaughter. An additional benefit was that by eating green acorns , which can be toxic to other farm animals, they reduced the risk of poisoning in horses and cows. In 1809 two brothers who bred and trained pointers and setters realized that they could train a pig to help them in yet another way. The could use it to find and point game!

So I fell into yet another rabbit hole today.

With a belly full of coffee and dogs snoozing at my feet, I thought I would put the finishing touches on a chapter I am writing about the golden age of bird dogs in the UK. But I needed just one more nugget of information, an interesting tidbit of trivia to give the reader a wee bit more insight into the period.