At the Kirkstyle Inn in Slaggyford, Northumberland, Great British Game Week gave diners two ways to get to know the game from the surrounding countryside. The pub’s programme paired a five-course dinner featuring locally sourced wild game with a cookery masterclass led by head chef Connor Wilson. The masterclass was fully booked.
The annual celebration ran from the 2 to 9 November 2026, with special menus, events and recipes encouraging people to try British game. At Swinton Estate in North Yorkshire, the Terrace’s Game Week lunch menu paired estate game with produce from the hotel’s four-acre walled garden. At Welbeck Farm Shop, the butchery team offered advice on choosing cuts and cooking them at home.
For upland communities, there’s a good reason to celebrate game ingredients. When a pub buys from a nearby supplier, it gives diners a taste of what comes from the land around them, and supports local producers.
Where deer are culled to give young trees a chance to grow, putting the venison on local menus makes a sustainable and impactful use of the meat. Putting game into a pie and saving the bones for stock are simple ways to make a bird go further and waste less, and is so much better for the environment than factory farmed chicken. The carbon footprint difference between fresh locally sourced game and some New Zealand saltmarsh lamb is reason enough for us all to start trying this approach.
There’s plenty of room for game in an ordinary kitchen, too. During the week, Eat Wild chef Leon Challis-Davies shared a partridge stroganoff recipe with chestnut mushrooms and pappardelle, ready in around half an hour. Scottish Venison suggested using venison mince in familiar suppers such as bolognese and chilli. A venison burger with mushroom ketchup is a favourite autumnal treat.
The specials may have come off the menu, but the next time you’re at the butcher’s, ask what game is in season, where it came from and what they’d do with it. You might come home with a new and sustainable version of something you already love to cook.