MAJOR General Dare Wilson has published a vivid collection of his 85 years of escapades hunting, shooting and fishing all over the world.

In The General’s Game Book: The Sporting Life of a Military Gentleman the former Deputy Lieutenant of Somerset and Exmoor National Park officer gives a “frame-by-frame” chronology, starting with his initiation into country sports aged six on ‘Mousie’, a Shetland pony.

Before the age of ten Dare was a deft young fisherman, and he was given a .410 shotgun on his eighth birthday.

Drawing on his expansive collection of old shooting registers, notebooks and diaries spanning almost nine decades of sporting activity, he interweaves sporting memories with his recollections of postings, assignments and responsibilities as a high-ranking military man.

One of the book’s quirks is the appendix, listing his 12 black Labradors in a lifetime of outdoor adventures.

Dinah, a dog “in a class of her own”, “almost certainly” saved his life “during the historic blizzard of 1942” in what the Met Office said was Scotland’s coldest February since 1900, writes Dare.

Among other tales is dicing with death on a weekend’s wild goose chase, going on a snake hunt with a US Army corporal in Georgia, rat hunting at boarding school and the “rugged charm” of wildfowling.

Dare also won a reputation as “the chap who shoots with a flame gun” thanks to his concoction of sporting ammunition during wartime Britain.

The General’s Game Book: The Sporting Life of a Military Gentleman costs £15.99 from Pen and Sword Books on www.pen-and-sword.co.uk or on Amazon.