No, the two haven?t fallen on hard times.

It started with a drunken dare made during a discussion about the nature of being a carnivore, explains Mark.

?We were talking about how people have become so complacent about going to the grocery store and buying meat, Jules said if he is going to eat meat he should be prepared to see the whole process right the way through.?

Jules says: ?There?s not much difference between killing a fish and killing a chicken and no one has much problem killing a fish.?

Undeterred by the rumours about the Island?s wild chickens being disease-riddled the pair hatched a plan to trap one with a handful of corn left under a suspended cardboard box which would fall down when yanked with a string.

They picked a spot near Castle Harbour recently where chickens are fed by the public and got to work.

?We got out of the car and the chickens came straight up to us,? says Mark. ?We set up the box but it was too light.

?It would lay across their backs, they would carry on eating, before realising something was on their back.?

He feared it was only a matter of time before the box disappeared into the bushes on the back of a particularly sturdy hen.

After half an hour they switched to a plastic bin found nearby but the first chicken escaped.

?It fell down,? says Mark. ?I held up the corner of the box to grab it but the chicken bolted through the three-to-four inch gap, it went between my legs.?

?There were times when we felt a little ridiculous, the two of us hiding around the corner with a bit of string in our hands.

?Two men asked us what we were doing.?

But when they found out the pair were after chickens they pointed at a particularly noisy rooster in the hope the pair could trap it and restore night-time peace for an exasperated neighbourhood.

?We got a few concerned looks from bypassers,? adds Jules. ?It may have been to do with the explorers hats. People wanted to know if we were catching cats.?

The pair tried another spot before returning and finally succeeding, says Mark.

?Two went in, one was a rooster and one was a hen, we didn?t want to try the rooster, we found a net, pulled the corner up and we caught the hen.

?We thought one would be enough rather than four or five, we didn?t know if it would be tasty.?

Then came the task of quickly dispatching the chicken by ringing its neck, which fell to Jules. Death came instantly.

And then it was off home to share the spoils. De-feathering took seconds. ?You put it in boiling water and the feathers come away,? explains Mark.

A friend had advised him on gutting chickens. ?I have spent my life cleaning fish, it was similar to that. It wasn?t unpleasant.

?A number of people have said these chickens are full of parasites, this had none. I can?t remember any nits. I didn?t find anything in the meat or soft organs.?

So was it all worth it?

?It was rather small? says Mark. ?About the size of a Cornish game hen but the flavour was the finest I have had. Compared to the chickens I have had from a store it had a lot more flavour.

?The meat was a little tough especially the legs but it wasn?t stringy. It had hardly any fat on it at all.?

Jules elaborates: ?It was tough and chewy, like a well done steak.?

They have since learned covering the bird and cooking it slowly with water can greatly tenderise the meat.

?It?s a story to tell,? says Mark. ?Most people say ?good on you?. Everyone asks what it tasted like and now I can say from experience they taste great if a little tough.?

However few, apart from his wife Tiffanie, were keen to try a piece.

?I took some to work, everyone was interested when I described the hunt but when I pulled a piece out they didn?t want to taste it.?

Neither viewed the enterprise a waste of time.

?I think if you knew what you were doing it would be much more efficient. If we had bin at the start we could have got a chicken in minutes,? Mark says.

Asked why he had bothered when chickens were so cheap in the shops Jule says: ?Why do people climb mountains??