A road curves from the centre foreground through a ford to a country house in the middle distance. To the left are dunes with a blasted tree silhouetted against the sky beside a fence, dominating the composition, a fallen section of its trunk nearby. To the right, the landscape stretches away past a river and rustic bridge to distant buildings and low hills. On a clear, bright day, five men with hounds and retrievers are out hawking and shooting. In front of the house, a mounted falconer has just released a hawk that soars up in the sky and is glimpsed between the tree's branches. One of his two servants is seen on the extreme left with a ring of hawks; another, with a long staff, is resting in the centre foreground. The latter is addressed by one of two sportsmen, who points out the approach of the hawking servants' master while his shooting companion crosses the ford just behind him.