Chapter X: Part 10

It is not possible to have several spaniels seeking dead at one time unless they are all within sight; but there is no fear of tearing the game when the dogs can be seen, as they can be upon a moor, or in open cover, or in fields.

The difference of opinion between sportsmen as to which are the better dogs for retrieving probably arises because of mental reservations of those who express opinions. The advocates of spaniels are probably speaking of a team, and those who sing the praises of retrievers are thinking of one retriever against one spaniel. Except upon the line of a runner, a single retriever is usually much better than a single spaniel on any ground, and although the spaniel is quicker on the actual line of the runner, he usually takes much longer than the retriever to find the fall of the bird or the place to start from. Altogether, the retriever is preferable, unless a team of retrieving spaniels can be worked at the same time, and even then several retrievers will probably be as satisfactory, except that they take up more room in traps and motor cars.

The best spaniel for all-round purposes is the English springer; he is active, stays well, and can retrieve well. The clumber cannot be coupled with him, because he is not supposed to stay, and moreover he is as big as a retriever to get about country, and without being nearly as active. In the New Forest, where shooters are limited to a fixed number of dogs, nobody will look at a clumber; so that for heavy work a change of team, or dog, at lunch-time would probably be needed were clumbers relied upon. No such charge can be brought against either English or Welsh springers, but the cockers are only one remove better than toys, the field black spaniels, and the Sussex breeds.

Irish water spaniels have been mostly kept and altered for show, and the few that the author has seen at work of late years have been extremely moderate performers.

THE BREAKING OF THE SPANIEL

The spaniel should be broken early. Eight months old is quite late enough to enter on game if good breaking is required, and all hand breaking should precede this entry, and should follow the lines proper both for retrievers and pointers as far as they apply to individual requirements.

If one has to allow dogs to “run in” and chase game, to get up their keenness for hunting, it is a misfortune, and the task of breaking will become all the harder. In a good breed this encouragement will not be required. It is always hard to create opposites simultaneously, and to _make_ a dog both bold and obedient.

The principal requirement in the hunting spaniel is nose, quickness, never going out of gun-shot, instant obedience, and bustling up game in a hurry without chasing it when it is up, dropping to shot, and retrieving dead and wounded game when told. It is a large order, and yet dogs that can do it all often make no more than £15 at auction, and sometimes less.

It is obvious that a well-bred spaniel will start hunting as soon as he is introduced to the smell of game, then his range must be taught either by using a line or by voice and whistle. In thick covert the former is not possible. The principal difficulty is to stop the puppy as soon as he has moved his game. Again, either voice or cord can be made to do the business, but probably a little of both will bring about the required education sooner than either by itself. The system should be to prevent the chase, not to punish for that which is instinctive in the pupil. Consequently, the quick obedience to voice spoken of as necessary for setters and pointers, becomes doubly so for spaniels, and they really ought to tumble over to voice or gun as if the latter had done it. But this instinctive obedience cannot be taught during entry upon game, and consequently until it is perfected the puppy is not fit to enter.

It is much more of a strain on the instinct of the spaniel to stop him when he is bustling up game than it is to stop the setter when game rises or runs away from his point. In one case restraint follows upon restraint, in the other it follows excitement let loose.

Retrieving should be taught the same way as for a retriever proper, and if it precedes the work of entering upon the finding of live game, the latter will be all the easier for the breaker.

Wild spaniels in very thick cover are of more use than a highly broken team. Where the covert is so thick that a worker of spaniels cannot get into the thick parts, his highly broken dogs will not go there either, because they have learnt to keep near to him. In this case, four or six couples of wild spaniels to hunt up wild pheasants, woodcock, and rabbits, make beautiful sport, but they usually need several whippers-in to keep them somewhere in the neighbourhood of the shooters.

A friend of the author’s was once expatiating on the improved methods of pheasant shooting, and explaining that the last generation knew nothing of the charms and the art of killing driven birds, when, at that moment, wild spaniels on the hill above us flushed four cock pheasants, they came at us swerving through the trees down hill at a cannon-ball pace, and four shots did not touch a feather. Yet this was the old style of pheasant shooting—at least in that district, and it was on record there that the last generation were first-rate performers in covert and out. Amongst other birds they killed flighting duck and sometimes flighting teal also at night, all of which, including the down-hill rocketers from the spaniels on the hillside, are out of all proportion harder to kill than the best birds that ever flew across the open and flat ground from one covert to another, however the latter have “sailed” and “curved” in their flights.

By mutual consent, after missing the cocks, we changed the subject of conversation.

It has been said that field trials have brought some good dogs to the front, and enabled those who go to trials to judge for themselves of the merits of individuals and of races; but they have also done injury in one direction. There may be differences of opinion amongst sportsmen on how spaniels should be judged at field trials, but there can be no question that the use of field trials as a mere show dog advertisement is misleading and objectionable. As these remarks are written, there is an advertisement of spaniels appearing in which it is stated that the owner’s breed has won “800 field trial and show prizes.” What the author knows of the breed is that upon one occasion they won a prize at a field trial,—a prize that was ear-marked for the breed,—and won it because competition was weak and limited. That they have won 799 show prizes is not denied. But if this is the way to advertise show dogs, then the sooner field trials are dropped the better in the true interests of sport. In this direction lies the danger to sporting interests; and little differences about means and methods of judging are of _comparatively no importance_. A variety of judges have acted under a large variety of rules, and to the credit of the former, and in spite of the latter, the best dogs have nearly, or quite always, got the stakes. But there is also a tendency amongst judges to give the smaller prizes and certificates of merit because a dog has done no harm, although he may not have done any good.

If it is correct to absolutely disqualify a dog for ranging beyond gun-shot and for chasing game (and it must be so in the interests of sport), then, on the ground that every dog can be broken but not a tenth of them are worth breaking, it is also essential to disqualify a dog that cannot find game.

It is because the latter has not always been done that these remarks are necessary. The quantity of game left behind unfound by the dogs that have won minor prizes has surprised not only the author, but others also who have come to visit these trials once, _and no more_. On the other hand, the best winners have always been the best finders that passed the not very severe breaking standard, as indicated above, and that is obviously right.

GROUSE THAT LIE AND GROUSE THAT FLY

The shooter who wants grouse driving and he who wishes for shooting over dogs are by no means best suited in the same districts. The distribution of grouse must be mentioned before any just estimation of the causes of the different manners, habits, and instincts of the grouse can be formed.

The birds have one special altitude which suits them best in each locality, but this particular altitude differs with latitude and longitude.

Where the grouse are best served by high altitudes is in the south-eastern border of their distribution. They are at home on the top of the Peak district of Derbyshire, and exist much lower down. Farther north and farther west their best moors are lower, and this goes on until in Caithness the best elevation for the grouse is only about 100 feet above sea-level, as it is also in Argyllshire. Over all the intermediate country, between parallel lines pointing north-east and south-west, the grouse are best served by an intermediate elevation of moorland decreasing towards the north-west. They exist in large numbers, but not the largest numbers, above and below this elevation. This is generally true, and although it would be easy to point to moors a few hundred feet out of the theoretical best elevation that are better than others exactly in it, there are then always local conditions that favour such moors, and these are not to be found on the moors in the better elevations on the same parallels. The moors of Dartmoor and the heaths of Norfolk are both on the same north-east to south-west parallels. Probably neither of them are for the most part high enough to suit grouse in that latitude and longitude. It must be remembered that if red grouse are, as is believed to be the case, the same bird as the willow grouse, or rype, they are of Arctic origin, and, like other organisms of that origin, survive out of the Arctic regions only at certain higher altitudes as latitude decreases. The lower Dartmoor is obviously too low for them, but possibly places could be discovered on the moor where they would do well. The lower moors there are smothered with the bell heather (_erica_), and this is not the food of the grouse. The real “ling” (_calluna_) of the grouse food grows on Dartmoor much more scarcely, and although there is plenty for old grouse, it is not easy to see how chicks could get about to find enough of their natural food amongst what, to them, would be forests of useless vegetation—namely, the bell heather. On the South Wales moors the grouse are not very plentiful; but the species is better served in North Wales, which is on the same north-east by south-west parallel line as Yorkshire.

It is a curious fact that these parallels also supply an index to the wildness or otherwise of the grouse, but not exactly. It would be more nearly correct to say that this is true except so far as it is modified by insular conditions. What is meant is that the parallel lines hold good except as regard the islands where the grouse lie better than their north-westwardness would suggest from the behaviour of the grouse in the same parallels on the mainland.

It has been said that the wet climate makes birds lie: this is obviously wrong, because they do so in Caithness, which is the driest county in Scotland by the statistics.

It has also lately been repeatedly said that the Gulf Stream makes them lie, but this also is surely wrong, because the one part most affected by the Gulf Stream is the Port Patrick promontory in Wigtonshire, where the author has found the grouse as wild as in Aberdeenshire. Yet in Arran and in Islay, but slightly to the north-west of this point, they lie like stones _all the year_. They do so also on the west coast of Argyllshire, on that of Ross-shire, and in the whole of Sutherland- and Caithness-shires, and also in the Lews and that group, in Skye and in the Orkneys.

Elevation makes no difference to their instinctive habits, which are clearly in-bred in the birds, and whether in the same districts grouse are found at 2000 or at 100 feet above sea-level their instinctive habits will be always those of the district, and are not varied by hill and strath.

What, then, is it that makes some birds lie for security all the season, and others fly for security as soon as they can use their wings? It has been said that if you drive birds one year you will always have to drive them, because it alters their characters. The author held to that faith for years, but has lived to see the error of his imaginings. It is very natural to suppose, if you teach the parents to fly for life, that the children will inherit the same habit also. But although the author would be far from asserting, as some naturalists do, that life-acquired habits are _never_ transmitted, he knows that they are not often transmitted, and thinks that the growing, or rather grown, wildness of Yorkshire grouse can be amply explained on the Darwinian theory of the survival and breeding of the fittest.

Early in the nineteenth century the celebrated Colonel Hawker found the grouse so wild that he took himself back to Hampshire, voting grouse in August a fraud. He only shot a few that sat better than the rest, which implied that all those that sat worse than the rest were saved for breeding. This natural selection of the fittest went on for another fifty years, and then people took to driving grouse because they could get them in large quantities no other way. That seems simple enough; fifty or one hundred generations of selection of the wildest for breeding, and of the youngest for the pot, made the Yorkshire grouse breed earlier and breed wilder birds than before.

There is a natural and obvious apparent difficulty in accepting this theory, but it is only apparent and not real. It is this:—Why did not the grouse get wild in the same way and degree in the Highlands and the Islands and in Caithness-shire? The reason why they did not is probably that the Yorkshire grouse began by being strong enough and early enough to all rise in a brood by the 12th of August. Consequently, the early broods were saved. The Caithness-shire grouse and those of the Lews were later, and never were all ready to rise together in a brood by the 12th of August, and consequently the most backward were saved, since both barrels would be discharged at those first up, and the crouchers escaped while the shot was being rammed home in the muzzle-loaders.

If this is the true explanation of the difference of habit of the birds, its root cause can be seen at a glance every autumn on the heather—that is to say, its root cause, when the shot gun was first used to kill grouse upon the wing, was in the state of the heather. The bloom of this plant indicates the period when it started to shoot, and that is a fortnight earlier in Yorkshire than in Caithness and the Lews. It may be three weeks, or even more, but it is at least a fortnight.

The starting to bloom has no influence directly on the grouse nesting, but the starting of the plant to shoot has; and therefore if the survival of the fittest theory is accepted, all the wildness of the south-eastern grouse, and the hiding habit, or natural instinct, of the north-western grouse is explained by the state of forwardness of vegetation in the districts two hundred years ago, which in all probability was relatively what it is now.

Of course, what will make wild grouse lie now has not much to do with the matter. Falcons will make them lie, eagles will generally make them fly, as also will ravens. The birds are not very discriminating either, and make mistakes, for they frequently lie well under an artificial kite, and fly away if they see a heron in the sky. Probably they mistake one for a peregrine and the other for an eagle. But there do not appear to be enough peregrines anywhere now to permanently affect the habits of grouse. Probably when there were lots of them all grouse did lie well; we know that they did so, even in October, in the Duke of Gordon’s country in the time of Colonel Thornton’s tour in the Highlands, about 1803. But the peregrines have not ceased to exist merely in patches of country, and certainly not in the same degree as the south-east line of grouse distribution is remote or the reverse. It is clearly because of the falcons that the grouse acquired the habit of lying and hiding from danger in the first instance everywhere alike. That is not the question, but how it happened that when the danger ceased to exist in magnitude one lot of grouse preserved the ancient instinct and the other lot lost it.

Grouse that lie for protection are often spoken of as “tame,” but this term hardly truly expresses the primitive instincts found in the grouse of Ireland and the west and north of Scotland. Grey-lag geese in Caithness, nine hundred and ninety-nine times in a thousand, will fly at the sight of man; but once, at least, a grey-lag was observed cowering under an artificial kite, and this was not because he was tamer than usual, but because he was more scared and more wild than ever before, or since—for he was shot.

Most shooters in Scotland have doubtless observed that a little bad weather sends a lot of old grouse on to the tops of the hills, not on the high ptarmigan tops, but on to the bare places on the hills immediately above heather slopes. There they would not dare to go if there were a few peregrines about, because on such ground they are at the long-winged hawk’s mercy. It was not until between 1840 and 1860 that much headway was made in Scotland against the hawks, and it is quite probable that the grouse never would have acquired a taste for the “tops” if the peregrines had not been killed, and the present trouble about killing the old cocks would never have occurred in Scotland. This subject is referred to at greater length and in more aspects in the chapter dealing with grouse bags.

In Yorkshire, however, it seems obvious that the grouse were made wild by Act of Parliament—that is, by the fixing of a date for the opening of shooting which suited Scotland but did not suit Yorkshire at that time.

As everyone knows, there are doubts in the Highlands of Scotland as to the best means of shooting a moor for the benefit of its next season’s stock. From a conversation the author had in 1905 with Captain Tomasson, who is the most successful of preservers in Scotland by the almost exclusive driving method, the writer gathered that on one or two points Captain Tomasson could criticise some articles that the author had previously written, and do it in a manner to throw more light on the subject, and for this reason he asked the tenant of Hunthill if he would write a criticism of those articles, handling them in as severe a manner as possible. The latter very kindly consented, and the following letter is the result; but the ever-present want of space has not permitted more than an outline of his views, which more elaboration would make very much more interesting than this all too short letter is, or could be, from the nature of the case. In the next chapter the author has endeavoured to repeat the substance of the articles already referred to, in order that as much grouse lore as is practicable may be stored in this little work on so many shooting subjects. The articles referred to were entitled “The Difference of Effect in Driving Grouse in England and in Scotland,” or some such title, and it was not sought to be proved that driving was bad for Scotland, but merely that whereas driving increased Yorkshire grouse by 800 or more per cent., it has not done anything for Scotland. This is not to prove it bad, but merely to suggest that what has been gained in one way has been lost in another. That partial driving has reduced disease in Scotland is not likely, because we find that it is no more prevalent in Caithness, where there is no driving, than in the Highlands where there is. Besides that, can we expect it to do so when it failed so lamentably in Yorkshire, which was much more “driven” in and before 1872 than Scotland is now, and yet this practice was followed there by an outbreak of disease in 1873 and 1874 that has never been paralleled since? The author’s opinion is that bags made in these days truly indicate the stock of grouse; but when, in 1872, there were 10,600 grouse killed over dogs by three parties of two each on Glenbuchat, averaging 100 brace a day to each party (a fact which the owner, Mr. Barclay, has been kind enough to give me), there must then have been enough grouse left to have doubled the bag had driving occurred afterwards. The birds would not lie to be shot then in the middle of September, as everyone knows.

It may be fairly asked, “What is the use of double numbers if you cannot shoot them?” But that raises a very broad issue, and what the author has in mind is that overshooting now is far worse than want of attention was then. It is stated in a pamphlet issued by the Grouse Commission, that one acre of good young heather is enough to keep a covey of grouse for the season. As a matter of fact the moor is lucky when it rears half a grouse to the acre instead of a whole brood. In the author’s belief there is no reason past human powers to remove, why the acre should not breed the brood instead of the half-grouse. In fact, he has taken up this question in order to draw attention not only to the fact that season’s bags are smaller than they were in spite of improvements of all sorts, but to try and induce a search for a reason for this state of things in a contrary direction to that being taken. For this purpose he would refer possible readers to his chapter on “Game Birds’ Diseases,” and would also call to mind the very suggestive phase of wild life from Africa—namely, that when antelopes, buffalo, and zebra were in countless millions, nothing in the shape of disease retarded their increase, but as soon as they came to exist in isolation and small flocks, disease stepped in and well-nigh exterminated them. That the micro-organisms of some diseases are often present in the blood of the big game animals and do them _no_ injury, although they may be injurious to other animals, is also very suggestive of what may be possible in the future on our grouse moors—that is, if the practice of devoting them exclusively to grouse is persisted in.

“WOODTHORPE, NOTTINGHAM
“_October 2nd, 1906_

“DEAR MR. BUCKELL,—You ask me what I think as to your views _re_ grouse driving in Scotland, and the conversations we had together. I do not like to attempt to criticise, as I agree with you in nearly everything.

“As far as I can see, the point is this, whether the introduction of driving has resulted in larger bags in Scotland than in previous years? The case that you so ably put forward and support with so many industriously collected facts and with such originality resolves itself into the statement that there are not now so many grouse in Scotland as there were in the years 1872 and 1888, which you rightly regard as the maximum seasons during the dogging period. I think the comparison is hardly a fair one, as of course you have taken the very best years in the memory of man. What my experience shows used to happen in the old years was that on these moors (many of them of much larger area than at present) very large stocks of grouse were left in favourable years, and these were augmented as the seasons went on till at the end of the seventh year or so there was undoubtedly a very large stock of grouse left. Big bags were made, but it was entirely hopeless with the means then at one’s command to cope with those great hordes of grouse; then came the disease, and swept everything clean away. What we contend has been the principal advantage of driving in Scotland is that we are enabled to control the outbreaks of disease to a greater extent than formerly—that is, we kill by driving the older birds, leaving young and vigorous stock; that we are enabled to keep the birds within moderate dimensions; and that though we may not be able to have so many birds on our moors as in 1872 and 1888 (nor is it desirable), yet, taking the run of the seasons through, we kill more birds off our ground than was the case in previous years. The seasons average better, but they are not as they used to be in the old days—three good seasons, three very bad ones, and one moderate one. Now there are two moderate seasons and probably five good ones. For myself, I should go much farther than this. It is only a series of accidents, in my opinion, that has prevented the grouse stocks in Scotland from being quite as heavy as they were in 1888.

“Undoubtedly the grouse seasons run in cycles through some mysterious law which we are at present unable to fathom. Towards the end of the period one sees birds on the moors getting to look shabby and bad. In the old dogging days immense quantities of these birds were left all over the place. Now we are able to kill them off by driving and working the burnsides. In the non-driving era in stepped the disease and swept everything off the moor, and we had to wait in patience till things recovered. Nowadays we shoot a little harder than usual, kill off all the bad birds, and leave a fair stock, which with easy shooting soon comes round again. For some years we have been unfortunate with these periods. Thus in 1894 a very large stock of birds was left, which in the ordinary course would have been the foundation of record seasons in the next two years, but the terrible winter of 1895, which killed so many thousands of grouse, spoilt this period, and things had to begin afresh, though very large stocks had worked up again by 1901. With the terrible storm of the spring of 1902, which practically destroyed most of the older heather on the East Coast, the period was again prevented from giving the results it should have done. We have now got up the stocks again to very large dimensions, and with luck and the absence of disease should break all records in the next seasons.

“I take it that the more food there is for grouse the better. The evidence is that a grouse makes several thousand pecks of heather each day before he gets his full supply of food. I think the bird only feeds for a very limited time each night, and the shorter the distance he has to go for his food the better, and as he feeds mostly just as it is getting dusk he is not very well able to distinguish between good and bad heather, and often gets a craw full of stuff which does not agree with him. If you notice (as it is on most of the Welsh moors) where the sheep have grazed the heather up to a wire fence, on the other side of the fence the heather is perfectly good, and every grouse will be found feeding on it. If through the late spring or from other causes one cannot get a portion of the moor burnt, that part will invariably have less grouse on it than where there is young heather.

“I do not think sheep of a certain class do much harm on a grouse moor if they are properly looked after. The trouble is that shepherds do not take enough pains to keep things quiet. Breeding ewes are very bad when the lambing takes place on the heather, as the shepherd must be continually moving about among them, and disturbing the ground at the very time the grouse are nesting. Provided sheep are lambed on the green fields below the heather, and provided the shepherd is careful and goes about his work quietly, I think sheep do no great harm; and undoubtedly the paths they make through the heather are an advantage to the grouse, which are then enabled to move their broods about more easily. There is much more heather where there are no sheep, and the more heather you have the more grouse there will be. On a driving moor especially sheep are better off the ground. The long line of drivers move the sheep a great deal, and in hot weather this is bad for the sheep. One can leave big masses of birds on the march secure in the knowledge that there is no shepherd to come along and put them into a neighbouring moor. The wire fences, which are a necessity where sheep are present, are, of course, death-traps for grouse.—Yours sincerely,

“W. H. TOMASSON”

RED GROUSE

GROUSE PRESERVING AND GROUSE BAGS AS AFFECTED BY THE METHODS OF
SHOOTING, PRESENCE OF SHEEP, DRAINING OF MOORS, BURNING OF HEATHER,
AND THE BREEDING BY HAND—

1. AS REGARDS ENGLAND
2. IN REFERENCE TO SCOTLAND
3. IN REGARD TO WALES

Theoretically the stock of grouse ought to depend upon the amount of food present on the moorlands on which they live. In practice it does nothing of the kind—at least, not if we consider heather to be the food of the grouse. A sheep will eat twenty times as much food as a grouse, and if only half the sheep diet is heather, which is giving them a larger proportion of grass than they can get on most moors, then in theory it ought to be that the clearing of one sheep off an acre upon which there was but one grouse should result in an addition of ten grouse to that acre. But in practice it is doubtful whether it results in one single added grouse, or even one additional to 100 acres. But this is not any proof that the removal of sheep is bad policy. There are so many other things that have to be taken into account. Whether the sheep do harm or good by themselves is not certain, but in any case the shepherding is very bad for grouse chicks that have just strength enough to go a long way down hill and none to get back again to the brooding parent birds. The latter cannot carry their young like a woodcock, nor can they, like a Parliamentary bird of fame, be in two places at once. The author has not been able to arrive at any very definite conclusion in regard to the negative or positive value of the presence of sheep themselves, the evidence is so very conflicting. On the Ruabon Hills there are 5000 sheep on the 7000 acres of the most productive grouse ground in Wales; moreover, there are 70 commoners who each have a few dogs, and the latter’s business is to keep the sheep off the cultivated fields, either in the presence of their masters or not, as convenience and occasion serves. Then, on Mr. Lloyd Price’s bigger moor of Rhiwlas, the sheep have been reduced to a minimum, and belong to the keeper. Yet here 1000 brace has been about the best of the bags, but they have been improving. Now, if these two moors grew heather of equal merit, and if they were at equal elevations, we could say at once that sheep are valuable to grouse. But these things are very different on those two moors, and we can say nothing, but merely record the facts. Again, in Yorkshire the fashion has been to decrease the sheep to disappearing point; but when Lord Walsingham made his great personal bag of 1070 grouse in the day on a 2200 acre moor, there were 1400 sheep upon it, and there were nearly 2000 grouse killed there in that season. Even now, in Yorkshire, Askrigg is about as productive, acre for acre, as any moor, and it is common land, and fairly swarms with sheep. On the other hand, this is not true of Broomhead, where a grouse and a half to the acre have been got before now, but it was true of practically all the moors where great bags were made in 1871 and 1872 and before. And as the general grouse stock has never again reached the level of those years, it may be that there is some value in sheep that has not been discovered, and to which we cannot give a name. Some people believe that the sheep help the grouse in winter, by uncovering the heather when it is snow-buried. Probably there is a good deal to be said for that, but more upon high ground than low moors, because of course the object is to keep the grouse at home, and prevent them from migrating down the straths in those large packs that may or may not return again. On the lowest moors in the district it is probable that there is less advantage in keeping the birds from seeking winter food elsewhere. They must needs go for it below the heather belt, and this ground will not keep them in the spring, as the lower moors undoubtedly keep a large number of those grouse that in hard weather visit them from higher moors. No doubt many half-starved grouse get killed when they visit lower grouse, and arable ground, but unless the snow disappears very early in the spring the lowest moors are always favoured by some visitors stopping to breed. For them this is a change of blood, which possibly the higher elevation birds never do get. Be this as it may, there is always some moor in a neighbourhood, just as there is a piece of ground on nearly every shooting, that will at all times have more grouse upon it than are bred there, except when birds are too young to travel far. It is difficult to put a limit on these winter movements, or to give any idea how far the birds may not go for “black ground.”

This seems to depend a good deal upon the way the snow comes and stops. It may be affirmed that no matter how far it may be off them, if grouse can see black ground when their own is under frozen snow they will go to it. This in turn may be covered up, and then they will again go downwards. The late Mr. Dunbar, who sublet most of Sir Tollemache Sinclair’s shootings in Caithness, told the author that he had known the Caithness grouse driven to the seashore in hard weather, when the heather was all covered with snow. It would be a most excellent arrangement of Nature that the grouse go for food wherever it is to be had, if it were left to Nature, but it is not. People on the cultivated farms regard the arrival of the grouse as a great day, in which Providence has sought them out for a blessing, just as the Israelites in the Wilderness thought about the quail, which were possibly merely seeking their own migratory ends, like the starving grouse. Those on the lower moors see increased numbers of grouse, and kill them, knowing that if they do not somebody else will. So that the general result of this migration is that the total stock of the whole county, or country, is kept much lower than any sportsmen or owners of moors wish, and instead of being 1200 pairs left to breed on 4500 acres, which is Mr. Rimington Wilson’s estimate for his crack moor near Sheffield, the spring stock the country over does not average, in the belief of the writer, more than 250 pairs on every 4500 acres, and in this estimate he does not include the grass hills, the floe ground, or the ptarmigan tops, or deer forests.

By the habits of the grouse the owners of moors are compelled, therefore, more or less to pool their breeding stocks. Nothing seems likely to overcome the difficulty except a system of winter feeding in snow-time, and this is much more easily discussed than accomplished. Even if oat stacks with the corn in the straw, and more oats added to it to avoid unnecessary carting of straw, were erected, and protected in the early autumn, in various parts of a moor, these to be of any use would require to be visited in the very worst of the snow, in order that the protection might be removed and the grouse might start to scratch about for food. But there are many parts of many moors where an expedition at such a time would be a work of danger, for many a life has been lost in the snowstorms of the Highlands.

This digression into winter feeding of grouse arose out of the question of sheep or no sheep. Difficult as this is in Yorkshire, Wales, and the Lowlands of Scotland, it is very much more complicated in the Highlands, where sheep have to be considered not alone as an addition to grouse moors, but also as a protection to the deer forests. It is necessary to the forest owners that they should not lose their rentals by the movements of deer to grouse ground in the stalking season.

Where one forest adjoins another, exchange is no robbery; but where they adjoin sheep ground the only two possible ways of preventing a loss of deer are wire deer fences and the presence of sheep and shepherds. The former is out of favour, and will probably never come in again. It converts forests into parks, and park deer have no sporting value. Consequently, only the sheep and the shepherds are left. To remove them anywhere in the neighbourhood of forests is automatically to stock the ground with deer. This may be a wise or an unwise policy as circumstances arise, but it is very bad for the established forests to lose their best beasts, which take years to grow. Then to have deer forests interspersed through the more cultivated districts of the Highlands would probably lead to a revolution, or at least to the unauthorised destruction of the deer when they attacked the farmers’ crops.

The burning of the heather is rarely done half well enough. It is very expensive in districts far removed from considerable population. There is so much delay caused by waiting for the weather. The ideal conditions are wet ground and dry air and heather, in order that the tops of the plant shall be thoroughly burned and the roots and the heather seed in the ground not much heated. But to wait for such ideal conditions would be rarely to burn at all, and consequently risks are taken, but even as it is, not nearly enough heather is burned. On some moors the author has visited he could say there were 1000 acres of heather and that one match would destroy it all. Where such enormous beds of old heather do exist, it might be bolder than wise to apply that match and leave the rest to chance. But it always runs this risk even when grouse are sitting on their eggs. There are not many nests in such ground, nevertheless it is a pity to destroy it all, for this old heather is the most valuable when snow is on the moor, but the mere fact of burning strips through it greatly increases this value as well as every other. It assists the snow to drift, which in covering some parts deeply leaves the other bare. Shelter and food is what the grouse most want in the storm, and the very long heather supplies both to a very great extent. But a very little of it will go a long way for this purpose. The grouse never eat it at other times, so that it is _all_ left for winter feeding. These long old heather patches may also have a value in collecting grouse on driving days, but they have none for dog work; for grouse will not resort to them unless forced to, and dogs cannot work to advantage in them.

Some people prefer burning in small patches to burning in strips, and theoretically the former can be defended as enabling more birds to feed when out of sight of their brethren and enemies. Nevertheless, the grouse stocks in both England and Scotland reached their apex when most of, if not all, the burning was done in strips.

A too heavy stock of breeding ewes, in contrast to as heavy a stock of feeding or fat sheep, is said to destroy heather, and cause grass to supplant it. Although the author has several times had cause to believe this to be quite true, he has never actually seen these results.

Another cause of heather destruction has come under his personal observation, and is very serious indeed when it occurs. It comes in the form of a small beetle which some ten years ago (then, it is believed, unnamed by science) attacked thousands of acres of the heather (_calluna_), but would not touch the bell heather (_erica_). It destroyed and bit through the roots of the plants, half starved the sheep in consequence, and caused the grouse to entirely leave some of the moors in the neighbourhood of Castle Douglas. The only stay to it was fire, and square miles of heather were consequently burnt. On going over the ground ten years afterwards, it was observed by the author that only a very occasional root of heather had re-started, so that most of the roots must have been killed, and there was evidently no seed in the ground. But all the bell heather plants re-started to grow after the cremation of heather and beetles together. Judging by the destruction wrought, here is a pest that, under favourable circumstances to itself, might destroy all the heather in the country, and incidentally grouse shooting as well. The name of this beetle is _Lochmæa suturalis_.

Draining is receiving a great deal of attention, and well is the subject worth it. The worst kind of land on any moor is what is called “floe” ground. For the grouse it is useless, and nothing and nobody seems able to make any use of it. It is not good for fish in the winter when it forms a lake, nor for grouse in the summer when its islets of stunted heather become dry hillocks surrounded by death-traps for little grouse, not only because of their inability to get from one tussock to another without swimming, but probably also because of the millions of insects they breed. The midge flies swarm when these places are wet, and possibly carry grouse disease in their bites from diseased grouse to the healthy, which thereby become diseased. Probably few grouse chicks are drowned in such places, because the old birds instinctively avoid them for nesting. But neither they nor their chicks can avoid the midges, and, as the author pointed out some years ago, in an article in the _Fortnightly Review_, if Dr. Klein’s investigation of the disease did really result in the discovery of the true cause of it, namely the bacilli he cultivated from diseased grouse, then everything else he did pointed to the conclusion that only by direct injection under the skin could grouse disease be given from one creature to another, except in close confinement, as when birds healthy and diseased were confined together under one cloth and in a room. Since the writing of that article the Grouse Committee has been appointed, and Mr. Rimington Wilson, who is upon it, has been good enough to inform the author that one of the points being investigated is the midge theory.

A great many people think that the Committee will do no good, but surely in the present state of science it is only a question of money. Probably critics mean that if the bacilli of the disease is discovered, or re-discovered, we shall be no more forward, as the way to exterminate them or their possible hosts will still have to be inquired into. But if it should be discovered that the midges can convey the disease, and that is an extremely easy thing to test, then we need not bother about the life history of the interesting bacilli, but start and drain the breeding-places of their intermediate hosts—the midge flies. This would have one advantage outside all consideration of disease, for it would add possibly one-third to the productive area of the average Highland moor. Probably Mr. Rimington Wilson’s Broomhead moor is the most free of any from disease, and it is generally considered also about the driest moor in Yorkshire. All moors are quite well enough stocked with midges, but occasionally in hot wet weather they come in clouds. It was so in the autumn of 1873, and it was so again in the autumn before the last outbreak of grouse disease in the Highlands. It has been said that grouse disease is always present, and breaks out when the grouse are weakly and food is scarce. These may be contributory circumstances, but that is doubtful. In the hard winter of 1895—or was it 1896?—thousands of grouse died from starvation, but none from disease.

The different methods of killing grouse one year are supposed to have a great deal of influence on the breeding success of their collateral relations the next. Apparently this is as if one said that an honest tradesman was successful and had a large family _because_ his brother the highwayman was hanged instead of being beheaded. But this is only the superficial side of the question, which is one of the survival of the fittest. It is said with a good deal of truth that to drive the grouse is an automatic selection of the old birds for the poulterer, and of the young ones for breeding. This is no doubt quite true, but at the same time grouse driving has only been followed by enormous increases of stock in England, and not in the Highlands of Scotland. The apex of grouse stock in both countries was reached in 1872, and the question arises why it was brought about by driving in the South Country, and, on the contrary, practically before driving had made any headway in Scotland. The difference of effect of what was the same system in both can probably be accounted for partly in several different ways. Both “becking” and “kiting” are also automatic selections not only of the old birds, but particularly of the old cocks. This is easy enough to understand in regard to “becking,” but is only to be discovered by experience in “kiting.” It appears that the hens are not often shot under a kite, and the reason is supposed to be that they are the more timid, and make off before the kite gets near. Both these systems were practised in the Highlands before driving was introduced, but so they were also in Yorkshire. In the Highlands the grouse were not so wild but that the shooter could select the old cock of a brood and kill him over the dogs. In Yorkshire this could not be done; it was difficult to get near the youngest broods, to say nothing of the old cocks, and it had been difficult for half a century, as is pointed out in the chapter headed “Grouse that lie and Grouse that fly.” Then, when these old cocks became widowers and joined others similarly afflicted, nothing could sufficiently reduce their numbers, and it was not reduction but extermination that was wanted. Driving in Yorkshire accomplished this, for there are no rocky “tops” there which defy the drivers. In Scotland, on the other hand, the wilder the old cocks grow the more certainly they get upon these “tops,” and the safer they become from the gun. When driving is put off until the 1st of September or thereabouts, as it mostly is in Scotland, the driving is not an automatic selection of a large proportion of the old birds; on the contrary, they soon get up on the “tops” when disturbance often occurs below, and they leave the hens and the broods to “face the music” in the strath. Thus, on the rolling moors of Yorkshire the wilder the old cocks become the more certainly they get driven to the guns, whereas in Scotland the more certainly they find security on the tops that never yet have been _successfully_ driven. Before peregrines were mostly destroyed, the old cocks dare not venture on those covertless tops. From these facts it can be gathered that it is not the driving that makes all the difference, but merely the killing of barren and old birds, and that it does not matter how this is accomplished so that it is done thoroughly. The assumption is that it was done thoroughly in Scotland before driving began, and that it was impossible to do it in England, where the birds were a fortnight earlier and out of all comparison wilder. At any rate, we cannot deny that before grouse butts were seen on one moor in fifty in Scotland, the grouse stock had arrived at its highest point; that between 10,000 and 11,000 grouse had fallen before dogs at Glenbuchat in the season of 1872; that over 7000 had been killed in a month at Delnadamph, in Aberdeenshire; and also that 220 brace had been killed to one gun over dogs at Grandtully, in Perthshire, in a single day, as had a similar bag a couple of decades before by Colonel Campbell of Monzie. Only once since has as large a bag been made by one gun in the day, and that was twenty years ago. Now Scotch moors do not equal the season’s bags recorded above, nor do men make as big single gun-bags over dogs. Only once in 1905, and again in 1906, have a pair of guns shooting together equalled 100 brace in the day.