Chapter XI: Part 11

Another question arises here naturally. It is: Are the birds wilder than they were thirty-five years ago, and does driving at the end of the season make them wilder for the next season? No doubt it makes the old cocks wilder, but the grouse hen is only just as wild as her brood always. Even in Yorkshire, before the brood can fly the grouse hen lies to be trodden up; she grows wild exactly in proportion to the wildness of her chicks, and if we are to believe the biologists, acquired character is not transmitted to offspring. The author believes that the principal necessity in all grouse preservation is to kill a large proportion of the old cocks whether they have had broods or not, and consequently where wildness makes them secure they should not be made wild by end of the season driving, either with or without a preliminary of dog work. Had the author the planning and management of Highland moors now as he had years ago, he would get rid of these already-made-wild old cocks by driving each beat the day before dogging it, but with drivers just so far apart as appeared to be necessary to make sure of moving the old cocks but not the broods, which in any case will not drive well as early as the first week of shooting. The clearance of the objectionable brigade, which if left alone the first bad weather will send to the “tops,” is as necessary for a driving moor as for a dog moor, and as it is for one which has previously been both. The greater market value of the dog moors in the Highlands over the driving moors in England (grouse for grouse) makes it necessary to find a way to negative the damage done by making the old cocks wild. But the writer is not sure that the manner of going up to dogs is not responsible for half the apparent wildness of the old cocks. It is well known that nothing makes any birds fly so quickly as the thought that they are seen. Walking straight to a dog’s point, the handler in the middle and a gun on each side of him, convinces any self-respecting old cock that he is seen, and off he goes. On the other hand, if the handler advances in the tracks of one of the shooters, and these walk up 40 yards wide of the dog on either side, they may then safely pass the point a considerable distance, and if it is necessary, they can, with the handler, go back to the dog. If birds have allowed them to pass thus, they will also allow them to close in on them, for they will feel themselves surrounded. The old cock meantime has assuredly run forward, and nine times out of ten also turned to right or left, and the chances are great that one of the shooters will by these tactics just head him off, and get a possible shot at a bird that would otherwise have stood no chance of being killed.

The walking wide, in first driving, is practised on the Ruabon moors by Mr. Wynne Corrie in order to secure a greater proportion of old cocks and let off more young birds than would otherwise be the case. Mr. Corrie has given the author some very valuable information upon his management of the Ruabon Hills, but clearly if such tactics are necessary on a moor where the old birds cannot by wildness take to the “tops” and save themselves, they are ten times more necessary where this can be and is always done. In Caithness-shire the old cocks can be killed at any time of the season; they run there; and a dog that rodes well and fast is a necessity. Mr. W. Arkwright, of pointer celebrity, makes a practice of hunting down these old birds until he makes his grouse moor similar to that paradise regained as a sign of which seven women were to cling to one man. In practice it is only two hens that cling to one cock, and this upset of the natural order has also been observed on the Ruabon Hills, particularly in 1905; and the keeper there tells the writer that when it occurs he _always_ notices that it is followed by a good season. Here are two opposite methods accomplishing the same end, and the author knows enough of the subject, besides, to be able to say, Make your grouse polygamous by force of circumstances, and each hen will be contented with half the ground she otherwise would have considered hers by right of masculine strife.

In considering and comparing present-day bags with those of earlier years, it is necessary to avoid comparing now well managed moors with themselves at a time when they were badly managed. There are all degrees of bad management, and what we have to do is to go to the moors that yielded the best at the various dates and consider what was the management that brought this about. Some of the best moors in Scotland seem to have been very poorly managed in the great year of 1872. There is Menzies Castle moor, for instance, which lies only half a dozen miles or so from the record-breaking Grandtully moor, and yet in 1872, when the latter surprised all grouse shooters, the former was said to be very badly off for grouse, and the birds killed over dogs were nearly all old ones. Nevertheless, be it noted that the bags of old birds made were then far above the average of present-day shootings, which not only shows what was expected by sportsmen in those times, but also how the old birds sat to dogs. There were some peregrines to keep them in the long heather.

All the old records of English moors point to the capacity of the ground for carrying grouse, but to their scarcity nevertheless. The Scotch moors, on the contrary, seem to have had as many birds in the first years of the nineteenth century as they had at any time. Colonel Thornton, in his description of his Highland tour, spoke of big packs of 3000 birds as common in the winter, and in October he found the grouse lie too well in the Duke of Gordon’s country, whereas shortly afterwards on a 12th of August the celebrated Colonel Hawker could do nothing with the wild Yorkshire grouse, where the birds were also particularly scarce. There is no doubt that this scarcity was brought about by Act of Parliament, which fixed the opening season that suited Scotland, and by a fortnight’s earlier breeding just made it impossible to kill the old cocks in Yorkshire. They, in turn, would not breed themselves or let others do so, so that the practice in Yorkshire became almost precisely what it is now in those deer forests where they desire to exterminate the grouse, and do it by leaving them _entirely alone_.

In 1849 there was driving in Yorkshire; for in that year, on Sir Spencer Stanhope’s moor, Durnford Bridge, there were 448 grouse killed in one day.

The following bags will show what happened in Yorkshire at a glance, but nothing of this sort of rapid increase, as a consequence of driving the birds, will be found as applying to Scotland:—

GROUSE KILLED ON BLUBBERHOUSES MOOR—2200 ACRES

┌──────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┐ │ Year. │ Total bags in braces. │ ├──────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────┤ │ 1829 │60 │ │ 1830 │77 │ │ 1831 │14½ │ │ 1832 │31 │ │ 1833 │82 │ │ 1834 │69½ │ │ 1835 │90 │ │ 1836 │12 │ │ 1837 │25 │ │ 1838 │42½ │ │ 1839 │26½ │ │ 1840 │26 │ │ 1841 │35½ │ │ 1842 │21 │ │ 1843 │91 │ └──────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

GROUSE KILLED ON BLUBBERHOUSES AND DALLOWGILL MOORS IN SEASONS
FOLLOWING THE ABOVE

(_About 1862 a little driving began_)

┌─────┬───────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┐ │Year.│ Year’s bag at Dallowgill. │ Year’s bag at Blubberhouses. │ │ │ Braces. │ Braces. │ ├─────┼───────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────┤ │1865 │ │239 │ │1866 │ │691 │ │1870 │ │478 │ │1871 │2149 │ │ │1872 │2417 │807½ │ │1873 │208½ │disease. │ │1874 │177½ │disease. │ │1875 │508 │no record. │ │1876 │1576 │725 │ │1877 │1345½ │781 │ │1878 │1892 │704 │ │1879 │781 │241 │ │1880 │1015½ │no record. │ │1881 │945 │388½ │ │1882 │1551 │770 │ │1883 │2948½ │346½ │ │1884 │2519 │622 │ │1885 │1620½ │277 │ │1886 │1312½ │646 │ │1887 │2125½ │no record. │ │1888 │2501½ │919 │ └─────┴───────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘

The last figure was given to the author by Lord Walsingham about the time the bag of 1070 grouse made in the day by his gun was discussed, and might possibly have been added to later in the season.

Two points are likely to arise in an examination of the bags. First, was it that the birds were not upon the Yorkshire moors, or only that they could not be killed, that made the season’s bags so poor prior to driving?

The other point is: Do big day’s bags point to great stocks of game on the moors; and arising out of that, do great bags help to improve the stock?

The answers, from the bags to be mentioned, will be found to be that in the early days the birds were not on the Yorkshire hills, and if they had been there they could have been killed in numbers, except the wild old cocks. The proof is to be found in the facts that, as lately as 1872, there were 1099 brace of grouse killed in a day on Bowes moor _over dogs_, and that the day after Lord Walsingham made his great one-gun bag at Blubberhouses by driving, he walked up and shot in half a day 26 brace, or more than the whole moor had yielded in many a previous anti-driving season. It will be found, also, that big day’s bags do not necessarily point to big stocks of grouse, since, at least twice, one gun has in one day taken more than half the season’s total bag off a moor. But that very big driving days on a small moor are better than a constant worry by smaller drivings of the grouse is almost too obvious to name.

Lord Walsingham killed to his own gun in one day of 1872 421 brace of grouse when the season’s bag was 807½ brace; and in 1888, after a very bad breeding season, he killed 535 brace to his own gun in the day, and there were 919 brace bagged in that season. Similar proof of the skill of drivers and shooters when the stocks of game were but moderate are to be had elsewhere. The late Sir Fred Milbank’s best year at Wemmergill was in 1872, when he got 17,074 grouse, and his best bag was 2070 grouse. Lord Westbury, his successor on that moor, had a best day of about the same number, but his best year gave but 9797 grouse. Mr. R. Rimington Wilson killed 2743 birds in the day in 1904, but the season was not perhaps as good as that of 1905, when only 1744 grouse were shot on the best day, when Mr. Rimington Wilson was good enough to inform the author that the season was above the average, and that the direction of the wind makes all the difference. In 1906, the day, chosen months ahead, happened to be one of those heat record-breaking ones that caused the grouse to refuse to fly more than once, and only about 1320 grouse were killed on the first day, which, however comparatively bad there, would be absolutely splendid as times go elsewhere.

Again, in 1905, Mr. Wynne Corrie had his record season, but his big days were larger in the previous season. In 1904 they were 760½ and 781 brace respectively, and in 1905 there were 638½ brace shot on the best day. This is not as remarkable as the fact that in 1901 there were killed there 3341 brace, before big bags were started; and there were but 2103 brace killed in the year of the record bag.

The apex of grouse stock having been reached in Yorkshire in 1872, within a decade of the general beginning of driving, it was felt that the way to enormous stocks was discovered, and that these stocks were worth every attention and large capital outlay in the improvement of moorlands, but as a matter of fact it is difficult to find that all the improvement since has done any good to the head of game. If it has, it can only be discovered over periods of years, and not by comparing any one year with the results obtained in 1871 and 1872. The period of years is the better test if it can be fairly applied, but results come out differently altogether in accordance with the arbitrary selection of dates to begin and end these periods.

It has already been mentioned how wonderfully grouse have done in the absence of one of these improvements, namely the removal of sheep on the Ruabon Hills, and sheep are just as plentiful at Askrigg, in Yorkshire, where nevertheless Mr. Vyner has killed on a moor of 2000 acres, in 1894, 2775 grouse; in 1897, 2959 grouse; in 1898 there was a total of 2095 grouse; in 1901 there were shot 2686 grouse; and in 1902 there were 2898 grouse bagged.

Mr. Wynne Corrie has improved the best season’s bag at Ruabon Hills by about 1000 brace, or one-third more than the previous best. He has given the author four reasons to which he attributes the improvement, and as his is nearly the only South Country grouse moor that at once shows a great stock and also a great improvement over season’s bags of four decades ago, they are here stated:—

1. Leaving as large a head of breeding birds as possible.

2. Improvement of the heather.

3. Sunk butts.

4. Not shooting any grouse over dogs.

Probably it will be gathered from the records of bags made that the system of _only_ driving, in Yorkshire, has not increased the birds since 1872, and that dog work and driving afterwards has also had the same stagnant or retarding effect in Scotland, where also driving alone has made no improvement either, that when it could be said of moors that they produced as well as their neighbours, of similar area and conditions, under previous management. This is all very disappointing to those who give time and money to moor improvement, and sacrifice their shooting several years in order to get up the head of game. It is not pleasant to have to mention these partial failures, but it is felt that if we do not look facts in the face as they are, there is little chance of improvement. There is, in fact, a something _besides disease_ that keeps the grouse stock below a certain point in the best of years, and, as Allan Brown says, causes a little grouse to require as much land to itself as a cow.

These bags are not quoted, then, merely because they are records, but because they teach that there is something never yet found out that is infinitely more important to discover than the bacilli of the grouse disease. It must be more potent than disease in its effects of keeping the grouse stock down. For their numbers from a stock-breeder’s point of view seem utterly absurd. That vegetable-feeding birds weighing under 2 lbs. should want as much vegetation to themselves as sheep weighing 50 lbs. is the point, and there must be a reason for it, although it has never yet been discovered or even searched for, as far as is known to the author. But before dealing with that point it is necessary to show the present stagnation under every system.

At that period when Yorkshire grouse were only remarkable for their scarcity, Colonel Campbell of Monzie killed 184½ brace in 1843 in a day, 191 brace in 1846, and another bag of 222½ brace with no date mentioned. On the Menzies Castle moor, before mentioned, it was said the 1872 birds were mostly old and bred badly, yet five shooters obtained the following bags in the three first days, namely, 205, 117, and 168 brace; in 1905, an excellent breeding season, the bags were on the same moor 115 and 76 brace. Then at Grandtully, close by, the 1872 season yielded 220 brace to the single gun of the Maharajah Duleep Singh in a day, and in the first day of 1906 four guns got 35 brace. There were 7000 grouse killed at Delnadamph, mostly by driving, in 1872, when, elsewhere, there were no butts, as at Glenbuchat, where they killed nevertheless 10,600 grouse over dogs. Nothing like the above is done over dogs now, the nearest approach to it being at Sir John Gladstone’s moors, where upon occasion within the decade about 4000 grouse have been killed over dogs, and 6000 later by driving.

Unquestionably the best average in England has been kept up at Broomhead, the season’s bags of which have never been published, but the two best days in each season have been, and as records alone they are of great interest, even if nothing but facts could be deduced from them (see table on opposite page).

Bags made on Bowes subscription moor on 12th August 1872 were for 30 shooters over dogs as follows:—85½, 65½, 56½, 54, 49, 45, 44½, 43, 50, 40½, 41½, 41½, 36, 35, 35½, 35½, 35, 33, 33, 32, 32, 29½, 23½, 21½, 23, 21, 16, 27½, 8, 5½ brace. Total, 1099 brace.

This remarkable bag on a 12,000 acre moor establishes many things, one of which is that the grouse in Yorkshire could have been killed in quantities at any time had there been enough guns, so that the broods after being flushed by one shooter were quickly found by another, and given no time to collect after being scattered. But the wildness of the grouse on this moor is shown by the top scorer getting only about half the bag that some shooters obtained on the Scotch moors of the time. For instance, at Glenquoich Lodge, near Dunkeld, there were killed 124½, 114, and 88½ brace by three guns on the Twelfth; thus the three guns got 327 brace in the day, and this kind of bag was by no means unusual. In Yorkshire there were numerous bags of 1000 brace, and over, made that season. They occurred at Wemmergill, Dallowgill, Broomhead, Bowes, and High Force (probably); at any rate, at the latter place, there were in 19 days driving 15,484 grouse killed, and at Wemmergill adjoining there were 17,074 grouse shot for the season.

BAGS MADE AT BROOMHEAD

┌─────────────────┬────────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────────┐ │ Date. │ Guns. │ Brace in the │Brace in the best│ │ │ │ day. │ two days. │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Sept. 6, 1872 │ 13 │ 1313 │ │ │ Sept. 3, 1890 │ 8 │ 819 │ │ │ Sept. 9, 1891 │ 8 │ 630 │ │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Aug. 30, 1893 │ 9 │ 1324 │ 2125½ │ │ Sept. 1, 1893 │ 9 │ 801½ │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Aug. 29, 1894 │ 9 │ 1007 │ 1694 │ │ Aug. 31, 1894 │ 9 │ 687 │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Sept. 4, 1895 │ 8 │ 624 │ │ │ Aug. 26, 1896 │ 9 │ 1090 │ │ │ Aug. 25, 1897 │ 9 │ 1006 │ │ │ Aug. 24, 1898 │ 9 │ 1103½ │ │ │ Aug. 30, 1899 │ 9 │ 1013 │ │ │ Aug. 29, 1900 │ 9 │ 586 │ │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Sept. 4, 1901 │ 9 │ 712 │ 1447 │ │ Sept. 25, 1901 │ 9 │ 735 │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Aug. 27, 1902 │ 9 │ 693 │ 950 │ │ Aug. 29, 1902 │ 9 │ 257 │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Aug. 26, 1903 │ 9 │ 703½ │ 1188 │ │ Aug. 28, 1903 │ 9 │ 484½ │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Aug. 24, 1904 │ 9 │ 1371½ │ 1777 │ │ Aug. 26, 1904 │ 9 │ 405½ │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ Aug. 30, 1905 │ 9 │ 872 │ 1476 │ │ Sept. 1, 1905 │ 9 │ 604 │ 〃 │ ├─────────────────┼────────────────┼────────────────┼─────────────────┤ │ 1906 │ │ 660 │(roughly) │ └─────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────┘

Writing in 1888, Lord Walsingham said he thought that the great increase of grouse was to be attributed to the burning of the heather in Yorkshire during the previous twenty-five years. But no moors the author saw in Yorkshire about that time could bear comparison for regular burning with the moor of Dunbeath, in Caithness, where the strips were as regular and as well defined as the different crops in a market garden; and again, about 1875, the author went over Bowes moor to inspect for a possible purchaser, and he never saw any heather so badly neglected for want of burning. Although there were very few grouse there at that time, this was obviously due to the disease, for there had been any number of them three seasons before.

Driving the grouse at Moy Hall moors was started in a partial manner, without butts, in 1869, and the driving done between then and 1872 was limited to the birds round the corn-fields, and could have had no effect on the stock.

In 1871 the bag was 2836 grouse.
In 1872 the bag was 3002 grouse.

Between 1876 and 1879 no driving was done there, but in 1879 there were 103 grouse killed in six drives on the 1st of September.

In that year the kill was 5172 grouse, when the bag was assisted by driving, but the preservation had not been so assisted.

In 1888 there were killed 5822 grouse by means of dogs first and driving afterwards, and in the next season, which was a bad one, dogs were used for the last time.

In 1891 there were shot 3612 grouse.
In 1892 the bag was 3513 grouse.
In 1893 there were killed 4480 grouse.
In 1894 the season produced 4563 grouse.
In 1895 the total fell to 2511 grouse.
In 1896 it fell lower, to 1402 grouse.
In 1897 it touched lower, to 1131 grouse.
In 1898 it began to rise to 1943 grouse.
In 1899 there were shot 3416 grouse.
In 1900 the bag was 6092 grouse.
In 1901 the apex was 7127 grouse.

Since that year the season’s bags have not been published, and it is believed that they fell off very much until 1905, when there was a good recovery, but not a record, and disappointment occurred again in 1906.

From these figures we are not able to gather that driving and no dog work has acted as a means of preservation and an increase of the stock, but that it has enabled the grouse to be killed when they were there, as they undoubtedly were in 1879, when the driving was so little understood that it did not materially assist the bags for the season, as may be gathered from the bag for the day quoted above. Nothing can be gathered from these bags to suggest that anything like a remedy for the stagnation spoken of has been discovered, and we hope in vain, year by year, to see that advance of from 400 to 800 per cent. spoken of by Lord Walsingham, eighteen years ago, in regard to Yorkshire.

It has been already pointed out that by draining a moor one may often add a third to its heather-bearing land, and also that by removing a sheep to the acre one conserves about ten times the heather food a grouse eats. Yet neither of these methods has made very much difference anywhere. Both have done something to add to the stock in places, and both have also been disappointing in other places. Surely there must be some reason that has not only never been discovered, but has not even been looked for. It has been shown that were it only a question of heather food, the removal of sheep, where they are one to an acre, would multiply the grouse capacity of the moors by ten times, and the author believes that the majority of moors have on them, even when they carry sheep, ten times the heather the grouse require. If the former, to say nothing of the latter, is approximately true, then there must be something besides heather the grouse require, and the absence of which, in quantities, prevents their increase beyond two to an acre even on the _most favourable_ moors.

There is no doubt from the above facts that there is some such want, but what it is the author can only speculate upon. It appears likely that what is wanted by all young grouse, as by all young animals of other kinds, is proteid. Young birds of all kinds take it in the form of insects, or artificial substitutes. That little grouse begin at once to eat heather is true, but it has never been proved that they can be reared on heather and nothing else. On the other hand, it _has_ been proved that they can be reared without heather, provided they get plenty of insect food. They appear to be almost the easiest of game birds to rear, provided they have leave to help themselves to the insects of the fields, or are supplied with crissel and ants’ eggs by hand. For these reasons the author has arrived at the opinion that, provided the young grouse could be supplied with proteid (insects) for the first three weeks of life, the heather is sufficient to support ten times the numbers found upon the moors in most cases. Of course this could only be done by hand rearing of the birds. But as the grouse seem to lay more readily in confinement than partridges, and as these latter most particular birds have, by the French system, been doubled and doubled again, there seems to be no reason why grouse should not be increased in the same way.

It may be said that disease would stop anything of the kind, but those who advocate the increase of grouse to shoot by the decrease of the parent stock have, it is to be hoped, had their innings. It can be proved that where breeding grouse are kept up to the highest point, there also they are the most healthy.

The author has doubts whether it is desirable to increase the hand rearing of game; but in a book on shooting and game preservation the ethics of sport are not practical if they limit production in any way.

The red grouse (_Lagopus scoticus_) may be shot from the morning of the 12th of August to the evening of the 10th of December. Heather burning is legal at all times in England, but only from 1st of November to 10th of April in Scotland, which is another means by which an Act of Parliament has damaged the interests of the grouse shooter, since it generally happens that not enough heather burning can be done in the winter months, and September and October are quite as necessary burning months as March itself.

METHODS OF SHOOTING THE RED GROUSE

Whether we ask the driver of game or the dog man does not matter, all are agreed that the red grouse is the most sporting bird we have. It is only necessary to see how artfully grouse butts are placed, in order to make the shooting as easy as possible, to know that the grouse’s flight is a match for the shooter. Successful drivings, or big bags in the day, which is the same thing, require every assistance to be given to the gunner, for in grouse shooting height is an assistance to him, although it is the reverse in pheasant shooting. The reason is that the grouse usually flies too low for a clear sight of it against the sky, and also low enough to make shooting dangerous when the birds cross the line of the butts. The time has not yet come with grouse, as it has with pheasants to a great extent, when beats are planned to make the shooting as difficult as possible. This is not wholly true of pheasants either, because no one for the sake of increased difficulty places shooters amongst trees, and especially fir trees, and nobody for the added difficulty shoots his pheasants when the leaf is still on. In the same way, a grouse driver does not put his butts where grouse cannot be seen approaching, but selects a position 40 or more yards behind a slight rise in the ground, in order that the guns may see the game before it is within range, but not so much before that the sight of the gunners in the butts will turn the grouse. So, then, to make big bags, every advantage has to be taken to drive the grouse as easily for the guns as can be done, and besides this the “crack” gunners excel in being best able to select the easiest, or perhaps it would be better to say the possible birds. They neither lose time in trying to get on to birds when there is not time to succeed, or in shooting at others so far off as to be at wounding distances.

The red grouse also puts the shooter over dogs to the test. Even at the beginning of the season the direct walk up with the dog will generally result in the old cock getting off unshot at. But with two gunners who walk wide of the dog, the chances are that one of them will get a fair shot at the old cock, which invariably runs away, and leaves his wife and children to learn wisdom by experience and his example. Later on it may be necessary to hunt the dogs down wind, and this proceeding nearly always results in making birds lie much better than they otherwise would; for the grouse are found by the dog when the latter is to leeward, and the guns by walking down wind to the point complete the surrounding movement. It may be said that unless grouse have their heads up (when they are only fit for driving) they always are approachable by guns, provided the latter set about it the right way, and have dogs good enough to hunt down wind well and without flushing the game. The qualities required in the dog cover a very wide range—a very long and certain nose, and an absence of drawing up to game to make sure of it; that is, an absence of hesitation in pointing. Then the degree of accuracy of shooting that is enough in driving with cylinder guns at 25 to 30 yards range is not more than half enough with a full choke bore at 50 yards range.

There is ample scope for improvement always in grouse shooting, and the author has never heard of the gunner who is always satisfied with his efforts, either when shooting driven game or when shooting grouse over dogs. Those who talk of the “battue” and “slaughter” in the same breath have never tried, and those drivers of game who talk of shooting over dogs as too easy for their skill find out their own weak spots when they try it.

The proper driving of grouse to the guns is the result of local education based on sound broad principles. The former it is obviously not possible to deal with, and the latter have already been admirably stated elsewhere, except for this: it has been assumed that grouse can be driven everywhere, but this is very far from correct. They certainly cannot be driven where they will lie well to dogs all the season. Moreover, they cannot be satisfactorily driven when they resort to the “tops” of the ranges of hills or mountains in the Highlands, where a short flight puts them 500 feet over the “flankers’” heads. These flag-men then have no more effect on the direction of the flight of the grouse than the other “insects” in the heather have, for the drivers resemble insects when crawling along so far below.

To state the principle of grouse driving shortly is possibly difficult. It is based upon a series of incidents in the perceptions of the birds, which are influenced by sight alone, and not by hearing or smelling. They should first see a driver far off in the direction it is most wished they should avoid flying to. If they take wing at this first sight, then the act of rising should bring them into sight of a line of men covering every point that they are not desired to make for. Local conditions may alter all this, as it may be that grouse have a constant flight, and take it however they are flushed, but generally they have not. The means stated generally resolves itself into a quarter-circle of beaters on the most down-wind side of a cross-wind beat, attached to a straight line of beaters in the centre and upon the most up-wind side of the beat, so that the men farthest down wind are the most advanced. On the other hand, when the drive is direct to the guns with a full wind, the line of beaters will have two horns each well advanced on either side, unless local conditions make one side dangerous and the other not so. Generally they do. The desired flight may or may not be at first in the direction of the line of shooters. The first object may be concentration, either in the air or on the ground. In the first case, the grouse having been got to go towards a concentration point in their flight, are gradually turned to the guns by men who are set at danger points, and either show themselves to or are seen by the grouse at that exact proximity that the sight of the unexpected will have most effect in turning them. It is a curious fact that when flag-men are seen at a long distance ahead of them, the grouse may or may not swerve in their flight, but seen suddenly when so near as to leave just more than enough time for turning before the impetus has carried them over the head of the man with the flag, they turn off instead of merely swerving. Consequently, the men who are set to turn grouse are a law to themselves. They show themselves at the psychological moment, according to the speed of the grouse. Only a very little is required to turn a slow up-wind pack of grouse, whereas very much will sometimes not turn fast down-wind birds. This turning the birds from the point towards which they are driven is often necessary. Thus grouse may not be willing to drive in another direction, or to drive otherwise might be to lose the birds for the day, and to have the butts where the turn in the flight occurs might be to allow the majority to go straight on into some other moor, not to be seen again that day, if ever.

When birds are, or can be, collected or concentrated upon the ground, it is much more simple. It is difficult then to make everything go right, but it does not require quite the Napoleon of tactics that the other method does. Obviously the concentration of grouse upon the ground implies a larger beat than in the other case—one in which the natural flight of the grouse will induce them to settle before they get within sight of the butts. This concentration and settlement of the birds enables a new formation of drivers to be made, for the collection of the birds may have caused driving right away from the butts in the first instance, and in most cases not directly towards them. The object of all driving is not only to put as many grouse as possible within range of the guns, but the more important part is that of keeping on the moor all those grouse that go by the butts, to be used again and again the same day.

Another way of driving grouse is based upon the same principle, except that the driving is simple, because the beats are short and direct to the guns. In this case natural common sense is much more effective than in the other two, which must depend upon local knowledge almost entirely. But in all cases men to turn the grouse if they try to break out have to be employed, and they are of no use unless they perfectly understand what the grouse will do under every circumstance that may arise. Some of these men are so clever that when shooters in the butts are watching the operations and believe the big pack has broken out, they suddenly see it turn and head straight to them. Then the gunners recognise that the “pointsman,” if the simile is admissible, knows his business better than they know it; for it is clear from their anxiety that they in a similar situation would have shown themselves too soon, and that the flag-man has timed the occasion as accurately as a railway pointsman switches a train on to another line of metals. The short driving system may be exemplified by Lord Walsingham’s great performance, when he got 1070 grouse to his own gun in the day in 20 short drives on a 2200 acre moor. The long drive system may be exemplified by the first drive in the day at Mr. Rimington Wilson’s Broomhead moor, where 6 drives in the day is the outside limit.

There is a great deal of difference of opinion upon the best form of grouse butt, and some difference upon the best distances apart for them. But these are not abstract questions, although in conversation and books they are treated as if they were. Much depends upon the manner of driving. When the birds are brought from a distance and concentrated, it is clear that they cannot have got used to the sight of the butts on the ground to which they are forced. On the other hand, in short drives the birds are practically never off their own ground, and consequently get used to the butts, however conspicuous they are, and do not fear them. In this case nothing seems to be better than the horseshoe-shaped butt built up of turfs with heather growing on the top. Slight modifications of the horseshoe formation are best made when the butts are used alternately to shoot grouse driven from opposite directions. It is then well that the entrance should be an over-lap of one end.

But where grouse are brought off their own ground, and are not used to the sight of peat cutters and their temporary stacking of the peat, it seems that sunk butts are of the most value. The latter are much the more costly to make, because they require draining at a depth of 3 or 4 feet below the surface. The manner of making these sunk butts is not to excavate to the full height of a shooter’s gun arm, but to use the turf taken out of a partial excavation for making a gradual slope up bank close to the pit, a foot or two above the surrounding surface—the object being that the bank thus made should look like a natural heather bank, and not present a black surface of peats to the sight of approaching grouse. The biggest bags ever made have been obtained with the upright peat butts; but The Mackintosh, who has had the largest day’s bag in Scotland, prefers sunk butts.

The latter gentleman also puts his butts nearer together than anyone else. The nearest are about 15 yards apart. This would not suit most people. Possibly, though, this too greatly depends upon the nature of the driving. Twenty yards apart may be far enough for very high pheasants, and may prevent two guns shooting at one bird. If grouse happened to be equally high, as some ground might easily make them, the danger of shooting other’s birds would be lessened, and butts could with advantage be nearer together than where the grouse flew low. In the beginning of driving, butts were built 80 yards apart, now they are usually made at 50 yards intervals. Low flying grouse, going half-way between butts 80 yards apart, cannot be dealt with; their nearest point to a gun is 40 yards, but at the moment when they are between the butts they cannot be safely shot at, and before they get there they are out of range.

No doubt most missing of driven grouse is caused by shooting at them too far away. This is the greatest fault of the novice. The next most productive source of missing is shooting under coming birds and over those that have passed the butts. After this, failure to allow enough ahead of fast birds, to compensate for their movement while the shot is going up, is the next most productive of missing, and shooting too much in front of slow up-wind birds runs it hard.

Beating for grouse with dogs is usually done by going to the leeward end of the day’s beat and then walking at right angles with the wind, and turning into it at every march to the shooting, or boundary to the beat. This, however, is a rule that has to be honoured by its breach, in the hill districts particularly. Thus, when beating across the wind means that one has to rise and sink at an angle of 45 degrees every time, such a method has to give way. It also often happens when a fair breeze is blowing that to start beating up wind near a boundary march means that every bird will circle round and be carried by the wind out of bounds. Then the rule again breaks down. The object is to drive the birds that are not shot into ground to be beaten in the afternoon. This is best done by an up-wind beat of the zigzag order when the wind is light, and by a down-wind beat, starting from the windward march, when the wind is fairly high, but not so high as to carry the game over the leeward march. It usually happens that wind sinks about four o’clock in the afternoon, or before. If this happens, it is a good plan to draw off and go round to begin again at the leeward side of the ground into which the morning birds have been driven. The majority of the Welsh moors are so flat that they can be beaten in any direction, like those of Caithness, but the Highland moors are as steep as the Welsh hills are before you reach the heather ground. After you are once up in Wales, the walking is easy in all directions. The Highland hills are very like those of Wales, but with this great difference, the rises from the Scotch valleys are clothed with heather and are the best grouse ground. In Wales this rise is grass and fern-clad sheep farms, and often takes half a day’s work, counting work as human energy, to surmount before shooting begins. For this reason Providence created the Welsh pony.

The grouse have a very curious habit in the wet weather of affecting the wettest and wildest parts of the moorland. Then, and only at that time, you may find them mostly on the flat floe ground, where every foot of peat is a miniature island, and where there is no shelter whatever from the storm. This is probably because the grouse do not mind rain upon them, but do very much mind brushing the wet heather with their feathers. At such times grouse are generally wild, for they will not “squat” and hide, but run very much. Then they usually have very good scent, the dogs find and point them a long way, and then draw on and on after them as the grouse run ahead. It is nevertheless just possible to get good shooting by two guns going well ahead, very wide of the dogs, and coming back to meet the point. It is the sun, not the wind or the wet, that makes grouse hide in the heather, and probably the reason is that they were originally an Arctic species, and can stand cold better than very hot sun. In support of this view it may be said that grouse disease seems to disappear in very cold weather, and moreover the red grouse are, in everything but feather colouring and the white moult of winter, the same as the willow grouse—an obviously Arctic race.

Amongst the methods of killing grouse that have almost died out are first “becking,” second “kiting,” third “carting,” fourth shooting them upon the stooks, and a variety of other devices for which the gun was not used, such as snaring and netting.

Some of these methods of shooting had a great deal to recommend them. First of all, “becking” is the art of hiding and the skill of calling the grouse in the early morning, when this proud bird, exulting in his superabundance of energy, rises into the air and crows defiance. He is quite ready for battle, although it may not be the breeding season; for they “beck” in August, as the author has often seen and heard through an open window as he lay in bed waiting for the first breakfast-bell. The loss of “becking” is the loss of an automatic destruction of the most unfit, namely the old cocks, which are the only birds that will accept the autumnal challenge, and come to make things hot for an unseen rival, whose unrecognised voice sounds as if he had no right there.

“Kiting” has little to recommend it, except that it too is an automatic preservation of the hens. They for the most part will not lie under the kite, but make off at its first appearance upon the horizon. The stronger and bolder cocks seem to delay matters until the thing gets right above them, and then they too become scared, but dare not rise. Thus they get kicked up and shot when the dogs can find them, which is not always. When they are up, they twist under the kite like a snipe, and are then more difficult to kill than by any other sporting method; for they not only have a snipe’s twist, but about double their own usual pace, exhibiting what the falcon will show any day of the week—that when we think birds in a drive are doing their level best they are in reality taking things easy. The writer has shot at driven grouse with a falcon in actual chase. The grouse was seen to be approaching some distance, perhaps 50 yards, before it crossed. There was no time to shoot in front, and upon turning round it was seen that both grouse and falcon were already out of range, but there was a high wind blowing at the time this happened on the “tops” at Farr, in Inverness-shire.

“Carting” grouse is a poaching trick, based upon the knowledge that the birds take very little notice of a cart, even when they will rise a quarter of a mile away from a man on foot. The shooting is done from the cart.

Shooting grouse on the stooks has only this in its favour: it pleases the farmers. It is a butchery of those killed and a waste of many wounded. But to hide up and shoot grouse as they come into the oat-fields, whether uncut or in stook, is good sport. The birds do not usually travel as fast as in grouse driving, but they are quite as difficult, because they come so unexpectedly and silently. To make the best work, it does not do to trust to hiding behind a wall, or on the other side of a stook, because the grouse are as likely to come from one direction as the other. The best plan is to build a grouse butt with the oat stooks, in order that the shooter may straighten his back; for nobody is so expert as to be able to shoot well from a crouching position, although kneeling is just possible, and most uncomfortable.

Another form of grouse shooting used to be called “gruffing” in Yorkshire. It was common everywhere, although it may not have a name elsewhere. The method was for a single gun to approach hillocks on the shady side and walk round them to the sunny side, when grouse that had long become too wild to approach openly would often lie and afford good easy marks by this method. This is only workable on nice sunny days, and only practicable as late as October and November between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

There is a wet-day method by which the author has killed a good many grouse. It is with a retriever to walk the roads that traverse the moors, or, better still, to ride a shooting pony along them. The wildest grouse will sometimes take no notice of a passenger along the well recognised roads, and they must be very unreasonable indeed if they mind a mounted man. Your retriever will find all the grouse on the windward side of the roads, and they will generally rise within shot. Why they should affect the roadsides in wet weather is not so easily explained, but probably it is that they prefer to sit on the roads themselves, where their feathers are not in contact with wet heather. If so, they just move off in time not to be seen by the coming traveller.

It has been said that grouse lie better to a black-and-tan and to a red setter than to parti-coloured dogs in which white prevails. There is no truth in this in a general way. After white dogs have been used until grouse will no longer lie, they will often lie to either a black-and-tan or a red dog, but only for a day, and only a few of them for that short addition to the length of the dogging season.

Possibly they take the black-and-tan for a collie, and the red dog for a fox. On one occasion the author saw grouse treat a red dog in a way extraordinary anywhere, except in the west and north of Scotland and in Ireland; but this was in the Lowlands of Scotland, where the grouse were wild by instinct. The birds were seen to be standing up in front of the pointing Irishman and flicking their tails in his face, and even when the dog drew on they merely just kept their distance, still flicking their tails. There was not the slightest attempt at hiding. Probably this is the method they have when approached by a fox; it differs greatly from the behaviour of the average grouse before the man and the ordinary dog. Then crouching and creeping are characteristics of the race, unless they are of the wild sort, when standing up to look for an enemy is habitual, and flying upon sight is characteristic.

[Since writing the foregoing remarks, Mr. Charles Christie, of Strathdon Estate Office, has very kindly, with the assent of Sir Charles Forbes, made a search for the oft misquoted records of the Delnadamph bag of 1872. The bag was 7000 birds, not brace, and 1314 brace of these were killed over dogs in five days by four guns, whose best effort resulted in 435 brace. The guns were Lord Dunmore, Lord Newport (now Lord Bradford), Mr. George Forbes, and the late Sir Charles John Forbes.

Sir Charles Forbes’ Edinglassie moor yielded 8081 birds in 1900.

Probably the record bag over dogs was the 10,600 grouse killed at Glenbuchat in 1872, where Mr. James W. Barclay (the owner) very kindly informs the author that driving was not started until after that year, whereas the greater number were killed by that plan at Delnadamph in 1872.]

THE LATEST METHODS OF PRESERVATION OF PARTRIDGES

At the present time there are in operation many more ways of preserving partridges than ever before. Indeed, the history of preserving these birds up to about 1860 could hardly be written for lack of material. For some strange reason, at the period when stubbles were cut long (and the author has shot in them a foot high as lately as 1870), and when partridges sat so close to the points of dogs that to all appearances they could have been easily exterminated, they nevertheless seemed to require no artificial assistance, and even no designed limitation of the reduction to the breeding stock. Perhaps it was that the close crouching of the birds in good covert was the natural method of assuring safety, and it may be that birds that could escape detection by the dogs could also escape it by the foxes and the vermin.

The wilder the game is, and the more it runs, the more scent it gives out to denote its presence to dogs; and with guns ahead, the birds that flush wild do not escape in driving, so that increase of wildness is not all in favour of the game even upon shooting days, and for the other 360 days of the year may possibly be against them, and in favour of the vermin that hunts by smell.