The season for these birds opens in the North on 20th August, and in the South on 1st September. They have been lately exterminated in the New Forest and in Norfolk, and have long since disappeared in most of the counties south-east of Staffordshire. In Salop and Wales there are a few of them, as there are also in Devonshire and Somersetshire and in all the northern counties. They are and always have been absent from Ireland, but are found throughout the Highlands and the border counties, and are far more numerous in Dumfriesshire and Selkirkshire than elsewhere. Probably the species is decreasing in numbers everywhere, except in isolated patches of country where they are especially preserved. They are found throughout North Europe and North Asia, but in the Caucasus there is a second and only other species, which is smaller, and in which the cocks are blacker, than in our species. A peculiarity of black game is that the cocks do not acquire the lyre tails until the third year, although the hens are said to be fertile in the second year. The white under the tail of the black cocks is flecked with black until the bird grows old, when the black gradually disappears. It is not at all uncommon to see beautiful word painting detailing the glories of the lyre tail, amongst other beauties, on 20th August, but this is not painting from nature, for neither old nor young birds have the lyre tail at that time. The old birds are then in full moult, and although they can fly as well as ever, they lie to dogs then as at no other time of the year, except in July and the earlier days of August. No one would wish these old stagers to be shot then, where they are numerous enough to afford driving later in the season. But where they are scarce, and that is nearly everywhere, they are liable to become more so by the inability of sportsmen to kill them at the only time of year they can be approached. The man who shoots them during the first seven days of grouse shooting breaks the law, but assists to save the race; for too many cocks there always are, and the majority of them are too old, and interfere with their younger relations in the breeding season. This cannot be avoided as long as sportsmen make a practice of killing the young birds over dogs during grouse shooting. Until after 1st September the birds of the year lie close and to their sorrow rise singly, so that one has but to find a brood and exterminate it. The old cock will not be with the chicks, and probably the grey hen will get shot; but she is more likely to escape than any of the young ones. Consequently, where the birds are not separately driven later in the season, the preservation and shooting of this fine game bird proceeds upon the principle of killing all the young ones and leaving all the old. That is exactly opposite to the principle adopted for all other game, and we cannot wonder that the race decreases in numbers. Another reason for the decrease is that moorlands are being more drained than they formerly were, and this destroys the rushes, upon the seeds of which young black game mostly live in their early period. They do not breed in the woods, but prefer to have their chicks on the lower moors, where they can find rushes, heather, and bracken. Whether they eat bracken in its early stages of growth, as pheasants have been known to do, the author is not aware, but upon the moorlands around St. Mary’s Loch, where there are no coverts, there used to be large numbers of black game, and in hunting the moors they were rarely to be found elsewhere than in the rushes and the ferns. Probably, therefore, ferns as well as rushes are useful in some way to them, although it may be because ferns are a great resort of flies. The way that every young bird has to be found separately, and each gives the dog a point (whereas the grouse in most counties rise in broods), makes the keepers treasure the black game for the dog-breaking facilities they offer. They teach dogs to believe that there is always another in the heather, until they are sure there is not. But black game offer very easy shots, and consequently sportsmen rather despise them in this early stage. Then, on a sudden, a total change comes over the young birds, as it were in a night, and they are transformed into birds as wary as wild geese, and sit up on the hillocks to watch for danger. After that they must be stalked, driven, or left alone.

Stalking black game with a rook rifle is nice sport—infinitely more difficult than stalking red deer. With the shot gun it is still harder, because of the necessity of a nearer approach. But difficult as it is, the author once knew of a most extraordinary stalk. Two guns, unknown to each other, both stalked from different directions the same black cock on his fir tree; both, by luck or judgment, got up to the game; each fired at the same instant, and when the game fell, each unaware that the other had shot, claimed the bird. If that sort of thing can be done, it cannot be very difficult. But probably it never happened before or since, and as a matter of fact it is difficult to stalk black game.

If these birds were really plentiful they would be the most valued of all our game birds for driving. Probably there is not a pin to choose between their pace and that of grouse when coming down wind. The author has watched them coming to the butts together for half a mile, and the only difference was that the black cock were two storeys higher than the grouse. That shows which would be most appreciated by sportsmen, who are never happy unless they are accomplishing the difficult. But they are too few to drive separately in most places, and do not drive well with grouse. It would have been no uncommon thing had those third-storey birds turned back in the air and gone off over the drivers’ heads while the silly grouse were facing the music of the butts and dying in clouds of smoke, for this reference is to black powder days. Your black game can think in the air, like the wild ducks, and they can also fly into a wind about as fast as with one, again imitating the marvellous and unexplained power of some wild fowl, especially the teal. Pheasants, partridges, and grouse are creatures of the wind more or less, and pretty difficult to turn when the wind has got them, but not so your black game; they smell danger from afar, often only suspect it, but as they are like wild ducks, not slaves but kings of the wind, they will act upon their suspicion, because it is nothing to them to beat up against a wind, and besides, they are careless how long they fly. You cannot drive wild ducks, nor pigeons, nor black game, if they suspect your purpose. But when things are well managed they give great sport. Usually they will not, like a grouse, almost knock your cap off by rushing past your butt too near to shoot. They will be well up and look to be going easy. There they deceive, for they will be coming quite as fast as grouse if it is down a moderate wind, and if up wind very much faster, so that the lead, or allowance, and swing required is far more likely to be under than over done.

The author has taken part in killing 40 brace of black cock in a day, with no more excuse than that it was good for the dogs; but the kind of shooting in which anyone may be proud of a good score is in driving. Then the shooters have every right to gratification, but the drivers have far more. Late in the season, when black game are fit to drive, they sit up in the fir trees to look out for the enemy. They are so still in the dark Scotch pines that you may not see a bird as you go to take up your stand, but possibly the quarry has been watching all the time, and has observed not only the shooters but the drivers. Then your black game will probably be able to get away by the flanks, or if not, like the wild ducks, they may remember that there is always room at the top. In other words, they have the habits of game birds in August and of wood pigeons and wild duck in October. They are only unsatisfactory because the young birds are too confiding to shoot, and the old ones too artful to get shot.

The Duke of Buccleuch has had great sport with black game on his Drumlanrig Castle estate, but his best years there were a long time ago; the birds have been gradually growing fewer ever since. His very best year was in 1861, when 1586 black game were killed. This total upon an estate of more than 150,000 acres, although the largest, is nevertheless very small when compared with grouse and partridge bags over estates of one-tenth the size. Apparently the black game do not lend themselves to great concentration of breeding birds, or if they do, their fertility does not seem to be very great. Besides, concentration for shooting is extremely difficult, as is proved by the biggest bag ever made in a day. At Sanquhar, in Dumfriesshire, the late Duke of Buccleuch, with the assistance of eight other guns, once killed 247 black game in the day, of which over 200 were black cocks. This is probably the record day’s bag for Scotland or anywhere else, but it is noteworthy that it is only about one-tenth the number of grouse that have been killed in a day, and we may fairly say that the art of preserving black game has to be discovered, as also has that of introducing the bird into country new to it, which is only saying the same thing in other words.

The author has shot black game on Dartmoor and in Caithness and in most of the intermediate counties where they exist. Everywhere he has noticed a too great number of black cocks in proportion to hens, and as polygamous birds they should be treated like pheasants in this respect. The other point most noticed is that not more than a quarter of the grey hens breed. There is reason for this, and if it could be discovered, probably black game might be reared in numbers equal to grouse. The author merely speculates when he says that the excess of cocks has something to do with the trouble, but probably a worse fault still is that the old birds of both sexes are not shot, and the young ones are. There is no greater mistake than to believe that driving is an automatic selection of the old birds for destruction. This is far from the case in grouse shooting in Scotland, although in Yorkshire it is different; but your old black cock and grey hen carry years of wisdom to the topmost branch of the Scotch pine, and from that vantage post meet human strategy with avian tactics—and live to fight another year.

It is a great pity that someone does not take up the black game question and study it thoroughly. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of bracken, pine, and rush ground in Scotland, England, and Wales that have no sporting value. They are too high for pheasants and partridges, and do not grow the right food for grouse. The result is that they are useless, but are nevertheless natural homes for black game, and are so much appreciated that bachelor black cocks will inhabit them for years, as also will a few old grey hens that do not breed, and the probability is that they keep off all the breeding birds.

The grey hen lays from six to ten eggs on the ground. They are of a yellowish shade spotted with darker colour of brown or orange-brown. The playing-grounds and manners of the birds in love and war are best described in Booth’s rough notes, and best illustrated in Millais’ game birds and shooting sketches. However, both seem to suggest that all the birds in the neighbourhood meet on one playing-ground. This is not so, and there are sometimes and probably always several simultaneous tournaments in very near proximity.

The black game has feathered legs but not feathered feet, as has erroneously been stated.

These birds have been successfully introduced, and have bred for some years, at Woburn Abbey. Capercailzie have also been added to the birds of England by means of their successful introduction in the woods of Woburn, by the Duke and Duchess of Bedford.