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,
