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—

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.

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:—

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.

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.

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.

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.