Dalmagarry INVERNESS - SHIRE

I’d been really looking forward to my day out on Dalmagarry. Since being snapped up by its new owner, Niklas Lundberg, in 2012, bags had been consistently improving and he had made infrastructure investments on top of ongoing moor management. What’s more, the list of Guns sounded quite entertaining.

You’ll be waiting for the ‘but’ now, won’t you, because most grouse invitations come with the caveat of good final counts in July. The email which arrived was still an unwelcome surprise – never mind our two days, the whole 2017 season was cancelled, wiped out by the arrival of an unwelcome guest: the heather beetle.

It wasn’t just a few acres that the birds can live with and can regenerate quickly, but on biblical proportions. The polite translation was that their stocks had headed for the hills. Sadly, those hills belong to someone other