The Sportsman's Library - Grouse Shooting

By Martin Stephens

This vintage book contains the 'Grouse Shooting' edition of 'The Sportsman’s Library', and includes information on the history of the sport, shooting dogs, equipment, habits and habitats, moor management, and much more. Written in clear, plain language and full of handy tips and invaluable information, this timeless volume would be of considerable value to those with an interest in the sport, and it would make for a great addition to collections of hunting literature. The chapters of this book include: “Shooting Wildfowl”, “The Development of Grouse Shooting”, “Habits and Feeding”, “Manipulating Grouse”, “In the Butts”, “Pointers and Setters”, “Shooting Dogs”, “Moor Management”, “Distribution and Hand-Reading”, “Grouse Disease”, etcetera. This antiquarian volume is being republished now in an affordable, modern, high quality edition - complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on hunting wildfowl.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447498681

Martin Stephens

Martin Stephens is a consultant to nonprofits, working with small and large organizations to help launch, fundraise, plan events, and thrive. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Is there really room for another book on grouse shooting? Is there anything new to be said about it? And am I the person to write it? The answer to all these questions seemed to be in the negative, especially the third. But clearly the Sportsman’s Library could not face the world without a volume on the most characteristic aspect of the British Shooting world, and my publisher was quite explicit in his desire that I should undertake it.

I would wish to make it abundantly clear that I do not set up myself as an authority on any particular side of Grouse Shooting, but for the last six years I have been more or less intimately associated with the many aspects of the subject, and have begun to realize how varied these aspects are. But I have also realized how little I know, and how little even the most knowledgeable of us know of the ways of nature at the end of a lifetime. And when, in addition, I recalled that I was faced with the fact that in the last three years we have had two admirable books from Lord George Scott, perhaps the greatest living authority on Grouse Driving and Moor Management, and Mr. Bernard Cazenove, my hesitation will be understood. I have tried in so far as I can to avoid plagiarizing these authors; but certain facts do not alter, and if our conclusions overlap I can only apologize.

This little book only claims to set forth the more salient facts of grouse shooting for those who may have small knowledge of the subject. I have tried to include only those factors which are common to the grouse alone. I have not added such matters as the art of shooting, the choice of guns or cartridges, the use of retrievers, which are dealt with elsewhere in the Sportsman’s Library. I have tried to cover all the topics concerning grouse which might crop up in argument at luncheon on the Twelfth. I have it as my aim that any young man who has read this book could at least follow such arguments with an intelligent interest. Indeed, some of the subjects in this book, such as heather beetle, sheep tick, or strongylosis, are imperfectly understood by many who have a long experience in a grouse butt. It will be seen that half my chapters are devoted to these semi-scientific subjects, which I have tried to make intelligible to the lay mind. I make no apology for this, as all those factors which go towards moor management form at the very least 50 per cent of the battle.

I have attempted to assemble, then, all the principal factors that affect the grouse, as it were under one roof, so that anybody looking for counsel on a particular subject may find it here in simple form. But those who would go further must go to one of the larger works on the subject, and, in particular, to The Grouse in Health and Disease, which remains after twenty-seven years the Grouse Shooters’ Bible, and to which I am under a very great debt.

If any of those with more experience than myself who read this book are left with the impression that I set myself up as the last word on the subject I can only apologize in advance and leave it at that.

I should like to express my thanks to some, at least, of those many who have given me help and advice. To Mr. N. B. Kinnear, of the British Museum (Natural History), for much help on the question of Grouse Distribution; to Dr. Cameron, of Edinburgh University, and Mr. Fitzwilliam, of the Field Sports Society, for advice on the heather beetle; to Mr. Walter Moore, of the North of England College of Agriculture, for his help on the question of sheep tick; to Mrs. Steuart-Menzies, of Culdares, Sir Edward Mountain, Major C. E. Radcliffe, Sir Fergus Graham, and Major H. G. Eley, of I.C.I., for advice on the introduction and hand-rearing of grouse; to Captain Keith Caldwell, for much patient exposition of his views on grouse driving; to Major J. D. Lloyd, for a great deal of help on questions of dogging; to Captain Frank Bell and Mr. Patrick Chalmers, for advice on a number of points which they were able to resolve from their long experience of grouse shooting in the North of England and in Scotland respectively; and, finally, to Mr. Eric Parker, for the constant help and advice which he has shown me, not only during the writing of this book, but during many years of friendship.

CHAPTER I

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GROUSE SHOOTING

The attractions of grouse shooting have been so remorselessly proclaimed in print that I hesitate to add to that pyramid of enthusiasm. For the red grouse, though he may be easier to hit than the driven partridge or less impressive than the really high pheasant, has certain claims on our attention that neither of his rivals can put forward. He is the only game bird, and I believe the only bird that is unique to the British Isles, which in itself gives him a certain glamour. Moreover, while the pheasant is as often as not hand-reared, and while the partridge is in this way and that very considerably assisted from shell to shot by man’s ingenuity, the grouse is completely wild from the moment he chips his egg to the moment he comes over the butts. He has received no more assistance from man than perhaps a little grit put down on the moor. Nor does it end here. To some the pleasures of grouse shooting may be that the lodge is comfortable, that one can get a pony to take one to one’s butt, that the lunch hut will be wind-proof. But to most its appeal will be in the knowledge that of the three most common forms of shooting, of the grouse, the partridge, and the pheasant, grouse shooting is carried out in far the wilder and more picturesque surroundings. You can shoot pheasants under the lea of a pit village with the pitman laying bets on your performance; you can shoot partridges in the suburbs of a country town. But you can only shoot the red grouse across the curves of purple heather. I do not intend to labour the point or prolong ecstatic description. I have purposely chosen illustrations to this book which make my point better than any fine writing, however well done it may be. Moreover, the hardy grouse brings her brood to maturity earlier than the pheasant or the partridge. Nobody shoots partridges on the 1st September, or pheasants on the 1st October, but the 12th August is an opening day in fact as well as name. And thus we shoot our grouse in August and September, in our own holiday months, during the sunny days of late summer when the moorlands are at their very best. And the shooting man as he motors up the white winding road of the Yorkshire dale, or leaves his sleeper in the bracing air of Inverness, feels the exhilaration which I think most Englishmen experience when they touch, however falteringly, the hem of the wild. Nor is the grouse merely to be praised for these associations. For as shooting qua shooting, i.e. in the presentation of targets numerous and difficult, grouse driving offers sport of a quality at which no man could cavil.

AT THE FOOT OF A WELSH MOOR

Glyn Tarell from Pen Milan looking towards the Brecon Beacons

In the long history of sport the story of the gun is a comparatively short one, and the history of grouse shooting is much shorter than that of the more pastoral pursuit of the partridge. The North of England and Scotland developed more leisurely and on more feudal lines than the south country. It is a truism to point out that until the nineteenth century it was rare indeed for the laird or the chief to kill their game. They would as soon have butchered their mutton. They left it to their retainers to do for them. This habit of mind was, no doubt, persisting to some extent in the early 1800’s, when the first Englishmen, like Hawker and St. John, were beginning to go to the north in pursuit of game. Hawker had a day on Bowes Moor as long ago as 1812, and St. John was exploring the terra incognita of Sutherland just a hundred years ago. His accounts were read in the same sort of way as a modern writer might describe Patagonia.

But the shooting of grouse by owners of moorland and their friends was general by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne, and must have been practised more or less regularly by a minority for fifty years before that. The available records are remarkably few. Those who shot in those days did not think their exploits worthy of note. It has always seemed to me so sad that the very distinguished shooting men who helped to compile the Badminton Volume on Grouse Shooting did not delve back further into the past. There must have been available to them many early game books, which have now disappeared, and there were still living those who could recall the days of the Regency. But the Badminton makes little or no reference to the pre-breech loader days.

Shooting in earlier times was, of course, over dogs, though driving in a rude form has existed for many years. In those days the sportsman might have two guns out and a loader. You could search all Britain and not find a loader on a dogging moor to-day. Yet as far back as 1803 grouse drives were carried out on Horsley Moor, which belonged to the Prince Bishops of Durham, and some of the butts are in exactly the same position as arranged then. Grouse were driven on Mr. Spencer Stanhope’s moor in Yorkshire about the same time. But grouse driving did not become in any way common for at least half a century later.

Between 1800 and 1840 we had seen the rise of the grouse as a sporting bird. By the 1840’s most people who had grouse wanted to shoot them. There then followed the next episode, the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the letting of shootings for sport. The most potent factor in this was, of course, the railway. As it crept northward to Inverness, the invading Sassenach came with it, wishing to enjoy the unrivalled sport of the Highlands. Moreover, it included a new class, for besides the eighteenth century aristocracy there came the wealthy founders of the Manchester tradition with the money let loose by the industrial revolution. In those early days few moors were let, though, doubtless, fairly widespread permission was given to those who asked to shoot. Letting sporting rights was not considered either possible or gentlemanly. Here is the advice of 1838 on the subject. Those who are anxious for satisfactory grouse shooting should obtain permission from some proprietor of moorlands. I seldom found these gentlemen niggards when applied to in a proper spirit. This in order to prevent disappointment as such mountains as are left unprotected absolutely swarm with shooters on 12th August, to say nothing of these illegitimates who do not wait for the legal commencement of the season. Where rents were levied they were according to modern ideas ridiculously low. The most quoted instance is that of Lord Malmesbury, who had all the shooting rights of the island of Lewis for £25 a year. The Weardale miners claimed the right to shoot the Bonny moorhen on the Weardale Fells and so did the Bishop, and there were stand-up fights between the Bishop’s men and the pitmen. There is a well-known north country ballad on the subject.

"You brave lads of Weardale I pray lend an ear,

The account of the battle you quickly shall hear

That was fought by the miners, so well ye may ken,

By claiming a right to the bonnie moor hen.

Oh, this moor hen as it plainly appears,

She belonged to their fathers some hundreds of years,

But the miners of Weardale are all valiant men,

They will fight till they die for the bonny moor hen.

Then the bonnie moor hen she mounts up in the air,

They will bring her down neatly I vow and declare . . ."

and so on, and so on.

But meanwhile another economic change was taking place, and that was the decline of sheep farming. It gradually became more profitable to view a moor as a home for grouse than as a home for sheep. Naturally this did not happen in a day, nor in many cases did landlords, at long last converted to the letting of shooting rights, realize that the dominant factor was an economic one. The years 1840–1870 may be said to have been those when grouse gradually began to take the place of sheep, and when proprietors of moors realized that they had in their grouse rents an economic asset. By this time letting was the common custom. Nevertheless, to the north of the Dee Valley there were still many persons who did not consider it the thing to do, just as there were great noblemen who could not take a subscription from those who hunted with their hounds. And the demand for grouse moors and deer forests was increasing enormously. Demand creates supply. Lord George Scott has recorded in his book that the fifth Duke of Buccleuch, who died in 1884, never let any shooting. The earliest record I can find of a let in Durham is 1834.

Meanwhile two other factors greatly affected grouse shooting. The first was the invention of the breech loader in 1854, symbolically in the year that Hawker died. Breech loaders were in common use by the early ’seventies. This allowed a much faster rate of shooting and called for more targets. The second was the grouse disease which was rampant in 1872 and 1873. From those years date the beginning of efforts at scientific moor management, in the hopes of preventing fresh outbreaks. Both these factors caused the more widespread introduction of driving. There is no need to labour here the advantages of driving over walking grouse if one wishes to increase bags. To-day the fact is universally admitted, whether of grouse or partridges. But it was more slowly appreciated in those days. Moreover, it was felt to be less sporting to sit still and have a bird driven to you than tramp after it over the moors. And prejudice dies hard. We know to-day why driving is beneficial. Firstly, in a year of plenty it is impossible to kill down the stock sufficiently and prevent disease by walking. One must on occasion go on shooting right into October, and this is impossible over dogs. A moor’s capacity is gauged by the amount of grouse it can feed in the winter, and stock must be kept down to this level. Secondly, driving has the great advantage of killing off the old birds which come first in the covey, and of splitting up the coveys and, therefore,