THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES v FUR AND FEATHER SERIES edited by ALFRED E. T. WATSON s^\ I J THE GROUSE - r' FUR AND FEATHER SERIES. EDITED BY ALFRED E. T. WATSON. THE PARTRIDGE. NATURAL HISTORY Ky the Rev. H. A. MACPHERSON. SHOOTING By A. J. STUART- WORTLEY. COOKERY By GEORGE SAINTSBURY. With Illustrations by A. THORBURN, A. J. STUART-WORTLEY, and C. WHYMPER. Crown Svo. =s. THE GROUSE. NATURAL HISTORY-^ the Rev. H. A. MACPHERSOX. SHOOTING 13y A. J. STUART- WORTLEY. COOKERY By GEORGE SAINTSBURY. With Illustrations by A. J. STi'ART-WoRTLEY and A. THORBURN. Crown Svo. 5s. ^fc THE PHEASANT. By A. J. STUART- WORTLEY, the Rev. H. A. MACPHERSON, and A. J. INNES SHAND. THE HARE AND THE RABBIT. By the Hox. GERALD LASCELLES, &c. WILDFOWL. By the Hon. JOHN SCOTT-MONTAGU, M.P., &c. Illustrated by A. J. STUART-WORTLEY A. THORBURX, and others. London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. New York: 15 East i^ ;h Street. HO1IZ LIFE. THE GROUSE A r A TURAL HIS TOR \ ' BY THE REV. H. A. MACPHERSOX SHOOTING BY A. J. STUART-WORTLEY COOKERY BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST 16"- STREET l8 94 PREFACE THE design of the Fur and FcatJier Scries is to present monographs, as complete as they can possibly be made, on the various English birds and beasts which arc generally included under the head of Game. Books on Natural History cover such a vast number of subjects that their writers necessarily find it impossible to deal with each in a really comprehensive manner ; and it is not within the scope of such works exhaustively to discuss the animals described, in the light of objects of sport. Books on sport, again, seldom treat at length of the Natural History of the furred and feathered creatures which arc shot or otherwise taken ; and, so far .as the Editor is aware, in no book hitherto published on Natural History or Sport has information been given as to the best methods of turning the contents of the bag to account. 883574 vi PREFACE Each volume of the present Series will, therefore, be devoted to a bird or beast, and will be divided into three parts. The Natural History of the species will first be given ; it will then be considered from the point of view of sport ; and the writer of the third division will assume that the creature has been carried to the larder, and will proceed to discuss it gas- tronomically. The origin of the animals will be traced, their birth and breeding described, every known method of circumventing and killing them not omitting the methods em- ployed by the poacher will be explained with special regard to modern developments, and they will only be left when on the table in the most appetising forms which the delicate science of cookery has discovered. It is intended to make the illustrations a prominent feature of the Series. The pictures in the present volume are after drawings by Mr. A. J. Stuart-Wortley and Mr. A. Thor- burn. All of them, including the diagrams, have been designed under the supervision of the first-named. ALFRED E. T. WATSON. CONTENTS NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE BY THE REV. H. A. MACPHERSON CHAP. l-AGE I. IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE .... 3 II. THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE . . . . 19 III. THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES. . . .41 IV. THE PLUMAGE OF THE GROUSE . . . . 56 V. GROUSE-BECKING ...... 65 SHOOTING THE GROUSE BY A. J. STUART- WORTLEY I. 'THE SCOTCH MAIL' 83 II. ' OVER Docs' 102 III. SCOTCH DRIVING . . . . . .120 IV. ENGLISH DRIVING . . . . . . . 172 V. GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHI.NX; . . . 217 VI. 'TiiE FRINGE OF THE MOOR' . . . . 237 VII. RECORDS AND REMARKS ..... 253 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 267 ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. STUART-WORTLEY AND A. TlIORBURN (Reprodnced by Messrs. Andre & Sleigh, Angerer 6 Goschl, Universal Process Company, and Walker c Boutall} VIGNETTE .... ... Title-page AT HOME . . . . . . . Frontispiece BETWEEN Two FIRES ... . . To face p. 20 THE SHADOW OF DEATH .... ,,46 THE FIRST RIGHT AND LETT . . . . ,, 96 WELL FOUND AND WELL BACKED . . ,, 118 OLD GROUSE ON THE TOPS .... ,, 148 WHY TURN ROUND? ,, 190 NOT TO HE TURNED ...... ,, 204 THE LAST BEFORE DARK .... ,, 216 BLACKCOCK FORWARD ,, 238 WHERE ARK THEY? ,, 248 Ox THE WALL ,, 262 VARIOUS DIAGRAMS IN THE TEXT KY A. J. STUART- WORTLEY. NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSIi BY THE REV. H. A. MACPHERSON CHAPTER I IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE IT is hardly too much to say that the Red Grouse enjoys a unique position among the members of the feathered community. Certainly no other bird exacts a similar amount of homage from its admirers, or affords as large a share of enjoyment to sportsmen. In these days of increasing taxation, it would go hard with many of us Highland lairds if we had no grouse moors from which to draw the rates which go to support school boards and other luxuries exacted by the oppressive democracy. Scotland is pre-eminently the home of this splendid bird a fact to which she owes a very large portion of her material prosperity. It was a happy hour when the Sassenach discovered the pleasure to be gained from renting a Northern grouse moor. Until then the bird had existed only on sufferance, persecuted by many enemies and little cared for by anyone. It is true that its value as food was always 4 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE recognised ; but that circumstance only led to its increased pursuit in the days when Englishmen killed the ' pootes ' as well as the parent bird in the nesting season. Happily those evil days have well-nigh passed into oblivion. For us moderns the name of grouse has a fragrance of its own. Its bare mention suffices to set us dreaming of the fresh, breezy hillside, with its varied animal life and endless expanse of purple heather. Considering how widely the term grouse circulates, there is a certain quaintness in the fact that the word is not a British one at all, but only an addition to our language and of doubtful origin. Our forefathers borrowed the word from abroad, apparently from an old French adjective griesche, signifying grey or speckled. From this originated a plural word grice, printed thus in 1611 by Cotgrave, who used it to denote the ' moor-henne,' the female, as he tells us, of the ' mooregame.' The grouse was originally the moor-fowl, moor-game, moor-cock, or muir-fowl, and preserves these titles at the present day in many districts of both England and Scotland. Willughby called it the red game, and very properly. But the plural word grice was early modified into the singular grows. Professor Newton has shown that this title was first applied to the blackcock, notably in an ordinance for the household of Henry VIII., dated IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE 5 from Eltham in the year 1531. Similarly, Charleton tells us that two species of the heath-cock or grouss are indigenous to Great Britain respectively entitled the black game and the grey game. In course of time the name grouse, very variously spelt, has, curiously enough, come to be applied to the red grouse almost exclusively. It may be well to mention that some scholars have sought a derivation of grouse in the Celtic terms grug= heather and -iar=a hen ; but the suggestion has not met with favour. If the origin of grouse, however, be somewhat perplexing and I for one should be very thankful for further light upon the subject it must be allowed that the origin of an- other name of the species is still more mysterious. I allude to the name gor-cock, which appears to have latterly dropped out of use, but which was formerly much in vogue both south and north of the Border. Professor Newton assures me that he has no clue to the etymology of this term, though he thinks it may have some connection with the harsh cry of the bird. My own belief is that it signifies red-cock, like the Gaelic ' Coilleach Ruadh,' referring to the reddish plumage of the typical bird. This view has not obtained the support of scholars ; but it is borne out by the fact that it was current in the seventeenth century. Thus Ray writes : ' The Red Game, Lagopus NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE altera Plinii, an Attagen Aldrov. In the north of England it is called the Gor-cock and Moor-cock, the hen the More-hen, the brood Gorfowl. Heath-cock is also a name common to this with the precedent. Turner's More-hen is the female of the precedent or Blackcock. Gor in the north of England signifies red, so the Gor- Cock is the red cock, &c. For the under- standing and exact distinctions of these names we are beholden to Mr. Johnson, of Brignal, in Yorke- shirc.' ! The prefix ' gor ' has been applied to some other birds, notably to the great black-backed gull and to the carrion crow. The fishermen of the Solway Firth often speak of the great black-backed gull as the ' gor maw.' In Oxfordshire, as Mr. O. V. Aplin tells us, the carrion crow is still recognised as a ' gor-crow.' The syllable 'gor ' seems in these two instances to be identical with the Saxon gor (carrion, or refuse), and to refer to the fact that both the black-backed gull and carrion crow feed upon carrion. Of the appropriate- ness of the prefix in these cases there can be no question. The gull preys habitually upon such fowl as escape wounded from the wildfowler, and often attacks a sickly lamb. The carrion crow is equally a foul feeder. But with regard to grouse, I think that 1 77/1,' Ornithology of Francis IVillnghby, \i. 23. 7.V PRAISE OF THE GROUSE ' gor ' must refer to the red plumage of the bird, when- soever it may have been imported. Macgillivray was fond of coining new names for English birds, and he thought the grouse should be designated the red ptarmigan, The Gaelic names usually applied to this species are Coilleach Fraoich= the heather-cock, and Cearc Fhraoich=the heather- hen. It is also called Ian Fraoich=the heather-bird. The term most employed, at any rate in Skye, is the Cearc Fhraoich. The red grouse is not limited in its distribution to the mainland of Scotland. Wherever the common ling or heather grows most rapidly and richly, there grouse naturally most abound. The islands of Scotland are generally inferior to the mainland as regards their properties for growing heather in the dense profusion which the grouse loves to find. In Skye, for instance, the birds are scattered over a wider area than on a good Perthshire moor ; in other words, they have to range more widely in search of food. Of course, we can assist nature considerably by infus- ing fresh blood into our insular races. I have not tried turning down birds in Skye for more than two seasons, and cannot, therefore, speak of, with certainty, local results ; but I am assured that the introduction of Yorkshire grouse into Rum has greatly increased 8 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE the bags obtained on that magnificent island. Messrs. Harvie Brown and Buckley describe the grouse of the Lews as deteriorating in size, and as tending to die out, for which they specially blame in-breeding, an evil easily remedied, if desired. I believe, myself, that the fault lies in the want of zeal of the proprietors, who allow enormous numbers of hooded crows to exist and to plunder their moors. In Skye we per- sistently trap and poison these arch robbers, but we cannot get entirely rid of them, because a fresh supply is always forthcoming from the Long Island. Farther north, there are plenty of grouse in the Orkneys, not upon all the islands of the group, but upon the majority viz. on the mainland, Hoy, Burray, Flotta, Fara, Risa Little, Cava, Eday and Rousay. Stragglers occasionally visit the other islands in the autumn and winter months. But there are no grouse in the Shetlands. There never were any there until they were introduced. Their first introduction must date back two hundred years, since Brand tells us, in 1701, that grouse had previously been introduced into Shetland, but could not live there. They were numerous even then in Orkney, and the Fair Island peregrines used to visit Orkney to procure the moor-fowl as food for their young. Of late years, several efforts have been made to naturalise grouse in Shetland ; but IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE 9 the experiments appear to have been conducted care- lessly, and have, so far, proved useless. It was about the year 1870 that Mr. D. D. Black, of Kergord, endeavoured to establish grouse at the head of Weisdale Voe. A quantity of trees were planted at the same time to afford shelter to the birds ; but the situation did not suit the Norway firs, and they con- sequently perished. At last one pair of grouse nested, however, because three young birds were caught upon Sandness Hill by a woman who carried them to Dr. Scott, of Melmby. In 1882, Mr. John Harrison of Windhouse, in Yell, procured upwards of forty grouse from Scotland for the purpose of turning down ; but, unhappily, almost all the consignment perished on the way, and only a single pair of birds was set free at their destination. These birds nested, and were joined in 1885 by five additional pairs. They lingered for some time on Yell, and tenanted the island in 1890. In Unst a female grouse nested in 1886, but the eggs proved unfertile, and the species became locally extinct. -Mr. Harold Raeburn, to whom I am indebted for my present information, considers that there is no reason why grouse should not become perfectly well established in Shetland, if sufficient trouble were bestowed upon the experiment. The birds would have to face some drawbacks here as elsewhere : e.g. the dense popula- io NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE tion, the wet and stormy springs, and the sinful custom of burning heather all over instead of in suit- able strips. Another difficulty in Shetland, as in very many places, is the great abundance of the hooded crow and other vermin. Mr. Raeburn thinks that the peninsula of Roness on the mainland would suit grouse particularly well. What is required, if grouse are to become naturalised in Shetland, is the united effort of the various proprietors, who should join together in extirpating vermin, and turn down some hundreds of grouse for two or three successive seasons. I have no great faith, myself, in the virtue of experiments carried out on a small scale ; because introduced grouse would have, in the first instance, to fight stoutly for existence. On the other hand, a well-considered scheme, accompanied by remedial measures for the protection of heather, would probably result in material benefit to the Northern Isles. Upon the Scottish mainland the grouse enjoys a general distribution, ranging freely over elevated moorlands as well as those situated in low-lying districts. A wonderful region of Scotland is that which lie's between the high mountains and the western seas, bathed in a flood of thin mist or de- corated with a variety of soft and soothing tints, marvellous reds and browns and greys mingling to- IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE n gather in glorious harmony. To lie upon an open shelf of rock, from which the sun has newly drawn the early dew, to listen silently, and drink in at, leisure, all unnoticed, the cries of the wild population that hold their own among the pathless hills, this for the naturalist is a feast of intellect. Now it is an old male capercailzie whose fine bold form appears suddenly upon the scene, as he speeds through the top of a cluster of Scotch firs, having been rudely startled from his favourite perch by some passer-by. Anon, a restless curlew sweeps into the field of the binoculars, and pro- ceeds to wheel in agitation above the rushy ground in which her progeny are skulking, quaint little downy morsels with their curious, straightened bills. A wary old blackcock comes speeding along the hill in full view of us, and a skein of wild duck appear circling over- head, wheeling round and round at a vast height from the earth. If we lingered a few minutes longer, we should surely be visited by a blue merlin, or, perhaps, a tercel might favour us with a morning call. Much of the charm with which the hills are invested is due to the delicious uncertainty as to what we mayor may not meet with among the rocks and heather of the lonelier glens ; and I, for one, am obliged to confess that our national scenery exercises a stronger spell over mv imainnation than the beauties of Switzerland 12 NATURAL HISJ^ORY OF THE GROUSE or the gloomy grandeur of the fiords of Western Nor- way. The grouse is pre-eminently bound up with our happiest memories of home scenery. Of course, the wealthy men among us can go to Spitzbergen and enjoy good sport with a form of ptarmigan which Mr. Abel Chapman considers to be almost identical with the red grouse ; or they may visit Northern Europe and kill willow grouse to their heart's content ; but the grouse holds a unique position in the affections of most British sportsmen ; all the more, perhaps, since it is essentially an insular production, and cannot be met with out of Great Britain and Ireland, except, indeed, under certain artificial conditions. I do not know anything of Irish moors at first hand, never having visited Ireland ; but the north of England affords as fine a race of grouse as can be found anywhere in the Northern kingdom. The Pen- nine range, especially, with its infinite number of out- lying spurs, affords an enormous area for grouse to range over, and possesses the advantage of being near to the metropolis. Many quiet nooks of exquisite beauty are to be found among the grouse moors of Yorkshire and of Westmoreland. Farther south, the grouse manages to exist in close proximity to some of the grimy manufacturing towns of Lancashire. The account of the habits of the red grouse furnished IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE 13 by Mr. Seebohm to Dresser's ' Birds of Europe ' was based upon his study of the species in Derbyshire. Farther south than this it seems useless to look for grouse, unless we turn aside into little Wales, which is not famous for the quality of bags obtained upon the Twelfth, though the species appears to exist in most suitable places in the Principality. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the grouse cannot thrive at a distance from the great lonely moorlands which constitute its natural home. I believe that the species could be naturalised in any part of Britain, provided the conditions of life proved suitable. The experiments that have been made in Norfolk, although carried out on a small scale, are full of encouragement. Mr. J. H. Gurney tells me that Mr. J. Hardcastle turned some grouse out on Holt Heath nearly twenty years ago, but that they have long since vanished. Better results have been obtained at Sandringham. ' Some fourteen years ago,' writes Mr. Jackson, the: head keeper, ' thirty brace were turned down, and the following year another thirty brace. The experi- ment was not made with a view to add to the shooting, but for the pleasure of hearing and seeing the birds on the estate. I found that they nested and reared their young quite satisfactorily, but that they decreased in number between the breeding seasons a fact which 14 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE was doubtless due to their straying off our ground. They have an area of about 1,200 or 1,500 acres of heather, which is for the most part surrounded by grazing land. The stock is now reduced to about eight or ten brace.' It must be the wish of all good sportsmen to see such experiments as that just de- scribed meet with an enlarged success. We do not take as much pains to improve our sport at home as we might. I wonder, for example, that landowners do not unite to turn down gadwall and other fowl all over the country, and thus convert our ponds and rivers into a national preserve of wildfowl. There are thousands of places that would hold a brace of teal or a few pairs of pintail, if only they were planted with large beds of rushes and well preserved. As for the grouse, its good qualities have begun to attract atten- tion among our Continental neighbours. The pioneer was Baron Dickson, who established red grouse in Sweden between twenty and thirty years ago. It is now reported that the Belgian Government intends to people the sandy heaths of that country with drafts of red grouse. Already the example of Baron Dickson has been emulated by Count Kniphausen, who owns a property in East Friesland, and has given the following account of his experiment : ' In the autumn of 1891 I ordered IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE 15 from a game dealer in England five pairs of live grouse for my game preserves near Wittmund in East Fries- land, as an experiment in the way of naturalising this foreign game bird with us. My prospects regarding this attempt did not appear to me unpromising, as I could offer the birds on my sporting domain freedom from disturbance, plenty of water, heather, and various berry-bearing plants, and patches of buckwheat, to all of which these birds are said to be partial. The grouse were transported across the North Sea in November. They were sent from Scotland via London and Flushing, the consequence of which was that, by reason of the long railway journeys, the birds suffered very much, and succumbed, chiefly, I fear, from want of water at any rate, I only received one pair alive on their arrival at their destination. I had taken pains beforehand to erect for them, in a thicket, an aviary of wire netting, with canvas overhead, provided plenti- fully with water and buckwheat, and with the wire netting stuck full of sprigs of heather, partly so that they might feel themselves more hidden, but chiefly because I understand that heather tops are their chief source of nourishment. After a few days' rest I had one of the sides of the inclosurc raised, so that the grouse might go out of their own accord. In the spring of 1893 I was rewarded by coming across the 1 6 NATURAL HI 'STORY OF THE GROUSE cock grouse in the company of a blackcock on my preserve, and had the pleasure of listening to his call. It also came to my knowledge that the hen was alive, and that she had incubated for about fourteen days, though too late in the year, for it was during the harvesting of the buckwheat that she was disturbed by the mowers. The cock and hen both flew away, and the hen, alas ! never sought her nest again. The eggs, fourteen in number, I have preserved. This delightful discovery, that a pair of grouse had lived all but two years on my property, and had even made a good attempt to rear a brood, made me resolve to go on with my experiments. The dealer to whom I addressed myself undertook, for twenty marks the pair, to deliver ten brace of grouse to me ; and we came to an understanding that he should send them at my cost from Hull to Bremen, that he should undertake their being carefully secured in boxes made expressly for the purpose, and that he should not be bound to make good any losses that might occur. Messrs. Weltmann, in Hull, who forward goods for the North German Lloyd's Company, kindly under- took the delivery of them, and promised to see that they did not want for food or water on their thirty hours' sea voyage; and thus, to my joy, my gamekeeper, whom I had sent to Bremen to fetch the birds, was IN PRAISE OF THE GROUSE 17 enabled to deliver to me the whole lot of seven brace (more were not to be had at the time). ' The birds this time flew strongly when let out in their inclosure, but did not hurt themselves, owing to the canvas spread over the top. My sporting neighbours all belong to the Prussian and Oldenburg Forest and Moor Game Preservation Societies, to both of which I successfully applied, and they have, as before on the introduction of black-game, promised that for some years to come the protection of these grouse shall be looked upon by them as a strict duty. So it is to be hoped that this attempt to naturalise them in the plains of North-West Germany may suc- ceed, as it did with the black-game, which had for many a long year been extinct there.' And here I may remark that, as the red grouse is systematically netted in large numbers in the north of England, it should be easy enough for any of our Continental neighbours to repeat the experiment just described on a larger scale. Any such endeavour to naturalise the red grouse abroad should be extended over several seasons, and care should be taken to supply an adequate number of female birds. The latter are rather less hard}' than the opposite sex, and are consequently more liable to perish on the journey than their male companions. 1 8 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE It has been suggested that the eggs of the grouse could be exported to other countries. No doubt Count Kniphausen might very well have tried the experiment of introducing grouse eggs into the nests of greyhens. The eggs could be obtained in York- shire, and carried by water to their destination without incurring much risk. But very few sportsmen would allow eggs to be lifted on their moors, and any traf- ficking in the eggs of game birds gives an unfortunate stimulus to poaching practices. On the other hand, live grouse might safely be sent very long distances if packed in roomy cages and not overcrowded. The tops of the cages should be lined with canvas, so that the birds could not injure their heads by flying up- wards. I remember a charming sand grouse which became extremely domesticated and familiar with the members of the household to which it belonged. It was fearful, however, of strangers, and when alarmed the poor bird almost always started upwards and struck the wooden roof of the cage. I mention this practical point, because I have found by experience that, obvious as it seems to be, it is in fact generally disregarded by those persons who send live grouse about the country. I feel sure that its recognition would materially reduce the risks of travelling. CHAPTER II THE MANNERS OF THK GROUSK THE anxious time for those of us who happen to possess moors, or even to have leased those of others, arrives in the spring of the year, when the grouse, that have long since paired off with their respective mates, begin to occupy their stations for the summer and to go to nest. Without wishing to dogmatise too nicely, it is fair to say that almost every bird upon the moor occupies its peculiar station for many successive years, unless, of course, interfered with by human agency. It has been said, for example, that if an ornithologist wishes to explore any district in Lap- land in search of the eggs of the rarer species, lie should spend the time of a preliminary expedition in marking down the precise situations which each pair of any one species choose to occupy. We can all of us see the force of this remark even at home. Season after season witnesses to the faithfulness with which the curlew and its mate return to a lons^ and desolate 20 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE strip of broken moorland lying under the shadow of the Coolin Hills ; the eggs are almost always laid about the same spot, and generation after generation of downy chicks enter into existence on the same patch of heather and rough grass. It is the same with the ptarmigan that nestles up in the lonely corrie above Sligachan. I have seen the nests of two seasons placed side by side on a slope of green turf, screened from observation by the same con- venient boulders of rock. Indeed, I could tell you where to find the nest of the greenshank and many another rare bird, knowing from long intimacy with their haunts precisely the positions that these birds are likely to occupy in successive seasons. This principle applies as truly to the red grouse as to other birds, making allowance for the destruction of old females in the shooting season. On my own ground, at any rate, I have a very good idea where to look for grouse nests, although I never search for them intentionally, but only 'stumble upon them inci- dentally. No good sportsman would wish to organise a hunt for grouse nests. The grouse is a very par- ticular bird, and often deserts her eggs if suddenly startled from her charge. Of course, there are many hen grouse which would rather allow themselves to be trodden upon than leave their eggs, and their faithful- ?k m THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE ness to maternal duties is touching in its way. But the grouse is naturally a shy, timid creature, and will not willingly brook much interference. A grouse moor can hardly be kept too quiet in the breeding season. That is the reason why proprietors object so strongly to the intrusion of parties of tourists being forced upon them by any Radical legislation. Strangers do not, of course, intend the least in the world to do us any harm, but in point of fact they are pretty cer- tain to scare some birds badly, and thus to diminish the supply of chicks hatched out. Some people may suggest that grouse breed so very early that the young are hatched long before the tourist season. The grouse is an early breeding bird in the north of England, and often begins to lay eggs during the month of March if the season happens to be warm and genial. In the north of Scotland incubation is much later. In the island of Skye, April 24 is a de- cidedly early date for a full clutch of grouse eggs. May and June are the two months in which the majority of grouse hens go to nest. Although most of us have accustomed ourselves to speak of grouse nests, the expression is hardly exact, for the eggs are deposited in a mere scratching, scantily lined with a few dry stems of grass or twigs of heather. Some of the text-books, it is true, speak of feathers being used 22 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE to line the nests of grouse, but I believe that any feathers found in a grouse's nest have been accident- ally dropped by the old bird. The nest is very often placed near a little burn, generally under the shelter of a tuft of heather. I have occasionally seen per- fectly open nests, but they are very liable to be flooded. The grouse is one of the hardiest birds in existence, and frequently continues to sit upon her eggs after the nest has filled with water ; but the eggs are delicate, and are generally addled by such unfortunate immersion, notwithstanding , the devotion exhibited by the old hen. It is a fallacy to suppose that grouse like to nest in very old heather. As a matter of fact they prefer younger plants as cover, choosing to avail themselves of the shelter of well-grown but not really old ling. As to the number of eggs usually laid by grouse, my belief is that seven and eight are the numbers which occur most frequently Five is the smallest number that I have seen incubated, nor have I ever seen more than a dozen eggs in one nest. Indeed, to find more than ten eggs in a nest is quite an excep- tional event, although probably most sportsmen have at one time or another come across large coveys of young birds. It often happens, however, that one or more eggs prove unfertile. There are records of as THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 23 many as seventeen eggs being found in a single grouse nest, but I imagine that two hen birds had laid together. Mr. Henry Seebohm is perhaps as high an authority upon the eggs of British birds as any member of the B.O.U. He says that he has not found much variation in the sixe of eggs of the grouse. 'The ground-colour of the eggs of the grouse is usually a pale olive, spotted and blotched all over with dark red-brown. The spots are frequently so confluent as almost to conceal the ground-colour. In fresh-laid eggs the brown is often very red, in some instances almost approaching crimson. It appears to darken as it thoroughly dries, and sometimes almost approaches black. When fresh laid the colour is not very fast, and before the eggs are hatched the beauty of the original colouring is generally very much lessened by large spots coming off altogether, no doubt from the friction of the feathers when the bird is sitting. If the weather is wet when the bird begins to sit this is much more the case. When the colour lias once become thoroughly dry il will bear washing in water without injury. The colour of the eggs is admirably adapted for the purpose of concealment from the prying eyes of rooks, crows, and birds of prey, being very much like the mixture of moss, lichens, and peat where they are laid. Most of the eggs laid come to 24 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE maturity. I once asked a gamekeeper to watch half a dozen nests which were near his house. He told me that out of forty-nine eggs, he counted forty-seven chicken grouse. As soon as the young are hatched, especially in dry seasons, the hen takes her brood down to the more swampy parts of the moor.' It will be obvious to most people that the proportion of eggs that hatch out depends very much on the rainfall. Still more does this affect the tiny grouse during the first few days of their existence. If the weather is dry and sunny, the little fellows grow rapidly and soon become fairly independent, learning to peck at small caterpillars, flies, and other insects. _ If heavy showers of rain arrive at the critical time the number of young grouse that perish is often very considerable, for, hardy as they eventually become, they are extremely tender during the first days of their existence. Gradually the cheepers grow stronger, and learn to forage on their own account. They do best in fairly dry seasons, provided always that they have a good supply of water easily accessible. Should this be scarce, the chicks are sadly liable to seek to satisfy their thirst in deep ditches and drains, out of which they cannot easily make their escape. Of course it is impossible to guard against such misfortunes. Happily the hen grouse is a careful THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 25 parent ; indeed, both the male and female birds take every care of their young broods. The grouse depends chiefly upon heather for its subsistence, feeding on the common ling (Calluna vulgaris] and also on the fine-leaved heath (Erica cinerea), breaking off the fresh tips of the twigs, which are reduced to pulp by the action of the gizzard, assisted by fine fragments of quartz and pebbles intro- duced for the purpose of aiding the action of the latter in comminuting the food. Grouse are partial to the berries of both the bilberry and cranberry. Clover leaves have also an attraction for them. Occasionally they eat the polypody, of which the pheasant is also fond. In severe weather grouse find that even hips help to support existence. Joseph Walton of Garrigill tells me that very small grouse feed eagerly on caterpillars, a fact which he has verified by dissection. In the fall of the year grouse often shift their quarters from the tops of the hills, in order to feast upon the stooks of oats upon the shepherd's croft or the minister's glebe. Some birds take very kindly to the stubble. In some parts of Perthshire it is quite a common event to find a covey of grouse haunting a favourite field for many successive weeks, and the birds grow heavy upon the diet they thus obtain, 26 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE though they are considered rather to deteriorate in flavour. It is this readiness to feed upon grain which makes it possible to keep grouse in confinement, or at any rate in a state of semi-captivity. Some few years ago, when the sand grouse were visiting England, I was told one day that a sand grouse in the possession of a neighbour had nested and laid some eggs. On inquiry we found that the bird, which had nested in the house of its owner, was a tame red grouse, which had voluntarily begun to incubate. No instance of the grouse rearing its young in captivity has come under my notice hitherto, although some half-dozen records of the fact appear to be authenticated. The late Mr. Osborne, for example, kept a number of grouse in confinement for several years, and on one occasion a pair bred and hatched out five healthy chicks. Their owner used to walk many miles from Wick to fetch the tender heather shoots for the old and young grouse which had hatched out within his walls in the town. 1 It is remarkable that so shy and retiring a bird as the red grouse should become extremely bold and adventurous under artificial conditions, yet of this there can be no possible doubt. Mr. W. Oxenden Hammond tells us of a red grouse which was taken to 1 Fauna of Sutherland and Caithness, p. 205. THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE Kent from a Yorkshire moor, and lived for several years in a cage in the hall of a country house. ' This was an old cock bird, and its constant call in the morning used to echo through the house.' ' A pleas- ing description of the lameness of a covey of grouse was contributed to the ' Field ' of February 5, 1887, by a correspondent who signed his article with the letter ' X.' ' Now the history of these tame birds is as follows : A friend of mine one who delights in all matters relating to the habits of wild birds, and, what is more, is thoroughly versed in the subject had a nest of grouse eggs hatched out under a hen this on the same ground where his young pheasants were being reared. When first out of the egg the young grouse showed a disposition to stray somewhat too far from the maternal coop ; but this little difficulty was easily overcome by the intelligent keeper. At some distance a wire netting was placed round the coop. In a very short time this was removed ; but to show the result of habit and training on birds, it was found that the young ones circled round much about the place where the wire netting had stood. ' Time went on, and they soon settled into the habits of their pheasant companions. Some six or 1 Zoologist, 1885, p. 183. 28 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE seven grew up, and about October the cock birds seem to have made advances to the hens, and their overtures doubtless being taken by the latter as inopportune out of season they modestly levanted. There remained three cocks, all in splendid plumage and condition, feeding, be it remembered, entirely on pheasants' food and what they could pick up about the house. One of the birds remained in the corner of the field where the coop had stood, taking possession of it for himself. Here at all times he was to be seen ready to dispute his ground with anyone passing near it. Usually he challenged with a call, and then, if approached, he was ready either for a fight or to be fed, or both any- thing that suited the whim of the intruder. One day, when I was giving some maize to my friend, the keeper came up, and going on all fours, began throwing grass in the face of the bird. At once the grouse responded to the challenge by flying at him, coming up sideways, and using his spurs. The bird allowed itself repeatedly to be caught, and the moment he was liberated re- turned again and again to the unequal combat. More than once have I seen this same bird fly across from his corner and join us when shooting on the opposite woodland bank, this being some 600 or 700 yards across a narrow neck of sea at the head of a loch. My friend's dogs retrievers and spaniels knew the THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 29 bird well, and paid no attention to him, nor did he to the shots that were fired close to him. But not so my retriever. He began by thinking it was his manifest duty to bring the bird to me ; but, on being duly warned, and on seeing the grouse trying to get to close quarters to ram him, so to speak, with his spurs, a feeling of alarm, droll to see, came over the dog. Evidently he concluded he had to deal with some- thing quite new to him, possibly a demented grouse. Another day I fell in with my friend a mile from this spot, and having two dogs with me, it was as much as I could do to beat a hasty retreat into a thick wood, so anxious was he to have a sparring match with one or other of the dogs. ' This bird has now taken up his quarters close to a house, a mile from the place he was reared, remaining just as tame, and coming regularly for his breakfast. The two others remain about the lodge, in the court- yard, in the garden, and frequently come in at the servants' dinner-time to pick up anything that may be thrown to them. They have induced one wild bird to come down off the moor, and this bird is now fairly tame that is to say, he will let one get within a few yards of him. When, by the way, it pleased Master Grouse to join us out shooting, if by chance a spaniel came suddenly upon him, he was not in the 30 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE least degree disconcerted he would simply fly on to a rock, and begin crowing at the dog.' While the willow grouse is well known to be fond of perching in trees, its British congener rarely alights even on a bush except when forced by hunger to feed on hips in snowy weather. Mr. J. G. Millais gives a charming account of a Westmoreland grouse which was hatched and reared by a little bantam. ' Every evening the bantam used to repair to a large beech tree near the house, in which she was in the habit of roosting when unencumbered by family cares. So when she was allowed to remain out for the night her first thought was to make for her old perch, to which she considered the youngster was perfectly capable of following, as he could now fly well. The latter, after many ineffectual attempts to keep on his legs, was forced to sleep on the ground at the foot of the tree, for though he managed to get up to the perch, his efforts to keep there were quite useless, as he always fell off again, either backwards or forwards. How- ever, in the course of time practice made perfect, and he acquired such a liking for sitting on the trees that he was often afterwards seen in the daytime flying from branch to branch, appearing to be perfectly at home.' Mr. Millais adds that this grouse ' had a par- ticular affection for the lawn-tennis court, and when- THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 31 ever any of the members of my friend's family began to play, Mr. Grouse would always put in an appear- ance, seeming to enjoy the fact that he was an obstructionist, and refusing to clear off unless forcibly removed and shut up in his pen. If taken to the other end of the grounds he would almost imme- diately return to the tennis court. Such was the soci- ability of his disposition that he had absolutely no sense of fear at the report of firearms ; in fact, he would frequently follow the shooters out to a distance of several fields from the house before he would return home, satisfied that they had taken their departure for the whole day, so that it would be of no use accompanying them. Every night, before retiring to roost in his beech tree, he would take long flights round and round the house and village, which was close by; and in the course of one of his evening rambles he espied an old man digging, from whom he very naturally expected he would obtain some delicacy, as everyone was in the habit of giving him something to eat ; but this old scoundrel was a stranger, and barbarously despatched the confiding bird with his spade.' ' Mr. Millais mentions another tame grouse, which lived for a long time at (iuisachan, Lord Tweedmouth's place in Koss-shire. ' After !' 50. 32 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE being kept for several years, he departed as usual in spring to the hills, where he annually assisted in the increase of the stock, but did not return to the house, as was his wont, during the following winter. He feared neither man nor beast, and became great friends with a certain dog in the house, on whose back he used often to ride. The following instance of his plucky disposition was related to me on sepa- rate occasions by each of the two guns who were present when the affair occurred. A shooting party were beating the hillside near the house, when a pointer that was working stood to birds, which even- tually rose, and some were killed ; but as the dog still held, they correctly inferred that there was probably another bird left, which proved to be the case. This happened to be the tame grouse, whose presence was quite unexpected, and who considered being pointed such an insult that when the unfortunate dog ap- proached near enough to be disagreeable, he flew up and attacked it so blindly that he was with difficulty rescued from its jaws.' Cock grouse, in spite of their general shyness, are very pugnacious birds, and the old males especially show great intolerance of any strangers that venture to intrude upon what they consider their own proper domain. A Perthshire keeper tells me that he saw THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 33 two male grouse engaged in combat ; so completely blinded with fury were the birds that they dashed against the wall of a stone building, one of them kill- ing himself with the impetuosity of his flight. Individuals of the male sex appear to predominate in most birds, and I have no doubt myself as to the desirability of sportsmen endeavouring to shoot the male birds hard. Not only do more male birds reach maturity, but the females are exposed to additional risks in the breeding season. Mr. D. J. Lamb states that, out of 130 grouse killed near Pitlochry in four days in 1893, as many as 120 were cock birds. 1 This, of course, is an exceptional incident, but it points the moral that cock birds should not be allowed to live unpaired. Otherwise they disturb the breeding couples, and become a nuisance to the grouse moor. Of course, birds behave very diversely in different parts of the country. With us in Skye the family parties live together in peace and tranquillity until November, and rarely pack before the end of that month. If they pack in November it is generally in consequence of bad weather. On the other hand, the grouse of the north of England pack, as a general rule, early in the season, and the sexes usually separate. Every 1 Field, September 19, 1893. 1) 31 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE sportsman knows that the old cock birds often lie out singly in the heather on the tops of the hills, while the females and younger males are shifting in flocks about the lower ground. I have gradually been led to the opinion that the custom of driving the moors has altered the habits of grouse enormously, and led to their becoming far more gregarious than they used to be. The men- tion of grouse driving always reminds me of a remark which was made in my presence some few years ago. A certain man was descanting rather loudly on the excellence of his shooting, when Sir Reginald Cathcart inquired whether the drives were good. The reply was somewhat unexpected : ' Well, the fact is, we have not any drives yet, but I am having them laid out.' Our grouse in Skye never become very wild. Their tameness in December is often more openly expressed than in the breeding season. Of course, nesting grouse will alldw you to tread upon them in the heather rather than rise from their place of concealment, and it is necessary to take a dog to the hill if you wish to form an estimate of the number of birds upon the moor in the month of May. A hen that is nesting in an open situation will generally dash away in trepidation if she thinks herself detected ; but most birds nest in cover, and greatly prefer to THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 35 watch your movements while resting snugly concealed than to court your notice by any hasty action that might betray the safety of their treasures. Their habits become modified, however, when the young have hatched out. For example, if you happen to cross a bit of mossy ground on a July day you are sure to flush an old hen grouse, which sings out lustily as she rises from the heather. The dog makes a point, and lo ! a newly feathered youngster is crouch- ing at your feet, watching all your movements with a keen glance of its bright dark eyes. You pause for a moment to admire the little fellow's yellow freckled garb ; it harmonises nicely with the rough cover in which the creature is nestling. The instinct with which it accepts an impassive position, as offering the best hope of safety, is truly marvellous. The old hen will not leave her young ; another step forward, and you flush four or five more young birds, which start up with their plaintive cheeping cry, to fly a few paces across the moor before they drop back into cover. The anxiety of the old birds is often touching in its disinterestedness, especially if the young are newly hatched, in which case the mother birds worm this way and that way along the ground, trailing themselves through the heather with half-open wings, hoping by this transparent device to lead you away 36 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE from their tender charge. Grouse are good parents, full of solicitude for their young, and will endure any danger rather than allow their chicks to be injured. Sometimes they succeed even in beating off the attack of the hooded crow, or that rascally marauder the female sparrow hawk. Grouse seem to me to thrive best upon moors of moderate elevation. The low-lying grounds suit them very well in winter, when snow and sleet have driven them down from the hills, and they will then fly long dis- tances. It is not at all unusual for red grouse to cross the Solway Firth at a point where the estuary measures two miles in breadth, and I have known them fly longer distances. They often cross the valley of the Tees, flying about a mile from one hillside to another. Mr. Millais observes that ' the usual length of a grouse's flight ranges from a quarter to three-quarters of a mile, depending entirely, of course, on the nature of the ground over which they are passing, being as a rule much shorter on heather flats, where they have- numerous and agreeable resting places, than on broken ground and rocky hill places. In a discussion which took place in the " Field " I noticed that most sports- men were of opinion that grouse were incapable of flying four miles ; but I have twice seen grouse on the wing when they were crossing the " Bring," a wide 37 channel which separates the islands of Hoy and Pomona, Orkneys. The fishermen told me this distance, at the point where I was sailing, was quite four miles across, and the birds must have come at least another mile on the Pomona side from the point where they left the moor.' Mr. J. A. Harvie Brown states that in December 1879 a pack of grouse was seen flying south over the Moray Firth, making for the Banff coast. Their journey must have been very considerable. It is not easy, in fact, to say how far the grouse is migratory, but that individual birds wander far and wide in autumn and winter there can be no doubt. The Rev. M. A. Mathew records that a solitary red grouse was shot by Mr. C. Edwards on the Mendips, near Wrington, Somerset, in September 1885, and this, he suggests, must have crossed over the Bristol Channel, migrating from Breconshire. Very likely the bird was pursued by a peregrine, and the chase carried it far out of its usual latitude. Similarly, the red grouse included in Mr. Miller Christy's ' Birds of Essex ' had no doubt strayed from Sandringham, or from some other centre of introduction in Eastern England In 1879 Mr. W. Stamper observed a pair of grouse in a turnip field on his farm near Oswaldkirk, Yorks, early in February. The birds had strayed at least ten miles 38 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE from the nearest grouse moor. Severe weather often affects the interests of the grouse bred on high ground. Thus, Mr. James Carter writes that in January 1886 the neighbourhood of Masham, Yorkshire, was covered to a considerable depth with snow, which, owing to sudden changes from thaw to frost, with frequent fresh falls of snow, became a very solid mass. The depth above the heather on the moors was consider- ably more than a foot, and large drifts formed on a very extensive scale. 'The grouse suffered severely, being quite unable to penetrate the frozen mass for food, and in consequence they left the moors for the lower cultivated land to an extent never previously observed. The nearest point of moor to Masham is three miles distant, but the open moors are considerably farther away. Walking near this ground, great packs of grouse would sweep overhead and pass right down the valley over the town. A field of turnips was swarming with the starving birds, which vainly at- tempted, with numerous partridges, to scratch down for food. The grouse were perched on the fences, feeding on the berries like so many fieldfares, and on several occasions they alighted amongst the branches of trees. They were feeding in the hedgerows about Durton House and close to the outskirts of the town, and even on the heaps of manure close to buildings THE MANNERS OF THE GROUSE 39 where persons were working all day. As far as one could see they had abandoned the moors, and were feeding miles away in the cultivated districts on any- thing they could get in the way of food. A large farmer, whose land lies three miles still farther away from their usual haunts, states that immense flocks of grouse were feeding in his turnip fields. Gangs of men were being employed to clear away the snow from patches of heather, but their efforts did very little towards providing feeding ground for the vast number of starving birds.' 1 The Editor of the 'Zoologist' appended to the communication just cited a note that, ' About the time mentioned there was an extraordinary exodus of grouse from the moors in the neighbourhood of Ilkley, in consequence of the very inclement weather. The birds in many cases left the moorland altogether, and large packs were seen in the fields about Arthington and Weedon. ... I )uring a severe winter some years ago we remember to have heard that in Caithness the grouse were all down on the sea- shore, and hardly a bird was to be found on the moors.' A large amount of similar evidence might be cited if it could serve any useful purpose, but the foregoing will suffice to show that not only do single pairs of grouse stray occasionally on to arable ianns, 1 Zoologist, iSS6, p. 107. 40 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE but that under certain conditions the majority of English grouse desert their favourite moors for a short period in order to satisfy the pangs of hunger. The question whether grouse are liable to migrate in the early spring, when food is apparently plentiful, suggests a more difficult problem. There are good sportsmen, at any rate, and careful field naturalists who incline to believe that the grouse, like its distant relative Pallas's sand grouse, is occasionally seized by paroxysms of migratory fever, under the influence of which the birds travel for many miles from their home moor. But positive proof that this is so is still wanting, and the question can only be settled by means of marked birds. CHAPTER III THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES THE most important factor in grouse preserving is a judicious treatment of the heather which clothes the slopes of our northern hills. Of course many other points have to be considered. If we allow the moors to become overstocked, we increase the susceptibility of the game to the various forms of disease which have been so cleverly exploited by Dr. Klein and other scientific workers. But the vital question in the management of a grouse moor is the maintenance of a proper food supply. Grouse are hard}' fowl, and can face wet seasons, not indeed with impunity, yet without seriously losing ground. They are well accustomed to meet the vicissitudes of our stormy and changeable climate. In droughty seasons they vary their diet with an additional share of blaeberries. Does the snow fall swiftly and thickly on the brae? the grouse have long since learnt full well by experi- ence of hard times how to find the gullies where the 42 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE snow will drift in eddies before the gusts of wind that drive with such precipitancy, and are sure to assemble in the places where they can get the best supply of food. If necessary, they can scratch off the snow that shrouds the food plant from their vision. But how if we neglect the culture of the food plant ? In that case our grouse must fail. Shepherds have done much to change the appearance of our Highland glens, and to bring about a complete metamorphosis in the conditions under which grouse live in many districts. An enormous increase in the number of sheep kept in Great Britain has destroyed, and is still destroying, a vast quantity of heather. This is all right up to a certain point. Vermin like old heather, but grouse do not. Young heather is very acceptable to grouse as a variety. But the practice of burning great stretches of heather, instead of firing the ling in care- fully selected strips, is much to be regretted. Of course accidents will occur from time to time. No amount of care will prevent a few sparks from a passing locomotive firing a dry moss in a rainless season, any more than it would prevent our grouse being felled by a wire fence or by the telegraph wires newly erected upon some spot where grouse often cross the hill. But pains can be taken to see that heather is burnt by the shepherds in such a way as to meet the require- THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 43 ments of each hursel of sheep, while respecting the rights and interests of the prince of game birds. Shepherds, however good and reasonable they may be in other respects, like to delay the burning of heather until the latest legal date. They have their reasons for their choice. They do not care to fire the heather until it is very dry, for this reason, that if the stems of the heather are green they will not burn well, but will become hard and sharp, and the sheep will not willingly feed among it. The drawback to post- poning the burning of the heather is the fact that the grouse is an early breeder, and that late fires are likely to disturb breeding birds, and to drive them away from their nests. So the first point in keeping up a good supply of grouse is to secure a clever and thoughtful management of the heather. The next point is to supplement a good supply of food for the grouse by waging war against its four- footed and winged persecutors. The modern game preserver has often a genuine sympathy for the wild creatures that are roughly classed together as 'vermin.' It would be a grievous sin, undoubtedly, to extirpate even ' vermin 'altogether. People who have no game of their own to preserve are sometimes templed to say hard things of those who have, because they kill out hawks and other high-spirited creatures. Neverthe- 44 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE less, there is a mean to be attained in game preserving as in all other things. Landowners exercise good sense and decency if they tolerate a little ' vermin,' both to gratify their own taste and to satisfy the requirements of an interested public. But if they allow their lands to swarm with ' vermin ' entirely un- checked, they injure their neighbours and show a want of propriety. ' Vermin ' should not be extirpated root and branch, but common sense requires that they should be kept within reasonable numerical limits. In the British Islands the birds of prey have become sadly reduced in numbers of late years. Collectors of blown egg shells a very undesirable class of men offer fancy prices for the eggs of the honey buzzard and hobby ; so that, if these species try to nest in their old haunts, say in the New Forest, they are ruthlessly pillaged and plundered without mercy. A love of daring induces a good many young fellows to storm the nests of the peregrines that nestle on the most precipitous portions of our coasts. The eggs are so handsome that they really constitute a pleasant memento of a hazardous venture, while the young are charming pets, and can be trained for the noble sport of falconry. In many parts of Scotland, and, alas ! everywhere THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 45 in England, the man who manages to slay an un- fortunate eagle of either species is sure to find his doughty deed duly advertised by the production of a spicy article which goes the round of the papers, usually converting a sea eagle from Northern Europe into a magnificent golden eagle from the wilds of Sutherland. The most amusing instance of the kind that has come directly under my notice related to the supposed capture of a great eagle-owl in Cumberland. A local newspaper gave a high-flown account of how the huge bird was winged by a keeper on a moor near Cockermouth, and was brought to bay by the intrepid exertions of a large retriever dog. I journeyed some sixty odd miles to pay my respects to the bird of wis- dom, and was not a little entertained to find Bubo maximus resolve itself into a forlorn and miserable specimen of the short-eared owl. In this case there was no doubt as to where the blame of floating a canard lay. The editor of a local paper, Mr. Blank of Blankington, had seen the bird himself at the keeper's house, and the identification of the specimen as an eagle-owl was a flight of his own unassisted genius. Of course this brilliant hit was copied by many of his brethren all over England, and occupied a prominent position in some of the more foolish journals. 46 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE In point of fact, the golden eagle does prey to some extent on grouse. It likes blue hares better than any other diet. Rabbits are acceptable ; so also is venison, or hill mutton for the matter of that. But it kills a few grouse occasionally. Golden eagles have always been respected on our own ground. I am too pleased to see them about to grudge them a few grouse ; but they prefer the blue hare, which can be spared more conveniently. A former tenant of Rum assured me that a pair of eagles which nested on a certain precipice in that island killed a good many grouse, in the absence of the blue hares and rabbits which they would have chosen. Happening to be a gentleman, he respected the safety of the birds, which belonged to the golden species. An outsider might have proved less magnani- mous. The sea eagle has become so rare in Britain that it would be little less than a crime for anyone to raid its eyry or to slay a member of its race. Alas ! that the hand of the destroyer was stayed so late. I could say a good deal about the way in which the sea eagles of Skye were exterminated, on a proper opportunity. The sea eagle has no objection to grouse, and is sure to pick off a winged bird. A neighbour of ours at one time kept a pair of sea eagles. They enjoyed THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 47 their liberty, and used to love to accompany their master when he went to the hill, swooping down upon the birds he shot with great rapidity and unerring accuracy of aim. The kite, like the sea eagle, has almost been ' improved away ' from our midst. I for one am heartily sorry that it has become rare. Those that I studied in Spain appeared to live chiefly on offal and small reptiles. But I do not believe the kite is constant to any one diet. In this district the common buzzard feeds upon field voles, because they abound and other prey is scarce. In another district, not twenty miles away from the first, the buzzards live chiefly upon wall lizards. If you open them, you find their stomachs crammed with these reptiles, which you would have fancied were too swift and agile to be captured by so clumsy a round-winged hawk as the common buzzard. It is the same with the kite. In Germany I have seen it trying to annex tiny partridges. In some parts of Scotland, grouse found an inveterate foe in the beautiful, high-circling glede or red kite. The term ' glede,' by the way, is often applied to the buzzard and hen-harrier. But let that pass. The late Mr. 1C. T. Booth was a singularly impartial and truth-loving investigator. He studied the habits of the kite to good purpose in a remote part of Perthshire. The result of 48 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE his researches proved that the kites under observa- tion fed upon squirrels and rabbits, as well as upon peewits, and the young of curlew, wild duck, and pigeons ; but he decided that grouse ' seemed to be their favourite food.' One kite's nest, in parti- cular, was visited on several occasions, and each time 'the young bird had a fresh-killed grouse on the nest.' Further, he goes on to state that he counted the remains of over thirty grouse under the branches of a large fir. ' Some were only bleached and weather-beaten skeletons, and probably had lain for many months.' He considered that all the birds in question had been destroyed by a single pair of kites at the beginning of the season. I fancy that the offenders would have preferred more ignoble prey if it had been forthcoming. Sorry should I be to do any injury to a British kite. But our personal feelings must not be allowed to overpower our better judgment, and the preservation of rapacious birds, however desirable from a scientific or philosophical standpoint, possesses some distinct drawbacks for game-preservers. The male hen-harrier is a lovely bird in his delicate blue garb, and I know no more beautiful sight in nature than a hen-harrier quartering a moor, as I have seen it do in North Uist and other places. But there cannot be any doubt that both THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 49 male and female harriers are both extremely destruc- tive to grouse, and relentless in their pursuit. I do not justify the extermination which is so rapidly over- taking this bird, in consequence of its nesting on the ground, and being easily trapped beside its young, for it is a devoted parent. I do not go so far as to say that it feeds principally on grouse ; but I have no doubt that the presence of this charming harrier is highly inimical to the interests of both grouse and partridges. The peregrine falcon kills a good many grouse on some inland moors, but a long study of its habits has convinced me that it feeds on many other birds in a larger degree. I believe it prefers puffins and other sea fowl to grouse. Of course I admit also that this falcon kills grouse at every period of the year. livery sportsman knows the truth of this remark. It is not as well known that the peregrine feeds also on small birds. Young 'red' falcons are very destructive to young grouse, but they are not very discriminating, and live largely on thrushes and other small birds. 1 once crept within a yard or two of a beautiful peregrine, as he was perching on a crag of rock a thousand feet above the boiling waters of the Minch. He was so busily engaged in dissecting a fresh-killed skylark that he never observed my stealthy approach to his stronghold. It has often been said co NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE that the peregrine picks off the weakliest bird of a covey. The statement is not, however, supported by my experience, neither is it in keeping with what we know of the peregrine's character. The fact is, that a high-couraged bird like the falcon disdains to strike an unworthy quarry. She prefers a good chase. A Highland deer-stalker expressed the true view of the case with the naive remark, that ' the falcon is a real sportsman ! ' So she certainly is, and as such she has no stomach for flying sickly grouse. It is my belief that the peregrine, if she selects at all, selects the gamest bird in a covey, and the better the flight afforded by her victim, the keener is the falcon's enjoyment of the sport. I am no advocate for exterminating peregrines. On the contrary, I have taken some trouble to afford them protection in the breeding season ; but we can- not expect everybody to see the falcon in a favourable light. One of my friends dissected six peregrines in a spring, all old birds. Five of them had been feed- ing on grouse, the sixth had eaten a wild duck. Of course this did not prove much. The birds were cmite as likely to have contained rock doves or puffins. But the grouse has a strong and vigilant enemy in the falcon, and all that can reasonably be expected of the owners of grouse moors is that they will tolerate the THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 51 peregrine without allowing it to increase locally. The trapping of peregrines is easily accomplished when the falcons nest in the face of the sea cliff. Such birds as breed in high rocks in the interior of the country have a better chance of defying the exertions of keepers. Whether the buzzard ever kills grouse, I cannot say. I incline to think that it would readily kill a weakly or 'pricked' bird ; but I do not think a buzzard cares much about grouse if field mice and carrion are plentiful. The rough-legged buzzard is a finer bird, and more likely to kill grouse. I have known of two gerfalcons that were in pursuit of grouse when killed. They share the fancy of the peregrine for the flesh of that persecuted bird the Cornish chough. The sparrow hawk is common in many of the wooded parts of Scotland adjacent to grouse moors, and does some mischief in spite of its small size. A female sparrow hawk occasionally cuts down a full- grown grouse ; while the male, light as he is, has suffi- cient audacity to seize a winged grouse. Neither the kestrel nor the bonnie little merlin causes the grouse much sorrow. They may carry off the chicks when a day or two old, but only, I fancy, in very rare instances. I have preserved our breeding merlins for a dozen years, finding that they rear their brood 52 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE almost exclusively upon wheatears, meadow pipits, and other unimportant little birds. Once only in all my experience did I find the foot of a grouse chick in the nest of a merlin. I wish that the poor hen- harrier could be held equally blameless. To summarise my own experience of birds of prey, I venture to say that, so far as they act merely as ' nature's police,' their presence on the grouse moor has at least its redeeming features. Our grouse are all the stronger and hardier for having to struggle hard to maintain their existence. The thoughtless persecution of birds of prey, or of any other feathered fowl, is culpable in the extreme. But the interests of the sportsman and of the naturalist are closely allied, and the one ought to help the other in the wise management of the grouse moor. Proceeding now to speak of the less noble enemies which thin the ranks of our coveys directly or indirectly, I own to a considerable distrust of the raven. Cer- tainly he feeds chiefly on carrion, but I am afraid he is fond of grouse eggs, and sucks their contents when- ever a chance presents itself. So my endeavour is to keep the numbers of the raven down, without, how- ever, threatening their local extinction. The worst, because most cunning, foes of the grouse are the carrion and hooded crows. They are the worst of THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 53 ' vermin ; ' there can be no two opinions about that. In Norway, I know, the hooded crow is pretty omni- vorous. So he is in Scotland, out of the breeding time. In winter he will eat corn, or kill field voles, or gorge himself on stinking fish on the seashores But the black and hooded crows are dire enemies of sitting grouse. They carry the eggs away to the rock, near their nest, and the amount of mischief they do is incalculable. An acquaintance of mine saw three ' hoodies ' attack a young grouse. He was a fine bird, and could fly a little, but he could not withstand the attack of three of the black rascals. A few sharp blows upon the back of the head soon disabled him, and placed him at the disposal of his cowardly assail- ants. There is no worse pest in Scotland than the hooded crow. The carrion crow is as mischievous, but its visits to the grouse's home are more irregular. Much as I dislike the use of poison, I think it should be employed in the extermination of hooded crows, provided only that the eggs which have been ' doctored ' with strychnine be placed in a forked branch, or in a crag of the rocks to which no four- footed animal is likely to penetrate. The careless use of poison almost amounts to criminality. Only a few years ago, a fine golden eagle was killed by poison in a curious way. A neighbouring keeper had prepared 54 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE some rats with strychnine and put them out on the hill as a bait for hooded crows. Unhappily, the male of a pair of golden eagles, then breeding in the locality, chanced to swallow one of the defunct rats, and perished miserably, to our eternal regret. Some individual rooks are most persistent in harrying grouse nests, and owners of rookeries ought in my opinion to be held legally bound to shoot their rookeries every season ; for these voracious birds are long-lived, and if too numerous in a district, they do harm in a variety of ways that the general public never dream of. Whether jackdaws are generally mischievous on a moor I cannot say, but I know that in a dry season they rob many grouse nests, and I think they should be treated as vermin, and shot if possible at sight whenever they appear on the hill. Richardson's skuas are sometimes shot as destructive to grouse. They would no doubt bolt a tiny grouse if they felt hungry, and a chance offered itself ; but that is not a contingency which happens frequently. The black- backed gulls are very destructive to young birds of every kind, especially the lesser variety. I do not think the great black-backed gull troubles much about grouse. He cares more for fish and for car- rion. But the lesser black-backed gull is a shame- THE GROUSE AND ITS ENEMIES 55 less gourmand, and does a great amount of mischief. He likes the young wild ducks better than the tiny grouse, but nothing seems to come amiss to his hungry maw. It occasionally happens that an old herring gull takes to felonious practices. They suck poisoned eggs eagerly, and I have seen individual birds beating the hill day after day searching for grouse nests. I have also known the herring gull to carry off young chickens from a cottage door. But the grouse suffers more from hooded crows than from gulls or any other of its natural enemies. Cats that have run wild, collies that are badly fed, these, with foxes and stoats, are the worst furred foes that the grouse has to dread. In the Highlands we kill out the foxes, at least so far as is possible. It is very necessary to keep them down, for they would com- mit sad havoc among the lambs if allowed to become numerous. It may be said in conclusion that the grouse has fewer enemies to fear than formerly. The marten cat and wild cat anciently took their toll of moor fowl, but their presence: has been banished from most of the haunts of the red grouse. 56 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE CHAPTER IV THE PLUMAGE OF THE GROUSE CONSIDERABLE interest attaches to the plumage of the grouse, and most sportsmen have had occasion to remark upon the great variability of both sexes. This would not apply to the chicks, which are at first clothed in fine down, greyish yellow in ground colour, prettily variegated with chestnut and dark-brown markings. Nor does it apply either to the birds in first feather. 'At first the upper parts are brownish black, each feather edged and barred with yellow,' says Mac- gillivray, and a young bird in my hand agrees with this description, though some of the edgings to the feathers are pale chestnut rather than yellow, and the extremities of the feathers of the interscapular region are spotted with buffy white ; the lower parts are yellowish grey barred with pale reddish yellow. From this condition the birds pass gradually into the chief stages of adult plumage, which have been very cleverly worked out by Mr. J. G. Millais, who possesses a THE PLUMAGE OF THE GROUSE 57 large number of skins of the Scotch grouse. Both male and female grouse are liable to leucotism, or, in other words, to exhibit a tendency to assume white or light-coloured plumage. The male grouse have two dominant types of plumage, the red and the black. The females have three principal plumages : the black, the spotted and the yellow. The red is found, ac- cording to Mr. Millais, principally in Ireland and the Outer Hebrides. He finds little difference in Irish birds whether they be killed on the swampy ground of the north and south or upon the high mountains of Mayo, Connemara and Donegal. The black form ' is the most unusual of the three types, and one which is very rarely developed to any degree of purity. It is more often to be found mixed with the red or the white type, but most commonly with both. When combined with these two forms, it is the one most commonly met with by the sportsman during winter, and five old cocks out of six, shot at that season, will be found to be of this type.' As for the females, Mr. Millais decides that the red type is the rarest, and the spotted and breeding dress birds are the most beautiful. ' The females of the red Irish bird arc yellow, and not red, as would be supposed ; they arc, however, quite different from what are generally known among Yorkshiremen as 58 NATURAL HtSTORY OF THE GROUSE " yellow hens," which latter are finer in the markings of the feathers, and lack the boldness of the lines found in the Irish bird.' Mr. Millais points out that grouse will be found in full moult in April, August and October, but they change plumage gradually all through the year. From the month of May the plumage of both sexes passes through all the changes mentioned in the case of the ptarmigan, and every fresh month brings its alteration of feathers, either by moulting, discoloration, or both, till by November the bird stands clothed in its winter dress, that shows the type completed in one form or another. Young birds of the year are easily distin- guished till the month of September, but by Novem- ber it is impossible to see any difference between them and the old birds. Many men who have spent the best part of their lives on the moors will assure you that grouse vary in colour according to the ground they frequent, just as others feel convinced that they find certain types of colour in certain counties. Thus they hold that what they call ' stone-bred grouse ' are reared in rocky places, and that their plumage is barred rather than spotted, and of a generally greyer tone of colour than is elsewhere met with. I cannot say that I personally place much faith in such asser- tions, believing that birds vary almost indefinitely even THE PLUMAGE OF THE GROUSE 59 on moors in a single county. As regards the white type, though Mr. Millais distinguishes it as a separate phase, I do not see how it is to be separated from leucotism. Albinism i.e. the correlation of white plumage andpink irides isanother question altogether. Albino birds have often been obtained, but I have never yet come across an albino grouse, though I have heard of several white ones. Hut the white type of plumage seems to be akin to leucotism, and I hardly see how we can separate the two things. Many grouse have the lower parts beautifully frosted with white in winter. Sometimes white feathers appear among those of the back. Not rarely do white feathers crop out on the throat and breast. Birds which have the flight feathers of the wings partially or entirely white are obtained both in England and Scotland from time to time. 1 More decided varieties occur in which the ground colour of the plumage is huffish or greyish-white or pale silvery, varied with the usual characteristic markings in a subdued form. Such birds have been obtained in Ireland, England and Scotland. Mr. Millais considers that they arc 1 I should feel very grateful to any reader who would send us a white variety of the grouse for the Carlisle Museum at any future time. Such a gift would, of course, be cased with the donor's name attached to it, and should be addressed to myself, or to The Curator, The Museum, Carlisle. 60 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE most liable to occur at a high altitude in the north of Scotland. It may very well be so. Most of those that I have heard of myself were killed in the north of England at a very moderate elevation above sea- level. That such varieties are rare there can be no doubt, but they are not always preserved, even when procured. These pied and so-called white grouse are often bred from ordinary parents. On the other hand, when the sport has once cropped up, it is liable to be perpetuated, if the first pied or light-coloured birds are spared. Last season (1893) a hen grouse was shot near Alston in curious plumage. The wings were cream-coloured, and the body feathers were of a dirty- white. Three of her young birds were pied with white ; the other four birds of the covey were ordinary grouse. A few springs ago a Skiddaw shepherd sent me word that a white grouse was sitting on eggs upon the farm at which he worked. Unfortunately I was not able to go and see the bird. I have often thought of introducing the willow grouse to my own moor, in the hope that it might interbreed with the red grouse. These two species appear to be descended from one common ancestor. The young of the willow grouse bears a close resemblance to the young red grouse in first feather. The willow grouse has an enormously wide range ; it is, in fact, almost circumpolar, being THE PLUMAGE OF THE GXOUSE 61 found in the northern parts of both the old and the new worlds. Its flight and note are those of the red grouse ; but, in addition to having acquired a permanent plumage of the white type, it has learnt also to perch in trees, an accomplishment to which the red grouse has not yet taken kindly. Possibly the red grouse is an insular form of the willow grouse, which still puts on many white feathers in some parts of its Western home. This knotty point, unfortunately, we cannot decide satisfactorily. The red grouse is monogamous and consorts only with its own kind. There arc- nevertheless a few well-authenticated specimens of the wild cross between the red grouse and black-game, as there are also perfectly black examples of the red , grouse. As long ago as 1836, Mr. Macgillivray examined and dissected a hybrid of tin's cross. Altogether lie examined three specimens which showed the characters of both the species from which they were derived, and furnished the following description of a male specimen : 'In form and proportion it is similar to a female black grouse. The bill is of the same form as in that bird. The supraocular mem- brane resembles that of the red grouse, having a thin free fringed margin, which is not the case with that ot the blackcock. The feathers are generally oblong, broadly rounded, and have a large tufty tumule. The 62 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GROUSE tail is complete, slightly forked as in the female black grouse, but of only sixteen feathers, as in the red grouse. The quills are twenty-six. The tarsi are feathered all round, without a bare space behind. The toes are also feathered a third down, as are the interdigital membranes, and the plumage of these parts is as bushy as in the red grouse. They are margined with pectiniform scales, as in the black grouse. The claws are very long, arched, with thin parallel edges, like those of the red grouse and grey ptarmigan.' l The bird just described, which we may con- sider the type of this variety of hybrid, had the upper parts generally minutely undulated with brownish black and brownish red, with very narrow terminal bands of white. The upper part of the head was minutely mottled with brownish red, brownish black, and grey, but the rest of the neck was black, with a tinge of reddish purple. The primaries were greyish brown. The tail was black, the eight middle feathers narrowly tipped with white. On the lower parts the feathers were black, tipped with white, those of the sides being banded with red. The only hybrid be- tween the red grouse and black-game that has hitherto been obtained in England is a fine male preserved 1 British Birds, i. 162. THE PLUMAGE OF THE GROUSE 63 in the collection of T. H. Horrocks, Esq., of Eden Brows, Carlisle. Several specimens have been met with in Scotland, and a single hybrid of this kind has lately been obtained in Wales. I have heard of two other birds referred to this species, but in neither in- stance was the bird preserved, the reason being that they were hard shot. This is a misfortune, for the two species interbreed so very rarely that all specimens of their hybrid offspring possess great interest for natu- ralists. There is reason to think that a more extra- ordinary hybrid than that just named occasionally occurs, viz. the offspring of the red grouse and partridge Mr. Howard Saunders has devoted the following re- marks to an accredited hybrid : ' Hybrids between the partridge and any other species are uncommon, but Mr. Y. Bond has a bird shot on Blubber-house Moor, near Harrogate, in August 1866, by the present Lord Walsingham, which appears to be the result of a cross with the red grouse, the bill being strong and grouse-like, the tarsi and feet partially feathered, the breast and body mottled with pale reddish-brown with a sprinkling of grey, the quill feathers dirty white, with lavender-grey outer webs. The brown colour of the upper parts is not very significant, but the feathering of the tarsi and feet seems tolerably conclusive.' ' 1 Yarrell, J>riii>k />'/;-i llritish sports continue to fill its compartments, and help the dwellers of the far North to share the hard- earned gold of England's wealthier citizens ! SHOOTING THE GROUSE CHAPTER II ' OVER DOGS ' To the average owner or tenant of a Scotch moor, grouse shooting means ' over dogs ' and nothing else. A few years ago such was the onslaught made upon driving and its partisans, that it became necessary to take up the cudgels in its defence. But now that all Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Durham have adopted it exclusively, and that many persons in Scotland have followed the example of these counties, the press and the public recognise that it is useless to abuse a system which those interested almost universally employ. In treating this subject I have been obliged to re- cord my honest conviction of the superiority of driving as an art, as well as of its advantages to the general stock of birds. But in a work of this kind one must endeavour to be just all round, and recognise the fact that there are many persons, some of them excellent shots and sportsmen, who would not on any account abandon the ancient and beautiful sport of shooting OVER DOGS' 103 grouse over dogs, or to whom the organisation of drives would be neither convenient nor practicable. As a youth I duly graduated with Don and Ponto, ' Wallass ' and Lady on the higher moors of Forfar, Perth, and Aberdeen, and approached a point with as much keenness as ever Colonel Hawker felt when sculling to a bunch of fowl on the ooze of Key- haven, or advancing on a covey in the sheltering stubbles of Longparish. Yet when I had been intro- duced to the increased excitement, the superior marks- manship, the ampler results, and the more picturesque aspect of the birds in Yorkshire driving, I became contemptuous of those who were content to plod day by day after their dogs for a much smaller number of comparatively easy shots. But one grows more catholic with age. I have had many pleasant days since then with other Dons and Pontos, and should regret as much as anyone to see the extinction of so valuable a race of dogs, or the complete abandonment of so picturesque a science. I recall few days' shooting with greater pleasure than a bag of fifty-three brace to my own gun, which I made on September 23, 1872, on the late Sir Charles Forbes's moor in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, after many hundreds of brace had been taken off the ground by both driving and walking ; and that, considering the 104 SHOOTING THE GROUSE date, was a satisfactory performance. There is nothing in it, perhaps, even worth recording ; yet the fact re- mains that it is graven on my memory as a red-letter day, and ranks in my reminiscences of varieties of shooting with some of the best days of driving in which I have ever taken part. Shooting as practised in England is, on the whole, less selfish than most other forms of sport, yet it is also tinged with a proportion of the vice. I may, there- fore, be forgiven for saying that I think grouse shoot ing over dogs is eminently a sport which is best enjoyed alone that is, by one gun only. It is true that the party of two is the more correct form, granted that the pair work together absolutely without jealousy, and with exact knowledge of one another's powers. But these conditions are rare, and it is not too much to say that in no branch of shooting are greater sacrifices of result made to the essential qualities of courtesy and consideration for the capacity of your companion. If two guns can kill forty brace over dogs, you may be quite certain that the better of the two could have killed thirty brace, if not more, over the same ground on the same day. A good hand at the work can, if he chooses to set aside the unwritten laws of politeness and fair play, take so much advan- tage of an inferior hand as to practically absorb all y this way as many birds are shot coming from behind the right rear of the butts as from the direct front. The butts at this drive are very close to each other, and the bags made at it are large 350 birds, for instance. In another drive, 'The Rocks,' the birds are driven at first entirely away to the left of the line of butts, and at least half a mile to their left. '\Yhen once congregated on a certain flat, they are then M 2 1 64 SHOOTING THE GROUSE ' dribbled ' round a gentle slope at one side of this flat, the beaters hardly moving, but every one or two men moving from time to time as the firing mode- rates. In fact, the more ' dodgy ' a drive can be made, the more sport there is in seeing it done. Many of the writer's friends, who shot regularly on English and Lowland moors, describe the birds in the High- lands as being much harder to shoot. This, of course, is owing to the ground. In some drives birds come perfectly straight, either low, highish, or very high ; in others, on the same day and with the same wind, they will fly like snipe, with a wrench and twist which sadly upsets 'averages.' As regards scoring, the writer considers that the best fairest, and quickest way is to draw for butts, shift two each drive, and ask each gun after each drive is over, ' How many birds did you see fall to your gun?' In these days of nitro powders everyone can see if he kills or not. If he does not know whether he has killed or not, he had better give up grouse driving. The total of that drive is then given to the gathering keeper, who then has some idea of what was claimed and what was picked up. As the drives are all single drives, birds are easily gathered by the guns, and after they have left to go on to the SCOTCH DRIVING 165 next line, the ground is well hunted, and far back, by a keeper. Not a shot is allowed to be fired except during a drive. Walking in line and shooting home, as is often done, does really more harm in frightening birds than any amount of driving. The shooting at Moy Hall, in a fairly good year, is as follows : First week, about third week in August ; second week (after one week's rest only more is useless), about first week of September these of four days each; another two days about September 21, and another two days about last of October. These last are, of course, 'sandwiched in ' with other kinds of shooting. The man who will kill most at his moor by driving will be he who (i) gets good guns to shoot his birds ; (2) who disturbs his moor least by small days or stray guns being enlarged upon it ; (3) who is constantly on the look-out for fresh hints given by the birds themselves. (Signed) A. MACKINTOSH OF MACKINTOSH. With most of the above I cordially agree ; in fact, the experience of so close a student and excellent a sportsman could not, for his particular ground, be improved upon. 1 cannot quite endorse what he- says about built-up butts, having seen them work so 1 66 SHOOTING THE GROUSE well for a considerable succession of days. But even on this point one should, in considering individual moors, be open to conviction, and my solution of it would be that where on wild or rough ground such long drives are taken as are here mentioned, birds would be brought off their own ground entirely, and coming suddenly upon butts which they have never seen, would be likely to shy at them. At any rate first- rate sport has often been seen from both kinds, and so long as the sunken butts can be well drained I think there is a good deal to be said for them. Placing the guns so close as is advocated here seems to me to have disadvantages which on some moors would outweigh its advantages. Under any circumstances to concentrate the birds within so small a space is quite beyond the efforts of most Scotch keepers and drivers, although I admit that when once a perfect system has been established, such as obtains in Yorkshire, it would in some places be of great use to the bag. But in most Scotch drives the flight of the birds spreads over a wide space, requiring six or seven guns to cover it, and in such cases the flanks are sometimes as good as the centre. Again, having neighbours only fifteen yards off on each side of you would bother many people, besides destroying the feeling that you are free to shoot at any bird that SCOTCH DRIVING 167 comes within range, which constitutes one of the most attractive features of grouse driving. The opposition of the keepers is, as mentioned above, a serious drawback to the success of driving in some parts of Scotland. With regard to this it seems to me necessary, while making allowance for the tra- ditions under which they have been brought up, and their dislike of change, not to lose sight of cer- tain interested motives which generally underlie their hostility to the new system. Scotchmen, though as a majority they vote on the Radical side, are by instinct the most conservative of highly civilised races. Their laws and customs, language and dress, show the tena- city with which they cling to the traditions of an ancestry of which any nation might be proud, and a gathering of the clans would to this day evoke a response which probably no cry could raise in any other country. In the training and management of dogs the Highlander has always shown himself to be particu- larly apt. He seems in some degree to share the keen instincts and finer qualities of the dog, and the devotion of the animal appears to bring out the gentler and more sympathetic side of the nature of the man. The pointer and setter, no less than the collie, the deerhound, or the ' dandy,' respond more faithfully 168 SHOOTING THE GROUSE on the average to the handling of a Scotchman than of his English counterpart. The best dog-breakers I have ever seen have been Scotchmen, and one cannot but admire their reluctance to abandon an art in which they excel for what is to them a more irksome and laborious manner of providing sport for their employers. But while we may and ought to sympathise with their genuine devotion to the dog, as well as the honest and painstaking assiduity which they bestow on the development of his qualities, we need not be blind to the fact that there is in the large majority of cases the interested motive which I mentioned above. They many of them think more of the bawbees than of sport, and fear they may lose under the new regime a source of profit which they enjoyed under the old. It pays very well to breed pointers and setters at some one else's expense and sell them for your own profit. The kennel of a Scotch shooting tenant is usually a heavy item of outlay to him, but in most cases a profitable business to his keeper. It is the fear lest they should lose this which influences most of them, and causes them to take refuge in the unworthy course of advis- ing their masters that driving is impossible on the moor, that they cannot get men, or that they will drive all the birds off the ground or kill too many SCOTCH DRIVING 169 of them. Now, since this source of income to keepers, though not over honest in its source, has been, so to speak, legalised by the custom of two or three genera- tions, it seems to me both wise and right to com- pensate them to some extent if for your own pleasure or profit you do away with it. The obvious and best solution, unless you are prepared to raise their rate of wages, is to encourage them to breed and train re- trievers, with a few spaniels or setters. Good retrievers are very scarce and fetch high values ; most grouse driving is deficient in interest as well as in result, to those who are fond of hunting dogs, for lack of them. The same keeper who has for years maintained a high-class kennel of pointers will soon take an equal pride in his retrievers ; and a couple or two of setters should still be kept for wild days on outside beats, or to assist in finding birds after the big drives. The dog-man, whom I have urgently recommended as a necessary ally in partridge shooting, is equally if not more necessary to well-conducted grouse driving. To him should be confided the task of finding all the dead or ' pricked ' birds which fall wide of the line of butts or far behind, and it should be his business to remove all excuse for the apparently innocent, but usually crafty, marauding to which some of our friends resort to supplement their bag. 170 SHOOTING THE GROUSE The third difficulty, that of getting enough men to drive, is in some places insuperable. But here we must remember that, as in the case of the kennel question, liberality will do a great deal. A frequent evil to be found in Scotland is that the shooting tenant, having given a rent out of all proportion to the value of his moor, becomes stingy in other matters to recoup himself for his bad bargain, and so between the two conditions he gets less and less sport as time goes on. As I have urged in another volume, 1 liberality to all concerned is an essential condition of a pursuit of pleasure such as shooting, and I have always noticed that those who exercise this quality judiciously but freely, and combine with it a firm and kindly discipline, get the best sport. This is eminently the case in Scotland, where the people, specially responsive in nature, will be grateful to you for the one and admire you for the other. Good wages, a hearty lunch, and a brake or other conveyance for drivers who have to come far from their homes, I have seen work wonders ; while with the contrary conditions I have witnessed a general mutiny, and more often a sulky recalcitrant spirit, which, carried into practical effect all day, has entirely ' The Partridge. SCOTCH DRIVING 171 spoilt the sport. Where labour is scarce and drivers difficult to get, it becomes the more necessary to train the few you have to intelligent driving. It is wonder- ful what can be done with a small number by taking shorter drives, and teaching the men to cross about that is, while keeping their relative positions in the line, to zigzag so as not to miss the likely bits of hold- ing cover. To sum up, I commend the study of driving to those who rent or own Scotch shootings, feeling sure that if by any of the means I have tried to indicate they can infuse a keenness for it into the people they have to deal with, commanded and directed by superior practical knowledge, they will be much gratified if not astonished by the result. 172 SHOOTING THE GROUSE CHAPTER IV ENGLISH DRIVING SOME twenty years ago Messrs. Blackwood did me the honour to publish in their well-known magazine an article I had written on grouse driving ; a subject of which I had considerable experience during the remarkable seasons of 1870-1871, and above all 1872. In it I tried to portray grouse driving as it was, and is still, on English moors, and to defend and recommend it as a system alike the most attractive to the sportsman and profitable to the stock of grouse. Many letters followed my little effort, and one gentle- man, who disguised his identity of which I am still ignorant under the signature of ' W. C.,' fell foul of the advocates of driving, and of myself in particular, in the columns of the ' Field/ with all the artillery of envy, malice and uncharitableness, supplemented by an ignorance of the subject that was remarkable even among journalistic contributions to sporting literature. ENGLISH DRIVING 173 Sentiment against this ' inhuman butchery ' so overcame Mr. ' W. C.' that his feelings found vent in poetry, and the lines in which he may be supposed to have summed up his peculiar views on the matter are really worth reproducing, if only as evidence of his literary power and sporting instincts : Let gay ones and great Make the most of their fate As from mantlet to mantlet they run ; I envy them not - No, not a jot, If you give me my dog and my gun, I should have been concerned to see, even at that date, anyone who elected to run from ' mantlet to mantlet ' during a grouse drive, and the light of sub- sequent experience only tends to confirm the view which I held then, that a dog and a gun are almost as useful to a sportsman engaged in that pursuit as in any other, and none the less if, as appears to have happened to the fortunate ' W. C.,' they have been given to him. Mr. ' W. C.' finally crushed me with the remark that I was evidently more familiar with the pen than the gun. a compliment I enjoyed the more as I had never written anything for publication before, and had used a gun ever since I was strong enough to carry it. It is no longer necessary to defend grouse driving against this kind of onslaught, even when emanating 174 SHOOTING THE GROUSE from sopowerfula source as ' W. C.,' butthis gentleman was only one of many who always attacked anything like well-organised shooting or large bags, partly be- cause they had no knowledge of such things, and partly because at that time they furnished almost the only ' copy ' which editors of journals could procure on shooting matters. Nowadays all the best performances and records are pretty well known, most of them having been published in books or newspapers, and I think the Badminton Library has finally silenced the class of criticism so ably represented by my friend ' W. C.' The journey to the English moors, picturesque as it is, has details of a different character from those described in a previous chapter ; and what is a very important fact, the travellers are much more numer- ously recruited from local sources. The Manchester man and the Sheffielder, the dalesman and the tyke, are devoted to their grouse driving, and as proud as possible of the great bags that have made their moors so famous ; while their love of the sport is largely shared by the lower classes in the North of England. Herein lies the great difference between English and Scotch driving, as well as the secret of much of the superiority of the former over the latter. ENGLISH DRIVING 175 It takes a great deal to astonish a Yorkshireman ; this is one of his most distinctive attributes ; and if any competent Yorkshire authority such as Lord Walsingham or Mr. Rimington- Wilson told a man of York that an effort to kill 2,000 brace in one day was contemplated, he would be delighted, not surprised at the idea, and only ask for the privilege of helping to do it. There is therefore no difficulty about obtaining drivers, and those of the most willing sort. Many of them will be glad to help without any payment, and the older hands among them will have besides a complete knowledge of the mysteries of flanking, wind, c\:c., a shrewd judgment of the comparative merits of the shooters engaged, and often a wager on the probable scores of their favourite champions. Last but not least, if the head keeper is a good man, they have implicit confidence in, and great respect for, him and his prowess ; and as a consequence he can keep them all under discipline, and turn them all to account in the management of his birds. It will readily be seen what an important factor lliis spirit among the inhabitants becomes towards the success of those great days on the more renowned moors, which seem to provide an ever-recurring sense of wonderment even to those who have often taken 176 SHOOTING THE GROUSE part in them, and to be absolutely incomprehensible to those who have not. Many a time, in other parts of England or in Scotland, have I felt that it would be wiser to be silent concerning these phenomenal deeds, and that my character for veracity or honesty would never survive the relation of even half what I had often seen. I have never forgotten a les*son I received when, as a youth at a private tutor's in Oxfordshire, I used to be asked to take a laborious part in the slaying of from ten to twenty brace of partridges in the com- pany of seven or eight old farmers. I had returned to my tutor's after the summer holidays, during which I had been fortunate enough to be allowed to take a gun in a day or two's grouse driving on the moors of Mr. Walter Stanhope at Dunford Bridge. When the Oxfordshire farmers asked me where I had been, I said ' grouse driving.' This con- veyed very little to them, but one of them lazily asked what sort of a bag we had made. I naively replied the truth, from 150 to 170 brace each day. We had just finished lunch, and our morning's bag of 7^ brace of partridges and a hare was proudly laid out near us. But this reply of mine cast a gloom over everything, and one of these sandy-haired, beefy-faced veterans laid his hand on my shoulder and said, ' Ah, young ENGLISH DRIVING 177 man, when you be older, you'll know better than to tell such tales as that to a lot of men.' Many years after, a servant of mine, a veteran of the navy and the Taku forts, and afterwards of the London Fire Brigade, had to fight for his life in a Scotch lodge because he had incautiously related, and on this occasion quite truthfully, the results of a week at High Force, where he had just been with me, and where we had averaged 600 brace a day for four days. Previously nettled by his disparagement of Scotch moors as compared with English, the local champion, who happened to be the coachman, was fairly roused by this astounding record. ' Ye're a d d leear,' he cried, and fell upon the Southron. They were separated, but not until Flodden and Bannockburn had been fought over again, and the gun-room floor was covered with blood. These things are more widely known now, but I misdoubt me that many a Scotch keeper who listens with open-mouthed gravity to the tales of Studley and High Force, Broomhead or Wemmergill, conceals under the politeness of the Highlander an incredulity which cannot be shaken, and which deters him for ever from any effort to emulate such fabulous achievements, or eclipse the respectable moderation of the records of his own glen. X 1 78 SHOOTING THE GROUSE Although the opposition . to driving mentioned above is now out of date, there are still many people to whom the mere making of a large bag appears to constitute a source of irritation. I have never been quite able to understand this frame of mind. There is nothing to prevent such a man from making a small bag if he wishes it, either on his own or his friend's ground, and surely he might remember that those who take part in these (to him) colossal days are, for the most part, just as keen and accomplished sports- men as himself. From the days of the great Hawker until the present time, all the evidence tends to show that when a man is once out with a gun he will in- variably kill as much as he can. The man who will come home early in the day for fear that he should kill too much game is a person whom, at any rate, I have never met, and in whose existence, I must confess, I find it difficult to believe. But there is one point of view on which I should probably agree even with the unrelenting opponents of large bags. I do not think it desirable for boys or youths to take part in them until they have been properly trained to the contest between themselves and the animal they are pursuing, which constitutes the true definition of sport. A boy who is learning to shoot may be taken out grouse driving once in a way, but it is far better ENGLISH DRIVING that he should serve his apprenticeship in the pursuit of grouse by walking, stalking, or shooting them over dogs in the usual manner. When they are very wild he will, no doubt, if left to himself, organise little im- promptu drives with the few men who may be out with him, and in the course of a windy day he will get many shots which will teach him something of the calculation necessary to kill a driven bird. To partake in the pleasure of a well-organised shoot which produces a large total is not necessary to human hap- piness, however keen a shooter a man may be, but it is one of the delightfully exciting incidents of one's life ; and if the moor, manor, or covert produces naturally a large stock of game without doing harm to any individual, it is surely better to realise from it to the proper extent. This result will not be achieved", as I mentioned before in the first volume of this series, by anyone not educated to all kinds of shooting ; and the raw youth who has never pursued birds on his own account, nor handled a dog, nor trained himself to shoot carefully and accurately, but, on the other hand, has been allowed by too indulgent elders to take part in big days until he is nearly blase with heavy firing, is neither a desirable object nor a pleasant companion. I am glad to think, however, that these are the minority, and that the English lad i8o SHOOTING THE GROUSE is still keen enough, as a rule, to go out on his own account, and show his prowess in circumventing and securing birds without the aid of an array of beaters or drivers. Let me conduct such a one with me on to the moor, and, presuming that he already knows some- thing of the habits of the grouse, of the handling of his gun, and of the ways of his retriever, let me see, with all diffidence, if any hints that I can give will be of any service to him. Now mount your pony, and let us be off together. The other guns will follow soon, and we shall, at any rate, be first on the ground and into our places early. The drivers will start three miles from the first line of butts by time. It is, therefore, important that we should be on the spot punctually, or the birds will be coming over before we are there. Look to your girths before you get up, or your saddle may go round with you, and leave you in the middle of the road as we go down the hill. Through the little village we clat- ter, hustling the ducks and chickens out of the road- way, at that short and uncomfortable canter which appears specially to distinguish the hill pony. Round the bend at the end of the street, almost grazing our knees against the stone wall, as oui ponies hustle round the sharp turn, over the grey bridge that spans ENGLISH DRIVING 181 with its single arch the narrow, but violent, torrent of the beck, brown and swollen from last night's rain ; and" once on the opposite side the ascent begins, the road widening out here and there into a green lane or common, where the geese hiss and cackle at us, barely floundering away from under our horses' feet. We begin to leave the region of the sycamore, the mountain ash, and the larch, while the foxglove and blackberry grow scarcer by the roadside. Now we emerge into a great inclosure of, say, a hundred acres, in which, though there are still patches of succulent green pasture, dotted with mushrooms or here and there spots of grey stone peeping through the sward, the coarser grasses and rushy tussocks of the moor begin to predominate. A whole herd of young cattle come dancing round us, and the temper of the old bull who watches us, sulky and motionless, as we ride by, is a source of inward anxiety, until we reach the gate in the high wall which is the boundary of the real moor. Now we are fairly in the open and on the heather, a flock of anxious peewits hovers close round our heads, screaming and turning over in the air : the wheatear evades us in a succession of short, jerky flights, curtseying at us in derision at each pause upon a stone, and so, making our way through moss hags, over stones, and carefully round boggy places, i82 SHOOTING THE GROUSE but still always ascending, we reach the first of the line of butts. Now dismount and take your gun. You have drawn No. 4 butt, which is sure to b'e a good one ; and as we walk up to it from here, you may kill a grouse, which, as the drivers are still miles away, can do no harm. ' Yak ! kak ! kak ! ' from close underneath No. 2 butt. Well done, very good shot ! but look beyond there up the face at all those birds rising and going back into the drive. No matter, they will come on again. There is plenty of time, and you may gather from where those birds rose, about three hundred yards away, how difficult of approach the Yorkshire grouse is even in the early days of August. But here we are at our place, so let us get in and be ready for action. Now take the centre of the butt yourself, put half a dozen cartridges in your right-hand coat- pocket, that you may be able to put one quickly into the gun in case your loader should not be ready with your second when birds are coming thick. Let him place his bag of cartridges, well open, on the seat in the left-hand corner of the butt close to his hand, and I will crouch behind him rather to your right. Neither of us is likely to jump up, so that you can swing the gun round with freedom on both sides to shoot behind. Look with care to the height of the front of ENGLISH DRIVING 183 the butt it should be just high enough to shoot over in comfort when you are standing upright make it up with the spare sods lying about, and especially on the left-hand side, as from that side you will show to the birds against the sky, and you must keep low as they come up hill. Now lean both of your guns against the front of the butt, being careful in so doing that no little pieces of peat fall down the muzzle. See that the barrels of both are clear, and that both are loaded, and now let us take a good survey of the exact position of our next-door neighbours, and of the ground in front of us. Ours is the first butt under the ridge to our right, No. 5 being on the point of the ridge, and No. 6 beyond it out of sight. The three butts on our left stretching down the hill, No. r being the bottom one, all look at first sight to be belter places than ours, but I think we shall find on examination of the favourable slack in front of us under the ridge that we shall get as much shooting as anybody. The sun is now quite hot. The grasses and heather buds on the ridge are waving and shiver- ing gently in the bree/.e against the bright sky. In I lie valley I can just hear the splash of the beck over tlie stones, and clearly as we can see every detail on the opposite slope, and the flat above it, and even that rocky ridge, crowned by the delicate blue of a far-off 1 84 SHOOTING THE GROUSE range, no sign of a driver's flag, with the exception of the two pointsmen not far off on our left, is visible. A hoarse exclamation, ' Lie down, will you ? ' from a loader to his dog, comes to us faintly on the breeze from the top butt ; a snatch of a skylark's song from the pastures, an occasional bark from a sheep dog in the valley, the single plaintive pipe of a young golden plover, seeming to come now from the flat in front, now from behind, and now from somewhere in the sky, are all the sounds that reach our ears. All is deliciously still, and the atmosphere, fragrant with heather buds and stimulating to the nerves, the brightness and purity of the light, with the enchanting prospect of heath and fell, of mountain and cloud, of the peaceful valley watered by a shining river, its humble interests all clustered round the grey church tower and bridge of the little market town two miles away and five hundred feet below you, would be worth the journey up here, even if grouse and shooting did not exist to make it, to your eyes, complete. Faintly a very distant rattle, the well-known music of the railway, catches your ear, and there, creeping gently down towards the town, is the little toy train, tracing its accurate line in picturesque contrast to the windings of the river, and giving with its long soft trail of snow-white steam a new note of interest to the slumbering land- ENGLISH DRIVING 185 scape. Toy-like as it appears from here, that is a northern express going at fifty miles an hour, and it has even now passed out of sight. There ! On the rocky ridge afar off is a flash of something white; it is no, yes a driver's flag; there is another, showing black against the sunlit moor to the right yes, there they are, all or nearly all in sight, 'and in the shape of a perfect horseshoe. 'The birds will not be here for some time yet,' you say. No, but I should take my gun and be on the watch for an odd lot often comes over very early off the flank of the drive. Look out, here are birds ! ' Black and mysterious looking, a little pack of some five-and- twenty suddenly show on the ridge about a hundred yards in front. Rapidly and silently they come along the riclge straight for your neighbour, No. 5. Whistle to him, it is only fair play but it is too late, for ///;//. Some hasty movement of his or his neighbour's beyond, and in an instant they have swerved and are coming right down on us. ' Take the first one,' One two well done ; that second one isn't down yet, but badly hit ; ah ! there he comes, stone dead I should say, just this side of that little knoll with the shining bit of white grass below it. I shall get him for you all right after the drive, when we hunt the ground behind. l>y this time you are very much on \ i86 SHOOTING THE GROUSE the look-out, and so I now see are our neighbours, but there probably won't be any more for some little time. That little pack were all old birds, sitting on some bare place upon the ridge, and had got up thinking to sneak away long before the drivers came really near. And let me point out to you that, had your neighbour been 'watching out' as we were, the lot would never have swerved, but would have gone straight by him, an easy chance ; whereas as things are, he is either unconscious or furious, no matter which, and you are a brace of birds to the good, which he will only put down as an item of your extra- ordinary good luck. Now keep a sharp watch, and especially to your left. The birds that come over the ridge on the right must show well against the sky, and those in front will tell black against the sunlight of the opposite face; but those that come up the hill from the left, having crossed the gully without our seeing them, will be creeping very low over the heather, so that with the sun shining on their bodies they will be very difficult to see against the ground, and get right up to us un- awares, unless we are careful. Here they come, just from the point I warned you of, seven or eight of them, close to the top of the heather and very slow, for they have a little wind against them, have come a ENGLISH DRIVING 187 long way, and are flying up hill. The slant of their course will bring them obliquely across you, heading straight for No. 5 and here is a good chance to get four with your two guns. Take the outside one on your right, they are sure to swing away a little when you fire, but those on your left will still cross near enough to deal with easily. Good ! he is stone dead, the second also, an easy cross shot straight in front, the third a miss, though an easy chance, and the fourth cleverly dropped by a longish shot just as they were swinging back all together. No. 5 kills one, close to your last, for they are now almost in front of him, and they are gone ; back over the ridge. That third shot was a pity, and arose from too much haste and flurry in changing your gun ; quite unnecessary, for there was really plenty of time, as there was another bird much nearer to you than the one you fired at with your fourth barrel. Bear this in mind another time. Here come two straight to you from under the ridge ; take care, for these are coming thrice as fast as the last, the side wind helping them a little, and rather higher. Slightly to your right the}' come over at express pace ; ah ! your first barrel was neither high enough nor forward enough, as you see by those little floating white feathers from under his tail, but swinging quickly you killed him well 1 88 SHOOTING THE GROUSE with your second behind the line, and he has fallen stone dead in that patch of rushes by the little trickle of water. ' You ought to have had them both.' Yes, you ought, but the first barrel at a fast grouse at about twenty feet from the ground always demands just sufficient forethought to remember to lift the left arm well up and to shoot well over him. Now they are coming more frequently, and mostly very straight to us from the ridge to our right, and from the front. Look out again from the left you see those had got to within ten yards of you, coming from below before you saw them, and that is why, instead of getting at least three, if not four of them, all ea.sy shots, you in your hurry missed your first, killed your second behind, and fired two most ridiculous shots at him with your second gun after they were too far off. Your eyes should run over all the ground in front of you, from the extreme right to left and back again, incessantly. Especially you should watch two points that where the ridge sinks into the skyline eighty yards ahead, and that on the left where they come creeping to you from below. You ought by now to be getting to know the instant a bird is in sight whether he is really coming to you or not. Observe how those that you first see in front of you nearly all swing with the wind down to No. 3 on ENGLISH DRIVING 189 your left ; and on the other hand how the same curve in their flight causes all those which first show at the point of the ridge I just mentioned to come right on to you, though first seen straight in front of No. 5. Look out for those two in front, they are going to settle, and you should always shoot at a settling bird, even up to a longish range. You missed the moment, and probably the bird also. Just when he tucks his tail in, and is sinking down into the heather, with his wings open and neck and breast exposed, he is very vulnerable, and may be killed at a long way off. There, he has run on to that stone now take him sitting, it is better to put him up in any case, for he will only attract others to settle near him. Ah, you shot over him, and he is off. There is only one way to make sure of a sitting bird, a trick I found out for myself at pigeon shooting : aim carefully three or four feet under him, raise the muzzle gently till it just covers his toes, at that moment pull, and you will never miss another sitter. Now there is a fine lot -they seem to be streaming at you from all points in front, there must be two or three hundred of them. Keep cool, take the one coming straight for the right-hand corner of our butt and who leads the pack, first. Well killed ! the second snapped rather too hastily in front, the third well SHOOTING THE GROUSE killed ; but why, oh ! why did you turn round ? the fourth one you shot at and missed was ridiculously far, and then one nearly knocked your cap off mean- while. Again you change guns, and kill one out of two hastily shot at behind the butts, and as you again get your seventh and eighth barrels to work you find that birds have been streaming straight to you all the while, tailing off after the main body of the pack. Result five birds with your eight barrels, while, shoot- ing as well as you do, you ought to have very easily killed with all the shots and secured eight birds. As long as there are birds still coming on you should never turn round at all, but keep on plugging away always at those which catch your eye as coming easiest, and letting them get tolerably near you before firing. As in watching a first-rate professional at billiards you will be astonished at the number of easy strokes he gets, and notice how seldom he takes a difficult one, so a high-class performer with the gun will achieve as much by his rapid selection of easy chances as by accuracy of shooting. There will always be plenty of difficult shots during a drive on which to employ his more brilliant efforts, and which he will kill with all the more certainty from ' getting his eye in ' at the easy ones. But this is a part of the art that is not learned in a day, even by the most brilliant natural shot. ENGLISH DRIVING 191 Now here come three, one a little ahead of the other two and straight to you, the others abreast and a trifle to your left. Take the leader first, shooting rather soon, at what looks like forty yards, and with particular accuracy ; change guns quickly without firing the second barrel, and kill the other two with your second gun, one by sharp work just in front and the other an easy one behind. Good, you have got all three ; and no doubt you see the advantage of this manoeuvre. Had you stuck to your first gun after killing the first, you would have had to pause a little to get the next with your second barrel, and while you were changing guns the third bird would have got so far that you would almost certainly have lost him. Now the holloaing of the drivers sounds quite near, and in fact, though you cannot yet see them, for they are still climbing out of the gully and under the fall of the ground in front of you, they are probably not more than 150 yards off, a distance at which you may easily blind a man. You must now only shoot at birds a moderate height up in the air, or low to your right against the ridge, or behind. What remain are coming singly and easier, but look out for a small burst off the ridge, for remember we saw a good many settle there from time to time. There they come, but they won't quite face it, and hang back, giving 192 SHOOTING THE GROUSE long, high, crossing shots, and going clean back over the drivers. High, and well forward, and you have killed a beautiful double shot ; don't forget to pick these up afterwards, for they have fallen a long way from any of your other birds. The drivers are showing all along the line, their flags are rattling in the wind, and it is nearly over. Do you remember where that bird settled about sixty yards in front, just in that deep bit of heather ? They will go past him, for I don't think he has ever risen ; call to them, waving them to where he was. Yak-kak ! there he is, and as he comes straight on and rather high you have killed him easily and safely over their heads. He is about the last, and I think as the drivers are now only forty yards off, we may go out and pick up. It is better now to make the loader hold your dog until we have picked up all the dead ones near the butt on the burnt ground. It is bad for him to see so many dead on the ground and he will have had enough work by the end of the day. Having done this the man can go off after the bird we marked at the very beginning of the drive, which is quite dead, and you and I will look after the otheis with the dog, particularly those two or three which fell, not killed dead, near the little burnside. Twenty- seven you had down, besides one ENGLISH DRIVING 193 of these not counted, which will probably rise again. Well, we must pick them all up. Now we have gathered twenty-one, and your loader has the far-off bird which makes twenty-two. Wait a moment till he re- joins us and is out of the way, and we will try for the three in the burn. Now be ready with your gun, and mind to work your dog up to them from this side, for right and left and behind us are men all over the place picking up, and unless we drive him away in the forward direction you will not be able to shoot safely. Ah, I see the dog winds him ; look out, there he is, and safely killed without trouble. One of the others proves to be winged, and to have run a long way down the burn till he is gathered right behind No. 3, but though the latter looks rather askance at us for being off our own ground, the bird was fairly footed by the dog all the way from where he fell. The third is lying stone dead in a little pool, so now we have twenty-five ; but stay, we had almost forgotten the two you killed right away in front, as they were turn- ing back. Now we have got both of them, though the second took the dog a hundred yards down the gully, leaving a long track of feathers like the ' scent ' of a paper chase on the tops of the heather. But where have we left the twenty-eighth ? ' We must have been mistaken,' you say, 'for we have hunted the o 194 SHOOTING THE GROUSE ground all over.' ' I beg your pardon, I am quite sure of my count ; so just look with me carefully close round the butt, where a bird often gets left. Here he Jies, down a deep rift in the peat, in a little stagnant pool of brown water, which is why he had no scent, almost hidden by overhanging heather, not five yards from the butt ; so there is our correct number. You can see from this the value of accurate counting, for without me you would certainly have gone away satisfied you had picked all up, and left that last bird to rot.' As we have not been called on yet by our host, we might just look at where the second of those two settled in front, for the one which ran on to the stone and got away was not the bird you fired at settling. I thought not, and there to our joy is the other one, not quite dead, crouching deep under the thick heather, and found very prettily by the dog. That was lucky, I thought you had missed him, for he seemed to drop all right into the heather. So we have made it up to twenty-nine, a fair good drive, and though your shooting was really very good, you must remember that on several occasions you missed the chance of easily getting more, merely by undue hurry, or not making the most of the position. Now we shift across, and rather uphill, about two ENGLISH DRIVING 195 hundred yards only for the return drive. For some years \ve used to drive back over the same butts ; but grouse hardly ever return to any ground by the same line as they took to leave it, and here they always come back higher up, with the exception of a few lots which will return much lower down, and which it cannot be hoped to include in the drive. The reason of this is the wind the invariable factor in determining the line of the flight of grouse. This time they will be coming back off higher ground, the wind, though still across, being rather more behind them, an important fact to them, and with the sun also more behind them, an equally important one to you. You have now to keep, if possible, more care- fully on the watch than before, and from the first moment after getting to your place, for some will return to their own ground almost immediately. Here you must carefully scan the face of the hill opposite you, bothered as you are by the sun, now on your left ; for they will be very difficult to see against the dark rising ground, and come very fast. You will get no shots against the sky except at such as come high. They return on higher ground here for two reasons, one being that the majority of those in the last drive actually came off higher ground over the ridge to u 2 ig6 SHOOTING THE GROUSE your right than you supposed, which was swept in sideways by the flank, and to which they wish to re- turn ; and the other that the wind, the more imme- diate reason, being here on their quarter, they can the more easily slant across it, and are not obliged to curve round under the ridge, as they would do if it were at all against them. Remember that here they will all come very fast, and though nothing would really turn them, they will swerve and twist a good deal if you make hasty or jerky movements just as they approach you. This is another fruitful reason of the wonderful ' luck ' usually ascribed to a first- rate man. The duffer next to him exposes himself, bobs or shifts about, and turns many a bird from himself right towards the motionless form of his more accomplished neighbour, such birds 'counting two on a division ' as politicians would say. Here again, if they are coming straight, as most of them will, there can be no question of killing three or four, except out of a big or streaming lot. Make sure of your double shot, one in front and one behind, letting the first one come pretty close to you before firing, and swinging round like lightning for the second. To this end make sure that your footing is secure, and your loader so placed as not to interfere with your movements, for when birds are coming very fast down ENGLISH DRIVING 197 wind you have to turn round with extreme quickness, and must be free in your movements, with your feet on level ground. When you come to the pick-up, bear in mind that your dead birds will all be much farther back than you would suppose, and that you will have none, except cross shots, in front of your butt. Take your dog right away back at once to a point a little farther off than your farthest bird, and then hunt him up carefully towards the butt, so as to give him the full benefit of the wind. In conclusion, never wait to kill a bird behind the line while it is possible to kill him in front ; but be careful not to dwell upon or follow birds coming into the line, this being the most fruitful cause of accident. Thus may one endeavour to instruct those who are beginning to practise this most engaging of all forms of shooting. There are a few further points I would urge, on some of which I must disagree with what has been written elsewhere, though I am against splitting straws with persons who have undoubtedly brought much study to bear upon the subject. I can- not agree with one well-known authority, who advises men never to shoot at birds which settle in front. I would always recommend shooting at them even up to seventy or eighty yards off. First, as remarked above, they can be killed up to a good distance : 198 SHOOTING THE GROUSE secondly, because they will always attract others to settle near them. Whether the fresh arrivals detect the presence of those already there by sight or smell I cannot say, but it is certain that if birds have settled in front of you, and you do not disturb them, a great proportion of those following on after them will drop down to them. I have often seen them rise and come straight on over the guns after being shot at when in the act of alighting or sitting, showing that they did not detect where the sound proceeded from. Late in the drive, when the men are getting com- paratively close,-it is better to leave them alone, on the chance of their coming forward : early in the drive always shoot; if they go back, they will probably alight again before reaching the drivers, and be forced forward a second time. When you are shooting grouse with one gun only, and a big lot of birds are coming to you, fire your two barrels early, duck down below the butt, and as long as there are still grouse within shot, put in one cart- ridge only. You will do more execution this way than by waiting to load both barrels. I once killed five birds out of one lot of about fifty in this manner, and I ought to have killed six, for I missed the third shot, about the easiest of all. I need hardly say they were coming slowly against the wind, and swerved a ENGLISH DRIVING 199 little across me after the first shot, or it could not have been done. Keep your cartridges in your right-hand pocket, and have your bag on the seat, wide open, on your right, unless it is raining, when you must see them bestowed in the dry, but the strap of the bag left unbuckled ; and always feed your gun direct from your right-hand pocket. I must say that since giving them a fair trial I am distinctly in favour of brass- covered cartridges, and more especially for grouse driving, when one is so often overtaken by heavy showers, during which the necessity for quick firing makes it impossible to keep them all dry. For those who use ejectors, they will be found, in the long run, an economy, in spite of their trifling additional cost. The ejectors of my present guns (Purdey's) have never been out of order but once, and that was when I got a sodden paper cartridge stuck fast, and used too much force to extract it. We usually have to pay a penalty for every improvement in this world, and the use of hammerless guns with ejectors is no exception to the rule. The mechanism of the piece is more complicated, and requires more care in cleaning and general treatment ; but with these precautions and brass-covered cartridges there is no reason whatever why guns of this improved type, turned out by a good maker, should get out of order. They should not be SHOOTING THE GROUSE cleaned with anything but vaseline, which never cor- rodes, and only a moderate quantity of that ; the great secret being to keep all accessible parts of the action as clean and dry as possible. A heavy-handed, ignorant under-keeper, whether English or Scotch, is rarely fit to be trusted with the handling or cleaning of such valuable articles as the best breech-loaders of to-day. Whatever may be said to the contrary, the general verdict of those who have the best opportunities of judging is in favour of the best guns by the best makers. You will often hear it said that these makers' charges for their best quality of guns are ' outrageous,' and all sorts of ugly words applied to those whose position in the trade enables them to set the market price of these articles. I must put in a plea for the good gunmaker. It would be invidious to particularise, but there are several makers in Lon- don whose names are in everybody's mouth, and who turn out guns, undoubtedly high-priced, but which, to my thinking, are well worth the money. Everyone who knows anything at all of the subject, knows that the profit on the best quality of gun is not heavy, much smaller, in fact, than on cheaper articles of all sorts supplied by the trade generally, while most of the most valuable part of the work is not ENGLISH DRIVING 201 visible, and would not be detected by the inex- perienced. A great deal of personal care, as well as honest and dearly paid labour, is expended on a pair of ' best guns ' by one of these firms ; and I fail to see why a man should grumble at giving, say, 1407. or i5o/., or even more, for articles which, properly cared for, will last him his lifetime, and for which the demand is constantly and widely increasing. A well- built gun, besides its practical use, is, to a certain extent, a work of art, and it should be borne in mind that as an article of British manufacture it still holds its place against the competition of all other countries ; and that whether you care to give the price or not, there are plenty of Frenchmen Italians, Austrians and Americans, without reckoning our own colonists, who are ready enough to do so. The class of gunmaker I am alluding to is one who makes your piece to order, and specially to fit your individual characteristics, who pays very high for skilled labour, and bestows personal judgment and care, the outcome of actual knowledge of working at the bench, upon every detail of your order. There is another class, who advertise weapons of extra- ordinary cheapness, but are merely agents for great manufacturing firms, who have a large stock of guns always on hand, and stand in the same relation to 202 SHOOTING THE GROUSE those mentioned above as the reach-me-down clothes shop to the high-class West End tailor. These I cannot recommend. I must not conclude this necessary digression on choice of guns without adding that he who lives in the country entirely, and cannot afford the price of the first-rate London firm, will do better to employ a provincial maker of known re- pute. Of these there are several in England and Scotland of whom very excellent judges have reason to speak in terms of high praise, and whose work is far better than that of the wholesale heavily puffed firms, trading under assumed London names, who falsely profess to give you the same article as the good itiakers at one-third of the price. A few words on this subject have not appeared to me out of place in a chapter on grouse driving, since it is precisely in this branch of sport that guns are put to the most severe tests. The atmospheric con- ditions, exposing the workmanship of your piece to great extremes of heat, wet and cold, with the con- comitant condition of very heavy firing, rapid working of the mechanism, and maximum of expansion or con- traction of the metal, try the workmanship of a gun severely. A weapon which 'jams' in the middle of a good grouse drive would spoil the temper of an arch- angel. In the arrangement and conduct of your drives ENGLISH DRIVING 203 I must repeat, with even greater emphasis, what I have said in the volume on the ' Partridge ' concerning wind ; but you are far more in the hands of your head man and his drivers on this point than in any partridge drive. The latter have often to foot it some miles, even before you are out of your bed, to get to the remote point whence they will start the first drive. This involves organisation, since, living possibly some distance apart, they will not all start from the same place, and probably consist of two parties, each of which must be under a responsible lieutenant who thoroughly knows the ground. Consequently, should it be advisable to change the beat for the day on account of wind, or even the method of beating the ground, you must be able to rely absolutely upon the judgment and decision of your head man. It is almost indispensable that he should be a moor- land man, born and bred, though I admit that I have come across one or two notable exceptions to this. If he doesn't know the moors, literally up hill and down dale, every turn of the wind, every habit of the grouse, and every dodge of the driver, he is of no use to you in Yorkshire. He will command neither the confi- dence nor the obedience of his drivers, who, being nil dalesmen who have travelled tin; moors and fells all their lives, know a good deal on their own account, 204 SHOOTING THE GROUSE and have it largely in their power to frustrate the most elaborate manoeuvres. If you have to select a new chief, it is far better to promote the most trustworthy of the men who have been driving on the moor for years, rather than to put a man over their heads who has been mostly used to low-ground shooting, merely because he is considered ' fit for a head keeper's place.' Very difficult manoeuvres have sometimes to be executed, and unless your moor is very large in extent it is only by the most delicate and experienced hand- ling, in which every man must honestly co-operate, that the birds can be kept upon your ground. Five thousand acres is not nearly enough to hold large packs in a high wind, unless they are very well ma- naged. Suppose, for instance, that a large number of birds are packed at the head of a valley and on the ridge, close to the march, and there is a strong wind blowing towards the march. Unless your men get round very gingerly, keeping out of sight as carefully as a stalker getting up to deer, on the down-wind side, the game is up, and possibly your whole day's spcrt spoilt. I have seen this very manoeuvre beautifully carried out, and even the birds, having somehow taken the alarm, rise and make a big circuit round near the march ENGLISH DRIVING 205 before the two flanks of the drive had met; the whole of the men on the windward side lay flat down the instant the birds rose, and that without a word of command. The pack settled down again, and the down-wind side got well round and brought them on over our heads. What would an obstinate Scotchman with recalcitrant drivers say to that ! If, again, the head man is one in whom his drivers have complete confidence, and who has trained his lieu- tenants to carry out his orders whether he is present or not, he can enjoy the inestimable advantage of placing himself on the flank close to the guns, or of going into one of the butts with his master or some other shooter, and observing the exact result of his plan of campaign, and what alterations, if any, should be made in the line of butts. It is also an excellent thing, should opportunity serve, to let him visit other moors where good driving is carried on, and where he may pick up a new wrinkle or two, or get rid of ideas which may be too local. I urge these points because it is impossible to in- oculate a man with the instinct which alone makes a first-rate grouse driver. The theory of the dis- position of your drivers, the horse-shoe formation, the placing of the flankers, and the method of progres- sion, is now thoroughly familiar to all immediately 206 SHOOTING THE GROUSE concerned in English driving. I have gone into it in greater detail in the chapter on Scotch Driving, in order, if possible, to be of use to those who wish to introduce it on Scotch moors, or to persuade such as oppose the system from ignorant, conservative, or in- terested motives, of its practical value to their ground. In the construction and placing of the butts a few points should be noted. The larger and more com- modious they are the better, seven feet square on the inside being about the most convenient size ; and there should be a seat of heather sods or flat stones in each corner. Some spare sods should always be cut and left close outside them, that there may be something for a tall man to build up his front wall with, should it be too low. The floor must be absolutely level and well drained. At Mr. Riming- ton Wilson's at Broomhead, on the Sheffield range, the butts have board floors, a great comfort to the shooters in many ways ; but on many moors the cart- ing of timber up to the butts would be impracticable ; and on this particular moor on the principal days the driving is all done to two lines of butts close together, one on each side of a little gully, which has probably witnessed the slaying of more grouse than any spot of its size in the British Islands. A point of extreme importance, for the safety of ENGLISH DRIVING 207 the shooters, is that all the butts should be ' dressed ' square with the line ; that is, that the front should be at right angles to the direction of the drive. I have often, when in a butt set askew, found myself bothered in the hurry of quick firing to remember the exact line, and on reflection am convinced that many of the accidents that have occurred in grouse driving have been due to this cause. The diagram will perhaps explain what I mean. The butts A, n, c, together with the rest of the row not shown, are all on the line EK at right angles to the general direction of the drive. Now the man in the butt 11, though lie will doubtless survey the position of his neighbours before the drive begins, will 208 SHOOTING THE GROUSE probably, after his attention has become riveted on a succession of approaching birds, begin instinctively to face the front wall of his butt. Being so used to finding his neighbours placed at right angles to the side walls of his butt, and on the same line as the front, that danger in this quarter has become a matter of instinct rather than observation, his brain will imagine them to be located on the line DD. This delusion may only last a moment or two while he is watching birds ; but it may lead him to shoot at a bird at the point F, and so seriously damage the man in the butt c, or on the other side to take a shot at the point G, imagining the bird to have passed the line, and so to injure the man in the butt A. I have no evidence to prove that accidents have occurred from this cause, but they have occurred at drives where I have seen butts placed in this manner, and I have myself been so near shooting my neighbour under these circumstances that it cannot be wrong to point out the possible danger. Let there be always plenty of butts on the moor, that you may be able to drive according to the wind. If in any drive you notice that two or three of the guns invariably get all the shooting, it is better to put two or possibly three in a second line behind them, being careful they are full}- 200 yards off, any ENGLISH DRIVING 209 less distance not being safe for the eyes of your friends. In the early part of the season it is better not to have too many drivers ; the birds which they pass by without flushing will be all young ones, precisely those required for breeding stock, and if they came on, as they would, at the end of the drive, singly and flying very slowly, they would all be massacred. If your moor is at the end of a spur of the greater range, you can always insure a good double drive by pushing them first to the end, next the cultivated land, and then bringing them back ; but in such a case your men had better sweep in some of the pastures below the end of the moor, on which there arc sure to be birds. This formation of ground accounts partially for the certainty with which a large bag can be made on many moors, notably on Broomhead and Blubber- house. 1 In severe or bad breeding seasons the lower moors will suffer less than the higher, and as the former will be always fed, to a certain extent, by the latter, and have the advantage of them, it behoves the owner of moorland which is lower than his neighbours, and constitutes the end of a large ridge or stretch, not to be too hard upon the birds, especially late on in the season. Were he able to kill every 1 Mr. Kimington Wilson's and Lord Wnlsingham's respectively. P SHOOTING THE GROUSE bird upon his land, it would undoubtedly be re-stocked from the higher ground, and in the winter months, when mild weather prevails higher up, he is sure to have many more than his share upon his ground. The counting and picking up of the dead birds is a subject for serious consideration. I well remember, twenty years ago in Yorkshire, amongst a few of us who met constantly and whose comparative form would have been difficult to handicap, every day's grouse driving might as well have been a valuable sweepstake or a series of matches for ioo/. a side, so keen was the rivalry, the scoring, and the picking up. But I cannot say that it was a desirable state of things. The counting of what you have killed is no doubt necessary, but it might be done on the same principle as I have recommended for partridge driving, that is, keeping a score of the claims without putting them against any names. That which promotes keen- ness is good ; that which provokes jealousy is surely bad. The lines of pegs halfway between each butt, recommended by Sir R. Payne-Gallwey, were first adopted, I believe, upon a suggestion of mine at Broomhead some years ago, and Mr. Wilson has seen no reason to remove them since. To insure bagging all that have been knocked down, as well as in the interests of humanity, there should always be a pro- ENGLISH DRIVING 211 fcssional ' picker up ' in the person of a keeper with a brace or more of retrieving spaniels, who should hunt round the ine of butts after the guns have gathered all they can. An old pointer or setter is not bad for this work, but spaniels that will hunt close, if they are not too hard-mouthed, are better. Should you be a breeder of retrievers, here is a good oppor- tunity for your dog man to do a little breaking in ; and if they are well under control, there is no doubt they are the best of all. I well remember the first appearance of old John Young, Lord Londesborough's head man for over a quarter of a century, upon a West Riding moor in 187 r. He was supposed never to have seen a grouse, though a veteran in years and in experience of field and covert. He brought with him three of the most useful-looking brown retrievers to pick up his master's birds. Clad as he was in a heavy green velveteen coat with brass buttons, a red waistcoat, thick cord breeches, and gaiters, and an enormous gold-laced hat, he appeared to radiate heat and light on all around, and was a sufficiently striking object on the heather on a sweltering September day. He had about eight grouse in each hand, and his dogs were still diligently hunting, when we came across him, far away from his master's butt. We chaffed him on the 212 SHOOTING THE GROUSE fact that, though he was a novice to grouse, he seemed to be a pretty good hand at picking up. Laying down his birds, and raising the gold-laced beaver with an air peculiar to him, ' Never was on a moor before in my life, I can assure you, gentlemen,' he said, with perfect courtesy. Nevertheless, he had gathered about fifteen more birds than his master, always a most generous neighbour, had claimed ; and though he must have narrowly escaped an apoplectic fit, he and his dogs continued to work equally hard all day. In laying out your lines of butts, bear in mind that there is no invariable necessity for your driving line to progress from a given base in a direct line to the centre of the butts. It frequently occurs that on a particular range of moor the birds will always fly in a great curve, or a complete ring, eventually getting back in this manner to the ground they were flushed upon. In this case you must also drive on a curve, and the first half of the beat may have to be driven by advancing almost at right angles to the direction desired, or, so to speak, across the face of the row of butts. As in this diagram, for instance, you may wish to drive your birds, mostly lying about A, to some- where about the point D. But for reasons connected with the nature of the ground, they will not fly from A to D direct, but in- ENGLISH DRIVING 213 variably fly from A in the curves indicated, alighting mostly at the points x x. Now, make your formation as shown here, follow their curve to the point x with Fir,. 7. 214 SHOOTING THE GROUSE the main body of your men, and on flushing them again at the points x x you will find they fly on to one or other of the points about D, where I have in- dicated lines of butts. To arrive at these things you must either be on the moor as constantly as a keeper or a shepherd, or have out a few men and make experimental drives, letting your head man lie on a high point, whence he can command a view of the whole manoeuvre. The endless varieties and possibilities of managing grouse according to conditions of ground, wind, and season, will afford you many interesting and pleasant days between the intervals of your shooting parties, while they will add immensely to your enjoyment of the results. For actual marksmanship I must refer my readers to what I have endeavoured to make clear in the volume on ' Partridge ' of this series, and to the dia- grams explaining the reasons for shooting over birds, &c., repeating once more that it is impossible to teach anyone how to shoot driven birds. With driven grouse the necessity for shooting high is even more marked than with partridges. You will get many more shots on the level and below you, and in aiming at these you must constantly bear in mind to avoid the tendency to dwell or poke at the birds. This ahvays results ENGLISH DRIVING 215 more or less in your dropping the muzzle of the gun and shooting underneath. You will often see very bad practice made at grouse flying very low, creeping as it were over the heather, and perhaps going slowly against the wind. Here all the missing takes place from shooting under them. The only way to avoid it is to form the habit of firing the instant the gun is firm on the shoulder, and of striking your aim high, almost as though you would shoot just over the bird's back. Many people think they miss these birds from shooting in front of them. I fancy this is rarely the case, but at any rate the matter can be easily tested by firing one or two shots straight at them, and watching the result. You will find that you kill low- flying birds more easily when they are above you than below, a fact which sufficiently proves that in aiming at the latter it is the depression of the muzzle which accounts for the missing. Keep the left arm well forward, and lift it well, relying upon this member entirely for the swing and support of your piece. You have less to guide your eye in the way of station- ary objects, such as trees, &c., in grouse driving, and therefore you must make up your mind to rely more than ever on calculation as to where to aim. The principle, which I have before advocated, of rapidly deciding in your mind where the spot is in the air at 216 SHOOTING THE GROUSE which your shot will intercept the bird's flight, and throwing your gun directly and quickly upon it, is the only one by which you can compete with the endless variety of angle, curve, elevation and pace, which lends to the flight of driven grouse its un- doubted fascination. There can be no 'knack' in excelling at a sport which presents this feature in the highest degree of all. The individual driven grouse which comes straight at your nose on a still day is easy enough, but these are the ' half-volleys ' of grouse driving, and to hit them does not necessarily make you a good bat. It is a very different matter to realise the proper total from a succession of fine drives under varying conditions of light, locality and wind ; and when the day comes that you have achieved this, in first-rate form from start to finish, you will sleep like a public-school boy who has made 100 at Lord's, or a Prime Minister who has carried a great measure through the Commons by a triumphant majority, per- haps the two most enviable achievements known in this country. 217 CHAPTER V GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING IT is beginning to be generally understood that a moor, whether English or Scotch, will not produce the stock of grouse demanded by modern ideas, or to satisfy appetites whetted by the experience of excep- tional seasons and results, without due attention to the management of the ground, and to the nourishment of a healthy stock of birds. The old system of treat- ing grouse entirely as fenc naturce, and trusting them and the ground on which they breed to the development of nature, may leave you always a sprinkling of birds, but will not give you the stock you have a right to expect after paying the high value which such shooting now commands, nor satisfy the requirements of your friends. Further, it is found that however large the supply, the demand for these, the best of all game birds for the table, increases pro- portionately, and that it is possible to throw away a great deal of good money and food supply by 2i8 SHOOTING THE GROUSE allowing incompetence or want of care to decrease the productive powers of good moorland. Again, as this demand increases and the subject is more and more widely ventilated, the ingenuity of the poacher, the pothunter, and the receiver of poached or illegally killed game becomes annually more formid- able. The only saving clause is that the red grouse being universally known to be exclusively indigenous to the British Islands, we do not see the poulterer's shops in March, April, or May full of ' Siberian ' or ' Norwegian ' grouse stolen from British moors, as we undoubtedly should if the species were found in those foreign countries. I must refer my readers to my remarks in the volume on ' The Partridge ' as to the illegally procured birds which come into the London markets on August 12 and September i, and to the suggestions I there made, which I now wish to urge again. Owners and lessees of shootings seem for the most part not to have realised the extent of the illicit traffic in game, which applies to grouse almost more than any other kind ; and I venture again to express the hope that some one with more leisure and more influence than I have may found some Asso- ciation to combat this evil in a businesslike manner. Those who are in London on August 1 2 may be quite certain that any grouse that is offered to them, GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 219 unless sent direct by a friend from his own moor, is a poached, practically a stolen, bird. I remember being served with one which was absolutely putrid on the Twelfth, some years ago, at a well-known London restaurant. An old friend, the late Lord Dupplin, was dining near me, and had an equally bad one served to him. We agreed to send them both away in fact, though the price was 14^. per bird, they were uneatable but the head waiter explained (?) to us that this was the true flavour of the grouse, and that we were ignorant. Poor Duppy ! I can see his face of mingled disgust and amusement now at the idea of a crapulous Swiss waiter explaining to him and me what a grouse ought to taste like. But since the price that can be obtained for these birds on the Twelfth will always be a temptation to the evilly disposed, it behoves owners to look closely after what happens in the moorland districts in the week preceding that day. They cannot always be on the spot at that time, but if an association or league, such as I suggested in the former volume, were formed, trained detectives could easily watch the consignments passing through certain centres from the moorland, and trace their origin and destination. It has even come to this, that, as I am informed, silk and other nets are actually provided by London SHOOTING THE GROUSE poulterers, and are supplied to their fellow-culprits in this traffic, if not to the poachers direct ; and no questions are asked as long as they get the supply of grouse for sale on the Twelfth. This is a disgraceful state of things ; and it should be remembered that, without troubling Parliament with further legislation (which, unhappily, in these days is beset with diffi- culties of all kinds), there is ample law to put a stop to these practices if only trouble is taken to run the offenders to ground. It would be impossible to prevent the sale itself of grouse at a distance from the moors, say in London or elsewhere, but at least those who are fond of sport may do something to check the demand. I would, therefore, beg all good sportsmen who may be far from the moors on the Twelfth to restrain their appe- tite for grouse, and refuse to purchase any for a day or two at least. If this were universally done in restaurants and clubs, it would go far towards check- ing the evil, and those to whom I appeal would be spared the indignation or gastronomic disappoint- ment which they will probably experience on being offered a grouse of a week old which purports to have been killed that morning. Grouse are poached in many ways, and one of the most destructive is the recently introduced practice GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 221 of surrounding a moor with nets, which catch the birds as they fly off it on to the neighbouring pas- tures. This has been carried to such a pitch in some parts of Yorkshire, Westmoreland, and the other northern counties, that the value of a moor becomes seriously affected by it. A sort of blackmail is set up, which obliges anyone taking the moor either to hire all the adjoining pasture land as well, or to enter into an agreement with certain parties not to net in this manner for either of which forms of protection he is mulcted in proportion to the value of the net- ting on such ground, often amounting to nearly as large a number of birds as he will get on the moor proper by fair shooting. On one Yorkshire moor that I know this lately became so serious, and the stock was getting so much reduced, that the owner purchased netting himself, which he set on the moor edges in charge of his own men, so as to intercept the birds before they reached the enemy's nets, those taken being merely set at liberty again. Miles of this netting these poachers have in some places, so that the protecting nets of the owner and the con- stant watching become a serious consideration. It is difficult to see how this can be prevented by the operation of law, since where it is done on any scale the net owners are careful to take out a game SHOOTING THE GROUSE licence, and to keep strictly to their own ground. But a great deal of netting is done illegally on other people's ground, both by night and day pure poach- ing, in fact and has become a very common and lucrative business. This is due almost entirely to the supineness or ignorance of the owners of moors, who for the most part are not in the locality at the time when it is done, and who seem to me much too ready to accept the invariable excuse of ' disease ' or ' cold breeding season ' for the low stock of birds on the ground. As with partridges and other game, I have always observed that where there are really first-rate and honest keepers, there is always a pretty good stock of grouse. Of course seasons will vary, and anyone used to the moors will know pretty well when to make the allowance for bad weather, &c.; but it is astonish- ing how lightly moors suffer from this cause or from disease when the keeper > and his subordinates are thoroughly trustworthy. The only remedy you have as an owner is to pay strictly by results. The details must be left to your administrator, the keeper. So long as you have a good show of birds, allowing for variation of seasons, your ground is well burnt, and all the other details well looked after, keep and reward him as much as you can. But if the totals begin to fall GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 223 gradually year by year, the heather remains long and old, the driving slack and listless, and you are puzzled to account for the deterioration of your moor, change your whole staff of keepers, tell your new ones that you expect certain results and mean to have them, and in a year or two you will probably be astonished to find how the grouse have taken to your ground again. On high moors you are liable to lose a great many birds by their leaving the ground for lower ranges in severe weather. It is quite worth while to feed them a little at such times. It is chiefly when the snow is caked or frozen over with a very thin coating of ice, and they cannot scratch through it to get food, that they are most pinched and may leave the ground, never to come back. I remember Mr. Walter Stan- hope ' telling me that in the very hard winter of 1859-60 the grouse on his Dunford Bridge moors left the ground in hundreds ; many were killed in the fields in a half-starved state, and even one or two in the barrack square at Sheffield, some fifteen miles off. He then sent men up to the moor with long rakes, and 1 Mr. Walter Spencer Stanhope, who for many years re- presented one of the divisions of the West Riding in Parliament. An admirable letter from his pen is given in the Badminton Library, S/i ooting> vol. ii. p. 1 1, describing some of the earliest methods and results of driving grouse. 224 SHOOTING THE GROUSE as they raked the snow off the grouse followed them close, as gulls will follow the plough, or chickens the good-wife in the poultry yard, perfectly tame. Your keepers should see to these methods of help- ing them to feed in severe weather, and not, as is too often the case, helplessly gape at the half-starved packs sitting on walls or scratching at the ground in the fields below the moorland, until, forced by hunger, they rise and fly clean away in search of milder conditions. The same authority (Mr. Stanhope) always ex- pressed himself in favour of plantations round and about the edges of the moors. Though they may attain no value as timber, they will prove a great pro- tection to the grouse in a heavy snow. Then they will be able to creep under the boughs of the stunted larches or spruces, scratching and picking a bit when they cannot get at food or shelter on the open moor. Grouse, I believe, very rarely die of cold, excepting the devoted hens, which sometimes allow themselves to be frozen, or so pinched by the cold while sitting on their nests that they succumb within a short time. But they suffer severely from starvation in hard winters, and although their moving off the ground in large packs in search of food may, as Mr. Rimington Wilson has observed, serve to mingle the blood and improve GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 225 the breeding stock on the ground they move to, it will hardly benefit you on the deserted high ground, as few of them, if any, are likely to return. Grouse travel much longer distances than is generally sup- posed, and I am firmly convinced that many a Scotch bird has been killed well on this side of the border. Lord Huntingfield is said to have seen a pack of grouse flying over his place in Norfolk. I have not his lordship's word for it, but have often heard it from friends of his, and certainly his authority would be indisputable, after the many hundreds his unerring aim has accounted for. 1 Mr. Rimington Wilson, in an admirable letter to the ' Field ' of September 10, 1892, gives four principal points to be attended to in the management of a moor : 1. Heather burning. 2. Driving v. shooting in other ways. 3. Keeping down vermin. 4. Sheep, &c. To these 1 would add : 5. Watchful protection against poachers. 6. Feeding &C. in hard weather. 1 1 have only shot one week with Lord Hunlinglield. His accuracy was marvellous, while never appearing to take a long shot. It was a very pretty lesson, and one which I am proud to have learnt. SHOOTING THE GROUSE 7. Planting round and upon lower parts of your moor. As regards burning, it is instructive to find Mr. Wilson, Lord Walsingham, and the Mackintosh (see p. 156) all agreed as to the necessity of this system in order to keep the heather in a healthy condition. Mr. Wilson believes in burning altogether any large tract of deep old heather, though as a general rule the moor should be burnt in strips. Where possible these should run parallel with your lines of butts. He remarks also on the splendid stretches of young heather following on an accidental fire. I have noticed the same myself, and fully agree with him that most moors are not severely enough burned. The old heather is always damp underneath, affords no healthy food for grouse or sheep, and is abominable to walk through. Artistically speaking, I regret that I must give my verdict in favour of systematic burn- ing, while, practically, I must own that it is absolutely essential for the healthy condition of the grouse. On a moor that is exclusively ' dogged ' it must be burnt in patches, so that the young birds, feeding on the very young shoots, may have close to them the resort of good cover in an older patch, and avoid being driven off their feed by the older birds, and that they may thus be more evenly distributed over the ground. GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 227 On driving v. shooting over dogs I have already delivered myself in other chapters of this volume, but must again quote Mr. Wilson : ' It is, perhaps, superfluous to remark that to make a moor as pro- ductive as possible shooting over dogs ought to be allowed to a very limited extent, if at all. The candle should not be burnt at both ends' A certain number of sheep will do no harm upon a moor, but too many will do a great deal; while cattle and horses will always cause the heather to deteriorate, and a coarse, rank kind of grass to spring up, which is not good for pasture and useless for grouse. Here, again, liberality and a kindly feeling to the shepherds will do more for your stock than anything. They have it in their hands to injure if not to cripple your sport altogether. Their dogs can destroy in an hour in the breeding season what would give you a good day's driving later on. But I have always found them a kindly and simple race of people, and if well treated they will see that their flocks do not trample on the nests or young birds, and that their dogs do not career wildly over the moor during the nesting period. They are really your best and most loyal grouse- keepers if you enlist them on your side; and besides so ordering their work on the hills as not to injure the grouse, they can render immense assistance to 228 SHOOTING THE GROUSE your keepers in the tracking of vermin, detection of poaching, and other such matters, besides sometimes lending willing and skilful aid to the management of your drives. Moral : above all things be kind and liberal to the shepherds and farmers. Mr. Wilson omits to mention protection against poaching, though his moors lie in a country where it is well understood ; but I think I can account for this. I said above that good keepers always have a good show of game ; and certainly his head man, Ward, is an excellent example of this. A past master in the art of driving, his is also a name of terror to poachers, and in the security which so loyal a servant inspires, Mr. Wilson may well have forgotten how little his boundaries might be respected were they under less formidable protection. In addition to feeding the birds and raking off the frozen snow in winter, I would endorse what the Mackintosh says as to the improvement of the water supply by puddling up the streams, and making many little reservoirs, so as to insure the birds plenty to drink in a very dry breeding season, such as we ex- perienced last year (1893). Vermin must be thoroughly kept down, and on Scotch moors, terminating as they mostly do in high rocky ground, it is no easy work to keep in check the GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 229 depredations of foxes, crows, jackdaws, eagles, ravens, stoats, weasels, hawks of all kinds, and even occasion- ally wild cats, or cats which have become wild and taken to the rocks and ravines. I would never kill an eagle, but rather keep so grand a bird on the best my moor provided, nor would I, personally, shoot a peregrine; but the other species I have named, besides being less picturesque, are less rare, and must be ' attended to.' The anti-game-law party in Scotland lately started the cry that the destruction of hawks, owls &C. had subjected them to a plague of field voles (the common little brown mouse so often seen on the hills), and that these creatures were devouring their pastures, and impoverishing their stock ; but a perusal of the evidence before the Royal Commission on this subject will, I think, convince any reasonable person that the appearance of these animals in large numbers in particular localities has been of spasmodic recurrence from time immemorial, and that when they appear hawks and owls usually appear also in increased numbers to keep them in check. They seem to leave certain districts, or die off, as erratically and as rapidly as they appear, and the agitators failed altogether to connect their appearance with the de- struction of vermin by gamekeepers. i'oaching, dishonesty, and disloyalty, encouraged 230 SHOOTING THE GROUSE as they are by the unscrupulousness of the receivers of stolen and illegally killed game in the large towns, are after all the things most to be guarded against, and I have endeavoured to indicate how I think they may best be combated. I have before me a working model of the nets used in Yorkshire, with poles, clips &c. complete, as well as a fair selection of specimens of snares ; but I think that the accurate description of how all such engines should be used is against the interests of sport, and may serve only to encourage poaching by diffusing the science of how to do it. Wherever there is good moorland, well watered and with plenty of sheltered places, there ought to be a good stock of grouse. Laziness is much more common among hill keepers than where population is more dense, while the climate of Scotch glens, especially on the west coast, tends to enervate men. The great antidote for this is to be constantly on the high ground in the fresher air, as you will discover for yourself during a long stay in Scotland. Your head man should, therefore, see that his assistants are con- stantly on the moor looking after the welfare of the birds ; instead of giving way, as they often do, to the temptation of merely gazing at it from below all day, and leaving it to take care of itself all night. The great and mysterious plague known as the GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 231 grouse disease is the most powerful enemy to be fought against. I cannot agree that it is due to overcrowding and here again I turn to the Mackin- tosh and Mr. Rimington Wilson for corroboration. Mr. Wilson writes me : 'Since about 1870 there has been no disease on these moors sufficiently severe to prevent shooting ; previous to this date disease seems to have recurred severely and regularly about every seven years. There is no doubt that driving has pro- duced this healthier state of affairs.' The Mackintosh writes : ' On the Moy Hall moor there has been practically no disease since 1873. Driving was first resorted to in 1869, and only then when birds were too wild to sit to dogs ; ' but he adds that it was not seriously taken up until 1872. In considering these two statements we must bear in mind that the former is an undoubted authority on Yorkshire driving of over twenty years' standing, on whose moors all the English records have been eclipsed ; and that the latter is the most successful exponent of the adoption of the system in Scotland, and holds the record for the latter country. I might add that to my certain knowledge, where good management prevails, many other moors have yielded a fair proportion of birds even in the years when disease has been reported severe and prevalent over 232 SHOOTING THE GROUSE both Scotland and England. What are we to think of those moors, which have been let to a variety of tenants for twenty years, and where nothing but the old-fashioned system of exclusive 'dogging' in the early part of the season has ever been practised, which are almost annually reported as having suffered severely from disease, and have produced gradually declining results ? Is it too much to agree with autho- rities such as I have quoted, and to come to the con- clusion that other causes besides disease have been at work on these unfortunate moors ? I think not ; and it will take a great deal to convince me that good grouse ground can deteriorate to this extent for no visible cause except the eternal cry of ' disease.' The birds on ill-preserved ground are never good spe- cimens of the race. A deer-forest grouse is not, as a rule, to be compared, for weight, plumage, or flavour to one from Studley or Wemmergill. If the Scotch keeper on such ground does not learn by more direct channels, he will eventually discover by the depreciated value of the moor which he manages that he or his predecessors have killed the grouse with the golden eggs. A pound a brace or even more has been, and is still, paid by the unwary who rent certain Scotch shootings ; but a Yorkshire moor which yields 3,000 brace, though very scarce in the market, will GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 233 not fetch 3,ooo/. for the season. Those who take the average shooting, and wish for a moderate amount of sport at a moderate expense, should look more closely than they do into the records of the moor, should submit to no clauses in their lease which oblige them to keep on any particular keeper or nominee of the landlord, and should study more closely the methods which have been adopted on the moors where a really successful result is shown. The exact nature of the grouse disease is very difficult to determine. Lord Walsingham, some years since, offered a considerable money prize for the best essay on the subject ; but the result was unsatisfactory, and no one, if I recollect rightly, offered a solution worthy to receive the reward. Dr. Cobbold's pam- phlet still remains as the only scientific effort offering a tangible solution of the question. He ascribes it all to the Strongylus pergracilis, a little thread-like worm which breeds in the throat, and eventually in thousands in all the organs of the bird. It is further alleged that ponies and sheep had died on the moors during years when disease was prevalent from the attacks of the same parasite. But not even I )r. Cob- bold can tell us whence or how the Strongylus pcr- gracilis is produced, or whether it is the cause or effect of weakness in the larger body. I remember, 234 SHOOTING THE GROUSE in 1874 or thereabouts, on the late Sir Charles Forbes's moors at Dalradample, in Aberdeenshire, we were all taking refuge on a wet stormy day in one of the butts for luncheon. I sat on a seat in the corner, made of sods cut from the moor, and when I rose, found on my mackintosh and on the sod under me a quantity of small thread-like worms, answering exactly to Dr. Cobbold's description of the Strongylus. On examination, I found many others under where others of the party were lying or sitting, as though the warmth of their bodies had drawn these creatures to the surface. The particular growth they were in was not heather, but the coarse grass, reddish at the tips, so common on the moors and rough hill pas- tures. I put several of them carefully into a bottle with bits of the grass, intending to send them to Lord Walsingham, as one of our first entomologists, for examination ; but, alas ! by next morning they were all dried up and almost invisible dead, and shrivelled to nothing. This seemed to show that they were produced, supposing them to be identical with Cobbold's para- site, on certain ground, and prevalent, like the field voles, at spasmodic intervals. I was much disappointed at my failure to get a scientific opinion, but commend this experience to those who would pursue the subject GROUND, STOCK, AND POACHING 235 seriously. I should add that the ground was very damp, and that the weather had been very wet for some weeks previously. I believe that no remedy has ever been hit on or tried with any satisfactory result. Rock salt has been suggested ; but this does not appear to commend itself to the grouse. I have always thought that if it were practicable and not too expensive the heather might, as an experiment, be sown with salt, in case the parasite is really generated first upon the ground. I am sure that very little would suffice to kill worms such as I found on the occasion mentioned, and it might prove beneficial as against tapeworms in their young or embryo condition. So far as we know at present, we can only fight against the disease, or ward it off, by the common-sense practice of regular heather burning, and maintaining a vigorous race of birds by the methods and management I have mentioned above, aided by such suggestions as those who have long and practical experience of moois and moor-game can furnish in addition. I have alluded above to accidental fires. These may do no harm, possibly some eventual good, when the ground is somewhat damp and the weather broken, as in spring ; but in very hot dry weather in the summer they may prove very serious. At such times 236 SHOOTING THE GROUSE take every precaution against casual fires being lighted, and request your guests to be careful with matches, and also to watch that sparks from the gun do not start a conflagration. I set my butt on fire three times in one day at Studley, and only extinguished it with considerable difficulty. On these very moors, in 1872, the most disastrous moorland fire ever known took place. The fire de- stroyed 1,300 acres of the best of the ground, going eight or ten feet deep into the peat, and the smoke of it was perceptible for thirty or forty miles. I have not been on this ground lately, but can vouch for the fact that, ten years after the fire, the vast expanse of the ' burnt ground ' on Studley moor remained black and barren, a warning of what the careless lighting of a match may do in hot weather. 237 CHAPTER VI ' THE FRINGE OF THE MOOR ' MR. JOHN GUILLE MILLAIS has in his delightful book, ' Game Birds and Shooting Sketches,' given a description of bird and animal life in the early morn- ing on the lower edges of the moorland, and this, with many other passages in the work, I commend to those who love the poetry of nature. A son of the great painter whose tender and masterly touch alone seems able to grasp the realities and idealities, the romances or complexities, which go to make up the life of this age, he develops, as one of the first naturalists of to-day, a convincing admiration for nature and a brilliant power of drawing birds inheritances of his father's talents. From Sir John, my earliest master in outdoor painting, 1 I am not ashamed to have stolen the title of this chapter, in order to describe the picturesque 1 I believe I may claim the honour of being the only pupil Sir J. Millais ever had alas ! for too short a time. 238 SHOOTING THE GROUSE and varied ground which, lying next to or forming part of the moorland proper, leads you by the plea- santest of transitions to the cultivated land. This is the Bohemia of shooting the tract where we have all spent some of the pleasantest of our days in cir- cumventing its distinctive denizens, or in making a mixed bag without the aid of the organisation of a regular shooting party. Here sits the capercailzie and lurks the roe ; here abides the blackcock and crouches the hare ; here stalks the pheasant and sleeps the woodcock ; while from above and below the grouse and the partridge meet on the heathery slopes and rushy bottoms of this debatable land, the fringe of the moor. Driving the woods for black-game and anything else that may be in them provides the pleasantest of shooting days, liberally tinged with the element of surprise, which is as essentially an integral part of sport as it is admitted to be of wit. I quite agree with the late Mr. Bromley-Davenport, than whom no better sportsman ever rode, shot, or fished, that it is hateful to know exactly how much game there is in a covert, how many birds in a turnip field. All interest is gone the moment the element of uncertainty or surprise is removed. The great charm of the moor edge is its variety. The long plantation of larch or THE FRINGE OF THE MOOR' 239 fir, standing ankle-deep in yellow grass or breast-high in bracken, breaks imperceptibly into a bed of heather, dotted with young trees, which in turn gives way to swampy hollows or rushy wastes, not infrequently bordering a field or two of stubble or turnips before the wood or moor begins again. Small coverts, great open brakes of fern, and deep ravines where the heather can scarce cling to the steep sides between the rocks, succeed each other in delightful confusion, the whole forming an agglomeration of various sorts of covert, which used to be called by the old keeper at Drumlanrig ' by the expressive term of ' what- nots.' Many charming days have I enjoyed in years gone by among those ' what-nots,' where sometimes twelve or thirteen varieties of game, from the fallow deer to the jack-snipe, were killed in one day, and great were the numbers of the black-game. The two distinct kinds of black-game driving are determined by the nature of the ground. In the one your com- pany of well-organised drivers sweeps a succession of so-called pastures, though the herbage on them is not of the best, differing but little, except for the 1 Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the principal seat of the Duke of liuccleuch, which stands un an estate of 175,000 acres. 240 SHOOTING THE GROUSE frequently intersecting stone walls and marked in- closures, from the moor itself. In the other, some- times with an imposing but casual array of beaters, suggesting somewhat the levies of a pretender or an outlaw, but more often with the unaided skill of a half-dozen of keepers and gillies, the woods are ranged towards you as you stand in carefully selected spots, 'passes' where the blackcocks are sure to cross, and where you are equally on the look-out for a woodcock or a roebuck. The former style of black-game driving has been undoubtedly carried to the greatest perfection, and with the best results, on the Duke of Buccleuch's Dumfriesshire estates. Here, at Sanquhar or Wan- lock Head, lie the great stretches of rough pasture part grass, part rushes, part heather which favour a great stock of these birds, and which, lying between the oat stubbles and the luxuriant heather, afford them the variety of food that this specie seem in particular to affect. Here, ensconced behind a high wall, after, perhaps, removing the topmost course of stones to clear your view in front, having reached your places in strictly enforced silence, and weighed the consequences of any mistake, such as killing a greyhen or showing yourself unduly, which may ex- pose you to a fire of time-honoured chaff, you may THE FRINGE OF THE MOOR' 241 see a pack of a hundred or more blackcocks coming straight at your face, and on about the same level a sight never to be forgotten, and one that makes your heart beat faster and your hand tremble lest you bring ridicule upon yourself by missing these great ponderous objects as they come by you so close that you could almost touch them. The missing is easier than you would think, and we all know who have tried it how simple it is to shoot behind a black- cock, looking as big as a turkey, and seeming to be going very slow, within fifteen or twenty yards. Nothing will avail you but absolute confidence in your own shooting powers and a complete disregard of the disturbing personality of the quarry. You must shoot as at a driven partridge, if anything a shade more forward, and with more rather than less accuracy. With these precautions you will strike the bird in the head and neck, and he will collapse as easily as the aforesaid partridge. Without them, or if you should vainly try to kill two or three at a shot, you will inevitably miss altogether, or see your bird flinch and disappear, as you think, ' cut to ribbons.' This means that he will fly half a mile, rise again about fifty yards in front of your dog, and gaily fly on, never to be seen again ; or wheel round and re- turn contemptuously over your head, at the height R 242 SHOOTING THE GROUSE of the cross on St. Paul's Cathedral, to the ground whence he was first disturbed. Black-game have wonderful turning power, and it is a sight to see them, when they are driven down a heavy wind and suspect or are sure of danger in front, wheel deliberately round and go up wind over the drivers in the teeth of half a gale. For this reason it is necessary to observe silence as you move to your post and after you have reached it ; even smoking being in some places prohibited. The great thing is to get the main body, the large pack or packs over the guns, scatter them to a certain extent, and at any rate utilise them for the next drive. To insure this you must also be careful not to show yourself, bearing in mind that they are quite capable of turning completely round and going back when within a few yards of you, and that when they have accomplished this you have done with that particular lot for the day. The first bird or two that comes by you should spare ; they will probably be greyhens, flushed by the drivers at the start ; but do not despise this warning, as should they come against a bright sky, or should you be unduly keen, you may find that you have incurred the penalty of error. I suppose that no one who has shot black-game has not made this mistake THE FRINGE OF THE MOOR' 243 more than once ; therefore, I advise you, always let the first bird or two pass you before firing, as after they get level with you it is easy to distinguish the cock from the hen. Should you know that there is a large lot of cocks between the guns and the drivers, the first odd birds, whether cocks or hens, should always be allowed to pass without a shot being fired, so that the main body may come on without suspicion of danger. This applies when driving woods, but is seldom likely to be rigorously followed, as you will then be probably anxious to secure the mixed bag which the coverts afford. But in driving on the open moor or pastures it is absolutely essential, if you are going for a bag of blackcocks exclusively, to follow these tactics. In grouse driving, especially on broken ground, I am in favour of the beaters making some noise, for birds seated in hollows or anywhere out of sight of the flags, having heard the guns ahead and not being con- scious of the presence of the drivers, may rise and turn back. But for black-game driving I recommend absolute silence, as if too much scared they will get high up and leave the ground you are working, often crossing a broad deep valley and alighting on a far-off hill, clean off your day's ground. For black- 244 SHOOTING THE GROUSE game driving no flags are necessary, or at the most one or two for men posted on the flank to prevent the birds taking some particular line away from the drive. Driving them from the woods is almost entirely a question of judicious placing of the guns ; the keeper should know the points or ' passes ' where they almost invariably break from a particular covert, and here the guns should be placed pretty close together. As this conduces to talking, silence must again be urged in waiting for these birds, the fact that they drive best up wind furnishing an additional reason for- the exercise of caution and self-control. Walking the woods and broken ground in line in late September or early October is a very pretty form of sport, though the line is very difficult to keep in proper formation. Here you get very unexpected and difficult shots, a blackcock rising with a great rattle out of a little ravine being a customer whom it requires some skill to stop. ' At this time of year the cocks are found singly, scattered about the woods, seeking the various berries and grasses which they like as a change from heather, and some of them will lie very close. But they are then mostly young cocks ; so that for the good of your breeding stock it is better not to pursue them too closely in this fashion. The same remark applies even more strongly to attacking the young THE FRINGE OF THE MOOR' 245 broods during the last days of August. At this time the cockney sportsman, having noted in the almanac that on August 20 ' Black-game shooting begins,' sallies forth, and decimates the immature pullets, none of which will fly far, while nearly all could be caught by the hand in the thick heather after the dog has ascertained their whereabouts. The old cock he probably never sees, or if he does he misses him, and the old hen most likely escapes also. Having done as much harm as it is possible to do in the day, he will return and indite an account of his prowess to the ' Field ; ' quaintly remarking that he ' had i8| brace of black- game ' on the 2oth. Since he clearly need not have shot the majority of them, and should be ashamed of himself if he did, the fact that he possessed them is perhaps all that need be recorded. But it may be added that a young blackcock whom you happen upon ' in the way of business ' is, if you let him get far enough before putting shot into him, one of the most delicious of all birds for the table. Stalking black-game, whether on the stocks of corn, or later on the open moor and pastures, is a very agreeable art, and one which will try your skill and sportsmanlike qualities to the utmost. Foul weather, when it is hardly fit to be out, is the best for this. You will then find the old cocks, which should always 246 SHOOTING THE GROUSE be the object of your pursuit, sitting on walls or mounds, and other bare dry places. The wind must be very carefully considered, and the stalk conducted with as much care as if you were after deer. If you alarm other birds or beasts, the blackcocks, like deer, will take alarm also, and though their sense of smell is not so keen as, their eyesight is undoubtedly superior to, that of the nobler animal. It is often a good plan to employ your man, always granted that you can trust his discretion, to move about at a distance, and in a different direction, so as to distract their wary eyes while you creep upon them. As chances are few at this sport, and it is important to kill these old stagers, who live to an immense age, long after they have become utterly useless for stud purposes, I would advise you never to spare a sitting shot. Of capercailzie shooting there is not much to be said. It is no doubt a beautiful sight to see these magnificent birds sailing past you as you stand in a clearing of the wood, and a very satisfactory thing to bring them down stone dead, as you can do if you hit them well forward. But as their flight is not long, the drives are not exciting, and beautiful as the bird may be he is not fit to eat in any shape but soup. Whatever you may do, the capercailzie will leave your ground or remain on it as they list, selecting their THE FRINGE OF THE MOOR' 247 favourite trees for residence, and being found perched there with monotonous regularity. They do not seem to acquire in Scotland (the only part of the British Islands where they can be found) even the wildness of habit which makes the pursuit of them so exciting in Germany and Austria. But as they that is, the cocks only, for a hen is never shot are only pursued in the latter countries in the breeding season, and are, in fact, slain in the act of carolling forth the song of love, I confess to but little sympathy for the sport. But when you have to deal with one that is driven to you, be not deceived by his size or the com- paratively slow beat of his wings. He is going fully as fast as a blackcock or a grouse, and unless you hit him in the head you need not trouble to fire. I once missed five old cocks in one drive, none of them more than thirty-five yards off, from misjudging their pace, and probably also in some degree their distance from me. All that can be said about them has been admirably put by Mr. Millais in his book ' and by Lord Charles Kerr in the Badminton Library. '- Last, but not least, we must breathe the keen air and tread the summer snows of the high tops, while we attack the shy and graceful ptarmigan. 1 Game Birds and Shooting Sketches. " Hfoor and Marth, p. 53. 248 SHOOTING THE GROUSE The glorious scenery which surrounds the haunts of these beautiful .birds makes the pursuit of them especially fascinating. The splendid air and brilliant light, the panoramic view, the shifting cloud and mist, the dizzy height and wondrous silence these weird surroundings are so fine that we almost forget our wish to slay the creatures that inhabit them, and pro- bably few men have descended from the ptarmigan hill in the evening without a pang of regret at having carried their predatory instinct into these picturesque solitudes. At first you cannot see the birds against the stones, so closely do they resemble the pale grey rock, white spa, and speckled moss which form their background ; but presently they move and run before you, seeming quite tame, but fifteen yards away. In another second they are all in the air together, their white wings flash- ing in the sun, they have doubled in a bunch along the hill, and now, well separated from one another, are sailing away at a terrific pace, while you sorrowfully eject your empty and profitless cartridge cases. You must advance upon them with the gun held ready, almost up to the shoulder, and as they all turn toge- ther, the killing moment, try and knock over a brace cleverly, though the second bird will take you all you know to stop. FRINGE OF THE A/OOA" 249 They always rise all together and close to one another, and many people, otherwise scrupulous sportsmen, will, as they turn, shoot into the brown, or rather the ' white,' of the covey. This I think horribly cruel and unfair, specially so in the case of ptarmigan, for a wounded bird who may fly across a valley which it would take you four hours of descent and ascent to cross, is more often than not never retrieved, but left to linger in a rift between the rocks, or fall a victim on the mossy slopes to the eagle, the raven, or the fox. In beating a round hill, it is a good plan to separate and work round it in two parties, when you will send some beautiful rocketing shots from one to the other ; but your guns must be accurate, careful shots, or as you approach to meet again you may easily shoot one another. The handling of the gun altogether demands experience and closer attention on ptarmigan ground than on any other. The footing is often bad, and slips over loose stones are frequent, while the possibility of blinding one of the party by a ricochet off the rocks must always be borne in mind. The best way to carry the gun on such ground, wher- ever possible, is in the right hand only, thrown back, with the barrels resting on your right shoulder and the hand on the grip. Then, should you fall, your piece 250 SHOOTING THE GROUSE will fall forward as you extend your arm, and should a jar discharge it, will probably do no harm. But when there is anyone in front of you, it is obvious this method of carrying the gun becomes the most unsafe, and you must harden your heart and be prepared to lose here and there a chance by carrying it at half- cock carefully nursed over your left arm, while you are clinging to the steep face or picking your way among loose stones. Ptarmigan can be driven, though to do it to a profitable extent there should be a great stock of them, and an elaborate organisation becomes necessary. The ground they inhabit is so steep that the drivers must usually be sent up by a different route from the guns, and unless the whole thing is very carefully arranged the drive is likely to fail of its result. There are usually only a few broods on a particular hill, and I think, if you are not too hard upon them (for on certain days it is possible to kill almost every bird you see), it is a better and pleasanter way to walk the ground for them. Pointers or setters you will hardly require, though here and there, especially for finding a wounded bird, they will be useful. But the blue hares, which are usually pretty well sprinkled over the ptarmigan ground, are trying to your dogs, and you can be pretty sure of finding the birds without them. ' THE FRINGE OF THE MOO A" 251 Ptarmigan, like all other birds, are much in- fluenced by the wind, and should your march run along the top of the hill it is useless to go out unless the wind favours their lying on your side ; otherwise every bird on the hill will be over the march, and though you may get a splendid walk, you will make but a poor bag of either birds or hares. Where possible, separate into two parties, so as to drive birds to one another, and in this way each party is likely to be of service to the other in retrieving wounded birds. The valleys, which they cross in a few seconds and with consummate ease, are almost a day's work for men to traverse ; and somehow the idea of leaving these beautiful birds to a lingering death in their own wild home is peculiarly repugnant to the feelings of a good sportsman. To revert to the lower ground, I think that where you have, in addition to grouse, a large stock of black-game, the interests of the farmers should be borne in mind. There is no doubt that when the corn is standing in stocks a large flock of these birds, visiting the fields every night and morning, will destroy a large amount of grain. You will find your- self all the more popular in the glen if you visit them on off days when keen on this food, and a beautiful afternoon's sport may be enjoyed by lying in wait for 252 SHOOTING THE GROUSE them as they come from the moor to the corn-land. Black-game if disturbed once or twice on their feed will be chary of returning to the same place for a space of time, and the farmer will be found very grateful to you if, while enjoying a pleasant variety of sport, you show some anxiety to protect his produce from these voracious visitors. I regret to have to record my opinion that the decrease in the numbers of black-game in Scotland is due entirely to illegal destruction of these birds. They are easily poached, and since the poulterers have been suffered to expose them for sale during the spring and summer months as ' Norwegian,' the diminution in the general stock has become very marked. No one should buy or eat black-game from Christmas until the following August. \Yhether they come from Norway or not, they are not in season ; they must have been destroyed during the period when every animal but the lowest vermin should be let alone, and have never been come by in the honest ways of sport. 253 CHAPTER VII RECORDS AND REMARKS ALL the British shooting world now knows that a man can kill 500 brace of grouse to his own gun in one day given the accuracy, the physique, the endurance, and the grouse necessary since the feat has been performed by an Englishman on his own moor in Yorkshire. We also know that 1,000 brace and upwards to a party of well-selected shots is a performance we may always expect to hear of in a good grouse season, and that it has been done already several times in the same county. We further know that 500 brace can be killed in a day in Scotland, since it was done last year (1893) in Inverness-shire ; and in none of these cases are we sure that the limit of possibility has been reached. To defend large bags is always a difficult task, since they must generally appear unnatural and un- sportsmanlike to persons who have no experience of well-organised and accurate shooting on strictly 254 SHOOTING THE GROUSE preserved ground ; and, be it observed, it is only from such as these that the attack ever comes. Such experience and study as I have been able to bring to bear on the subject convinces me that the more grouse there are on the moors, the more partridges in the fields, and the more pheasants in the coverts, the better for everybody in this struggling age. We ought to rejoice in the discovery that by good manage- ment the food-producing power of the moors, no less than their opportunities for healthy pleasure and exercise, can be increased to such a pitch. If the grouse are there, it is clear they must be killed to be utilised as food, and surely no one would advocate their being destroyed by means of nets or other engines in the wholesale manner of the poacher or poulterer. It is evident the results cannot be obtained by the old- fashioned methods, since where these have been abandoned the stock has so much increased that it would no longer be possible to deal with the birds except by organised driving. I have never been one of those who have cavilled at Lord Walsingham's unique performance. Records must and will continue to be broken by Englishmen until the limit is reached, and it seems to me far better that everyone should know the extraordi- nary value and fecundity of well-preserved moors. RECORDS AND REMARKS 255 I append the account of Lord Walsingham's great day, copied from his own record, and signed by him for me at the time : August 30, 1888. (First drive commenced at 5.12 a.m. No. of birds No. of minutes in each drive for each drive 49 33 64 . . 38 59 16 79 18 71 . 24 58 . . 18 56 . . 19 53 20 42 . 20 61 . 16 16 . 17 21 . i2 30 91 . 21 39 28 93 S2 33 2.T. 24 30 . . 20 Walk] , ,. home j I4 concludm S ^ 7-3 P.M. 1,036 From first shot to last, 14 hours 18 minutes. Number of cartridges fired about 1,550, including forty signal shots not fired at birds. Deducting the last fourteen birds (killed walking home), and 256 SHOOTING THE GROUSE adding 22 + 12 picked up, we have 1,056 killed in 449 minutes, or 2^ per minute in the actual time occupied in shooting in the twenty drives. Once I killed three birds at one shot, the only three in sight at the time, and three times I killed two at one shot, each time intentionally. WALSINGHAM. September 20, 1888. Although the result has been published, I do not think any previous work contains this account of the details. The small pick-up, 34 birds out of a total of 1,056 only about 3 per cent., testifies to clean killing and humane and careful gathering of wounded ; while the hours occupied and proportion of kills to misses are sufficient to show that to produce the performance a man must be a first-rate sportsman and athlete. Here is the account of two days at Mr. Rimington Wilson's, on the Broomhead moors near Sheffield, last year (1893). The first constitutes the record bag for one day's grouse shooting : T. T . f August 30 ... 2,648 grouse Is me guns \ 6 I September I . . . 1,603 ,, Remarks. Six drives each day ; the first at 10. 15 A.M., the last at 5 r.M. The second day's driving was over the same batteries and the same ground as the first. Both days fine and wir>d favourable. 1,910 grouse picked up by luncheon on the 3oth. RECORDS AND REMARKS 257 Mr. Wilson also held the record previous to this day viz. 2,626 grouse, killed at Broomhead on September 6, 1872, by thirteen guns, including the late Mr. J. W. Rimington Wilson, one of the finest shots and most accomplished men of his time, and his two sons, who took outside places all day. The most recent record, as given above, to nine guns, is of course by far the more remarkable of the two. Here, again, are some of the results of the well- known Wemmergill moor, kindly furnished me by Lord Westbury, who has rented it almost ever since Sir Frederick Milbank gave it up. He says : ' For the last seven years this moor, which is under 12,000 acres, has yielded an average of over 6,000 birds a year ; this period includes two very bad seasons viz. 1891, when only 1,826 birds were killed, and 1892, when there was no shooting.' This average is 50 per cent higher than that of Sir Frederick Milbank during his twelve years' tenancy of the same moor, viz. 4,133 birds, although his period includes the exceptional total of 17,064 in 1872 ; ] Lord Westbury's highest year being 9,797 in 1888. This looks as though the preservation of the birds and the ground had reached a more perfect and even condition. 1 Badminton Library, Moor and Marsh, p. 37. SHOOTING THE GROUSE I append the best day in each season during Lord Westbury's tenancy : Year Date 1887 1888 1889 1890 August 23 23 21 20 Grouse Guns 1,287 7 1,596 7 2,053 8 1,324 9 1891 A very bad year ; no large bags. 1892 No shooting, owing to severe frost in May, which destroyed most of the eggs. 1893 | September 6 | 1,807 | 8 On the adjoining moor of High Force enormous totals have also been reached, the record of 1872, during the Duke of Beaufort's tenancy, showing 15,484 birds for nineteen days' shooting. On this moor, as the guest of the late Mr. Clare Vyner, I took part in a wonderful week, averaging over 1,200 birds each day for four days, to only six guns. I had the best drive I have ever seen, picking up 115 birds in the single drive. I had knocked down 145, but owing to pressure of time and much thick bracken near my butt, which in the heat of an August day gave the dogs, no chance, I had to leave thirty birds on the ground, most of which, however, came into the pick-up announced next day. It is curious that Lord de Grey should have also RECORDS AND REMARKS 259 had his biggest drive, 128 birds, later on the same day, especially since we have both taken part in larger bags than the total of that particular occa- sion. Lord de Grey, who is admittedly the best game shot of our generation, and who has of course immense experience, has killed to his own gun 575 grouse in one day, shooting as one of a party of seven guns on the Studley Royal moors. Sir Frederick Milbank's performance ' exceeds this in numbers, and will probably, as the performance of an individual making one of a party of guns, never be surpassed. Lord de Grey's view is that, without disparagement of any such feat as this or Lord Walsingham's, which is only possible to a first-rate man, there is a great deal of luck as to whether the chance ever presents itself to perform it, and that the general shooting throughout a succession of days under every variety of condition is the test which the most experienced will apply to a man's form. It is necessary to notice an exceptional per- formance, and to recognise it as such. It is rarely achieved but by the first-rate man, and does not alter the general conditions which govern the sport in 1 Badminton Library, Moor anil Marsh, p. 37. s 2 260 SHOOTING THE GROUSE question. We can all remember how when Mr. W. G. Grace produced a series of scores such as had never been dreamt of in the cricket field, people began to talk of altering the rules to assist the bowlers ; of adding a stump, or narrowing the pro- portions of the bat, in order to restore the balance of the game. But these scores, like those named above, now remain recorded as the meteors or comets in the celestial field of great reputations, of rare and spas- modic recurrence, and valuable only as a standard of possibility to stimulate minor constellations to greater brilliancy. The first-rate performer, as before remarked, is good under all circumstances. I have met those who have seen W. G. Grace in a rustic cricket match, or John Roberts on a country house table, just as I have seen De Grey walking for an ordinary bag of partridges, or pursuing the occasional snipe or rabbit. The per- formance shows the same excellence under all these circumstances, and the quality which excites merely pleasure and admiration under the average conditions should not produce jealousy or carping criticism when reproduced on the rare opportunity which admits of the execution of a sensational feat. There is no danger of the frequent recurrence of Lord Walsingham's 500 brace in a day, of Lord de RECORDS AND REMARKS 261 Grey's 240 partridges in one drive, 1 of John Robert's spot-barred break of 1,300 odd, or of Dr. Grace's hundreds in an innings. The first-rate form which gradually builds up a great reputation is sure on some rare occasion, when all conditions are favourable, to produce an exceptional or startling feat ; but there is no reason on this account to imagine that all the ordinary rules of the sport in question are to be sub- versed by this meteoric performance, or to deplore the fact that the result exceeds what had been foreseen. These isolated achievements, properly considered, do no harm, but on the contrary merely serve to raise the general standard of excellence in all outdoor amusements which it has always been the pride of the Englishman to maintain before the world. Some fifty years ago Colonel Campbell of Monzie made bags to his own gun over dogs which have never been surpassed, excepting perhaps on one occasion by the late Maharajah Duleep Singh.- I do not think any 1 This is, no doubt, the record for an individual perform- ance in a partridge drive ; the feat, which I give on Lord de (irey's own authority, was performed by him last year, 1893, at Baron de Ilirsch's in Hungary. - Colonel Campbell killed in one (.lay in 1843, i84./ brace of grouse ; in 1846, 191 brace; and on the authority of 'Hark- away ' is said on another day to have killed 222?, brace. The Maharajah Uuleep Singh in 1872 bagged 220 brace in a day. 262 SHOOTING THE GROUSE bad consequences have followed these rare feats. If they have, as is probably the case, stimulated others to improve their shooting and the management of their moors, they have done more good than harm, and merely resulted in an increase in the supply of grouse available as food or sport for those who own moor- land estates. As remarked before, the best black-game ground is undoubtedly to be found on the Duke of Buc- cleuch's large estates in Dumfriesshire, while on other ground in the border counties, as well as in Perth- shire and Aberdeenshire, they have been killed in considerable numbers. The Duke of Buccleuch kindly furnishes me with the following totals of the five best years on his Drumlanrig Castle property : 1861 1,586 1865 1,530 1869 . . . . . 1,508 [ Black-game 1870 1,486 1871 1,429 These are diminishing totals, as will be observed, and I regret to say that his Grace adds that the numbers are still growing less, though there is little or no poaching on his ground. But I must recur to the subject of illegally killed game, and have no RECORDS AND REMARKS 263 hesitation in putting down the diminished numbers to the account of the poulterers in London and elsewhere. Perhaps some one well acquainted with Norway will tell us from what part of that country the large supplies with which it is credited come to our markets ! Here is the best bag ever made on the Duke's ground : SANQUHAR, DUMFRIESSHIRE (1 rouse ..... 5 Black-game .... 247 Partridges . . . . .21 Pheasant ..... i Hares ..... 40 Rabbits ..... 2 Total . . . 316 the guns including H.R.H. Prince Christian, the late Duke of Buccleuch, and eight others. Of the 247 black-game over 100 brace were cocks, and I fancy this constitutes the record bag of these birds. In 1874, at Newlands near Langholm, another of the Duke's estates on the Border, the present Duke and Colonel Francis Cust bagged 98 black-game, Si cocks and 17 greyhens, in one day, starting late and having only one gun each. The Duke informs me that if they had begun earlier and had taken two guns each 264 SPIGOTING THE GROUSE they could easily have killed 60 brace or more. This, especially considering the date, October 9, is the best day I ever heard of for two guns. Of capercailzie, probably no greater quantity has ever been killed than on the day mentioned by Mr. Millais, 70 in one day, on the Dowager Duchess of Athole's ground near Dunkeld ; while the 35 cocks shot at Ballinling by a party of whom Mr. Millais was one, is seldom, if ever, likely to be equalled. These birds having many years ago become extinct in this country, were, as is well known, re- introduced by the second Marquess of Breadalbane at Taymouth, and have spread over most of the lowland counties of Scotland. So far as I have seen they keep very much to themselves, and I should say without doubt contrive to drive away black-game from their especial haunts, though they remain on fairly friendly terms with pheasants, woodcocks, and other game. They have never been found yet on the English side of the Border, though black-game have been killed in nearly every county in England and Wales, some- times within a short distance of London itself. Mr. Millais mentions the curious instance of a black- cock and a hansom cab coming within the range of his acute vision at the same time in the neighbourhood of Aldershot. There is only one way to ' transplant RECORDS AND REMARKS 265 these birds into a new country by procuring the eggs and putting them into pheasant or partridge nests, the former, of course, for choice. But they go where they list ; they will not stay if the country does not suit them, but will travel for miles until they find congenial cover and food, even as they have led me in this little work far away from their recognised home and com- panions, the heather and the grouse. COOKERY OF JHE GROUSE BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY THE COOKERY OF THE GROUSE I HAVE always regretted (but never so much as since I undertook the duty of these chapters) that I did not preserve a French book on game and its cookery which passed through my hands some years ago. The author frankly admitted that grouse do not live in France, though black-game of course are found there. But he wished to be complete, and moreover, as he very justly observed, some of his French readers might have one or more brace of grouse sent him by an English friend, and then what was he to do ? So he gave with great pride what he was pleased to call a receipt for ' Grouse a la Dundy.' Dundy, I remem- ber, he defined as being not only the gamiest, la plus gi/wyeuse, city of Scotland, but also renowned for every variety of refinement of taste and luxury superior in short to Peebles itself. And the way that they cooked grouse in Dundy was but that is exactly what I have forgotten. To the best of my memory it was like' 270 COOKERV OF THE GROUSE most French fashions of cooking game a sufficiently ingenious method of making the best of any natural flavour that the bird might have, and imbuing it with a good many others, not at all disagreeable, but super- added rather than evolved or assisted, a method useful enough for old birds or indifferent birds, but improper for others. This process could nowhere be more a counsel of imperfection than in the case of grouse ; which, I ven- ture to think, has of all game birds the most distinct and the least surpassable flavour. There are those, of course, who will put in claims for others, and this is not the place to fight the matter out. I shall only say that while nearly all game birds are good, and some eminently good, grouse seems to me to be the best, to possess the fullest and at the same time the least violent flavour to have the best consistency of flesh and to present the greatest variety of attractions in different parts. It has become almost an affectation to speak of the excellence of his back ; let us rather say that he is all good back and breast, legs and wings. Black-game, capercailzie, and ptarmigan are but varieties of grouse, and almost everything that applies to the red grouse applies to them. Indeed, the ex- cellent Baron Brisst characteristically includes both COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 271 black-game and capercailzie in saying that there are two kinds of coq de bruyere, the one about the size of a peacock, the other about the size of a pheasant. All three birds, it is scarcely necessary to say, have, owing to their habitat and food, a much stronger flavour than the red grouse ; and it depends very much on the predominance or moderation of this flavour whether they are intolerable, tolerable, or excellent. Moreover, in the case of two of them at least, English estimation of them is wont to be injuriously affected by the importation of vast numbers of ptarmigan and capercailzie from the North of Europe, without the slightest regard to their fitness for food. I have seen it stated, indeed, that most of the Norwegian capercailzie which are sold in English shops are poached by illegal and unsportsmanlike processes, at the very time when they are most out of season. Ptarmigan soup, however, is quite excellent, and I am not sure that even grouse at its best can give points to a roast greyhen in good condition. But partly because of the strong nature of their food whereof pine and juniper shoots and seeds are the chief parts and partly because they are stronger flying birds, and therefore tougher than the red grouse, black-game require even more keeping than that 'estimable vola- tile.' The whole tribe, indeed, will bear this process 272 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE as no other birds will. It was the custom of a hospit- able friend of mine in Scotland, who was equally good with rod and gun, to keep a supply of grouse hanging till he could accompany them with salmon caught in a river which was by no means a very early opening one, and I never found birds taste better. The less regarded members of the grouse tribe will, as I have said, bear much longer keeping. Indeed, the best if not the only really good capercailzie that I ever tasted had been subjected to the indignity of being forgotten. He was imported into the Channel Islands by an enterprising game dealer ; I bought him, and as the house in which I was living had no good larder, I asked the man to keep him on his own premises till he and we were ready. We promptly forgot all about him, and it was several weeks before the shamefaced dealer, who was equally oblivious, said one day, ' I'm afraid, sir, that capercailzie . . . ! ' Nevertheless we had him sent home. It was necessary to amputate and discard a considerable part of him, but the rest was altogether admirable. With all these birds, but especially with ptarmigan, dryness is the great thing to be feared when roasting them ; and this must be guarded against by liberal basting, by jackets of bacon, and in other well-known ways, especially, perhaps, by the German method of COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 273 marinading and larding given below. Except in soup, old birds of all the three kinds are very nearly hopeless, and should not be attempted. And though in the abstract most, if not all, of the methods of what may be called applied grouse-cookery are applicable to them, it is well to remember that the extremely strong flavour above referred to marries itself but awkwardly to miscellaneous additions, and is almost impossible simply to disguise with them. Indeed, it is noteworthy that even French cookery books do not as a rule meddle much with the coq de bruyere, but prefer him plain. Nor does any of the tribe make a very good devil. 'Tickler,' indeed, in "the Nodes Ambrosiaiue, avoucheth that even eagle's thigh is good devilled ; but the context does not inspire complete confidence in the good faith of the sage of Southside at that moment. On the whole, it may be laid down that black-game and capercailzie (the latter when young and in very good condition) are best roasted, ptarmigan stewed or converted into soup. But I must own that I have eaten roast ptarmigan which left the room (at least the bones did) without a stain on their character which were ' white birds ' as much metaphorically as literally. With these preliminary remarks and cautions as U) the outlying varieties we may turn to the cooking T 274 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE of grouse proper. For very obvious reasons the anti- quarian part of the matter needs but little attention. Until railway-and-steamboat-time grouse were any- thing but common in London and exceedingly un- common in Paris, and the chef of literary tendencies was not likely to trouble himself much about them. Their rarity in the former place is exemplified in the well-known though doubtless apocryphal legend of the Highland chieftain who ordered ' grouse and salmon ' for his domestics at a London hotel. And the books said very little about them. For instance, a lady had the great kindness to examine for me a country-house collection of cookery books, English, Scotch, French, and American, extending to some score of volumes, and all printed between 1790 and 1830. They yielded practically nothing but the direction 'Roast moor-game half an hour : serve with fried bread crumbs, bread sauce, and sliced raw onions in a little water in the same boat,' and the still more general advice to ' dress them like partridges and send them up with currant jelly and fried bread crumbs.' It is somewhat interest- ing to notice that the onion sauce (or rather salad) here suggested is neither more nor less than a degraded and barbarous survival of the onion puree which, as was noted in the volume on the Partridge in this series, Gervase Markham had prescribed for that bird some COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 275 two centuries earlier. As for the currant jelly I think it hardly survives now, but for people who like currant jelly with flesh or fowl it is not bad with grouse, while as usual cranberry or rowan-berry jelly is better still. German and American cooks also sometimes re- commend //;//-sauce. But in connection with the general direction to ' cook them like partridges ' I am tempted to acid two receipts for dressing that bird which I did not know at the time of writing on it, but which seem admirably adapted to grouse also, and which come from the collection referred to above. They appear in La Cuisine de Saute, an elaborate work in three volumes written by M. Jourdain Le Cointe, and revised in the year 1790 by a medical practitioner of Montpellier. This latter man of art, by the way, seems during that stirring time to have been as unpolitically engaged as his brother savant \\\w was indifferent to the Revolution because he had an un- precedented number of irregular verbs all nicely conjugated and written out in his desk. The first of these receipts is called a la Sultanc, and is described as one of the favourite dishes of Venetian cookery ; the other, also asserted to be Italian in origin, is a la ccndre. For birds a la Sultanc you take four, and sacrifice the least promising of the quartette to make i\farcetw T 2 276 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE the other three, with the usual accompaniment of mushrooms, anchovies, &c. You then, having stuffed the others, lard them not merely with bacon but with anchovies and truffles, and roast them before a not too fierce fire, basting them till they are two-thirds done with good consomme. ' II unit 1'agrement et la salubrite,' says of this dish M. Jourdain le Comte or the Montpellier doctor, evidently leaning back in his chair with a sense of satisfaction after writing the words. It would be interesting to try this receipt with grouse, and I think it would answer, though I should be disposed to omit the anchovies. The other manner, a lacendre, contains a slight puzzle to me. It is directed that the birds, jacketed in bacon and stuffed with the usu&lfarce made of one of their number, shall each be wrapped with extreme care, so that no part is uncovered, in a large sheet of white paper strewed with sliced truffles. Each packet being carefully tied up with packthread is buried in hot ashes, turning it if necessary till cooked. Our authority says that this way of cooking is very popular in Italy, but to his think- ing dries the birds too much and deprives them of their qualite restaurante. That, I should say, would depend on the stuffing and jacketting. But what sort of paper is it that will stand the heat of ashes hot enough to cook a partridge through ? Burnt-paper ash is not the nicest COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 277 of condiments, and, moreover, the phrase 'sorte/-les du papier' at the end of the article implies that the wrapping is exhypothesi intact. Perhaps somebody who has a hearth and wood-ashes at his or her disposal will try the method. Turning to modern and straightforward cookery, I observe that some critics, while speaking very amiably of my efforts in alien art on the partridge, have been pleased to speak compassionately of my preference of plain roast bird as ' very English.' I hope that nothing worse will ever be said of any taste of mine; and that, as accord- ing to a famous axiom, 'it is permissible to Dorians to speak Doric,' so it may be permissible to Englishmen to eat English food. At any rate, though I have just given some and shall hope to give several other receipts for more elaborate dealing, I must repeat and emphasise the same preference here. A plainly and perfectly roasted grouse, with the accompaniments above re ferred to (or others, such as chipped or ribboned potatoes), is so good that he can in no other way be improved, though of course he may be varied. Some extreme grouse-eaters even declare that you ought to eat nothing at all but grouse at the same meal ; and though I cannot go with them there, I am thoroughly of the mind of a certain wise and gracious hostess who once said to me, ' I have given you very few things 278 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE for dinner to-day ; for there is grouse, and I think grouse is a dinner.' Certainly it is rather wicked to eat a mere snippet of it at the end of a dinner of soup, fish, half a dozen entrees, and very likely a solid releve. The soup and the fish and one entree ought to be ample when grouse in sufficient quantity forms the roast. Also grouse forms a better ' solid ' than any- thing else that I know to finish a fish dinner with there is some subtle and peculiar appropriateness in its specially earthy and dry savour as a contrast to the fishinesses. For accompanying vegetables nothing can equal French beans, which Nature supplies at the right time exactly, and for drinking to match, nothing can even approach claret, good, but not too good. Not ' forty thousand college councils ' shall ever persuade me but that it is something of a solecism and something of a sin to drink the very best Bordeaux with any solid food whatever. That should be drunk with a recueilk- ment which is impossible to the palate when it is simultaneously called to deal with the grosser act of eating. Let, therefore, the host, however fortunate and liberal, keep the First Three and also his best Leovilles and Rauzans, Moutons and Pichon Longuc- villes, for the time when the grouse has vanished : but let him accompany it while it is being discussed with anything up to Palmer or Lagrange, or even COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 279 such second growths as Cos Destournel or Durfort. Not that Burgundy (again just short of the very best) goes ill with grouse, but that claret goes better. Alexis Soyer, who, though I have heard good judges declare him to have been a very overrated cook, said some excellent things, soon to be quoted, about grouse, re- commends a ' little sweet champagne ' with grouse. It was spoken like a Frenchman. The accompaniments of roast grouse, besides those already mentioned, are not very numerous. The liver of the birds cooked separately, pounded and spread upon the toast on which they are served, with butter, salt, and cayenne, is often recommended. Most people are unhappy without gravy ; for myself I think if the grouse is properly done, not too much and not too dry, it is better without any. The favourite, and to the general taste indispensable, bread crumbs are often horribly ill cooked, and unless very well cooked are the reverse of appetising. Soyer, as above reported by a good Scotch writer on cookery, who calls herself ' Jenny Wren,' liked to eat grouse, which he justly declared to vary inexplicably in flavour from year to year, ' absolutely by themselves with nothing but a crust of bread,' and this shows a purity of taste which makes one almost forgive him his sweet cham- pagne therewith. Watercress is as good with grouse 2 So COOKERY OF THE GROUSE as with most roasted birds, and salad almost as good as with any ; though perhaps the brown-fleshed birds do not so imperatively call for this adjunct as the white. I seem to have heard that there were times and places where grouse were eaten with melted butter ; but it is well known that there were times and seasons when there was hardly anything to which Britons did not add that unlovely trimming. It must be confessed that the thing is still done (the trimming being actually poured over the birds) in Scotland, where they certainly understand cooker} 7 , and where- they ought to understand that of grouse in particular. But it seems to me an abomination, and it must be remembered that if Scottish cookery, admirable as it is, has a tendency to sin, that tendency is in the direction of what is delicately called ' richness/ and that this may be an instance. No doubt the counter tendency of the grouse to the other original sin of dryness has also to be considered. There is a good deal more dispute as to the time, or in other words the degree, to which grouse ought to be roasted than in regard to most other gam,' birds. Nobody not, I should suppose, even an ogre or a cannibal likes underdone pheasant ; and I never heard of anybody who liked underdone partridge. On the other hand, only very unfortunately constituted persons COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 281 (who should not eat wild- or water-fowl at all) like wild duck or widgeon, or anything of that kind, from solan geese to plovers, otherwise than distinctly underdone. But in regard to grouse it is impossible to say that there is a distinctly orthodox or a distinctly heterodox school in this respect. The ambiguity of general opinion is shown by the variation in time from twenty minutes to half an hour usually allotted for the roast- ing of an average-sized young bird (I have even seen three-quarters advised, but this is utterly pre- posterous). This amounts to the difference between a distinct redness close to the bone and 'cooking through.' There is even a school who would have grouse decidedly underdone. I think they are wrong, and that there should be nothing in the very least saignant about a grouse when he is carved, but that, if possible, he should be taken away from the fire the very minute that the last possibility of such a trace has disappeared. The other two simple ways of cooking grouse (I suppose men do boil them, just as they boiled Lord Soulis, but I never knew a case) are broiling and con- version into soup. A broiled or ' brandered ' grouse is quite admirable, but must of course be quite young, plentifully buttered (or oiled), and fairly peppered. When successfully done it is like all broiled birds, one 282 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE of the very best things that it is possible to eat, and can be accompanied by an almost unlimited variety of sauces or gravies, from the plainest to the most elaborate. The same hyperbole may be used of grouse soup when it is what grouse soup should be. There are consider- able variations in the methods of preparing it; and, as in most cases, it is necessary to look to the end or object. Philosophically considered, the whole subject of soup may be divided into three parts. There is soup more or less clear, such as is probably at the present moment chiefly in favour as being most restorative in effect and most elegant in consumption. There is a puree of creamy texture, thick, but not containing any positive solids. And lastly there is the old-fashioned broth with solids in it, which is more an olla or stew than a soup strictly speaking, and which, though a little robust and massive for our modern dinners, is one of the most satisfactory varieties of food for reasonably hungry people. The first of these forms is that in which grouse soup is least commonly presented, and to which perhaps this bird lends itself least characteris- tically. It is, however, good in its way, and I never saw a better receipt for it than that which is given by Mrs. Henry Reeve. You take old, but quite fresh birds, which may be either grouse or black-game, or (I should add) ptarmigan. You add water at the rate COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 283 of three pints to the brace of birds, and keep it sim- mering as slowly as possible for hours, adding pepper- corns and a little onion and carrot. Some time before serving you take the best pieces of the breast out (the birds of course have been cut up at first), press them and cut them up in little bits to add to the strained soup. Puree of grouse is much more in request and for those who can consume thick soups much better. The apparent variety of receipts for it is great; the real, smaller. All can be reduced, with little difficulty, to a common form. The birds are roasted, but not so long as if they were going to be simply eaten a quarter of an hour is generally held to be enough. All or most of the meat is then removed from the bones, which are put into a sufficient quantity of ready- made clear stock or consomme, with vegetables and seasonings to taste. This is allowed to simmer from one to three hours, the longer the better. Meanwhile, tlie meat which was taken off is pounded in a mortar and pressed through a sieve, some adding butter and grated biscuit or toasted bread, others ground rice, others nothing but seasoning. This paste is then stirred into the strained soup till it attains thr required thickness. Celery in moderation is an important in- gredient in puree of grouse, and some send k-mon 284 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE with it to table ; but lemon is one of those good things which are liable to abuse in cookery, in regard to meats and fowls. It is more at home with fish and sweets. Of the ruder and more national form (which is also, I think, the best) of grouse soup, the celebrated stew whereof Meg Merrilies made Dominie Sampson partake was probably a variety, though the authority saith that moor-game were not the only ingredient of that soup or broth or stew. The beginning is the same as for puree, and indeed puree and this sort of soup melt into each other by imperceptible gradations. For you may either roast the birds as in the former case, cut off the best of the meat, break up and slightly pound the rest, fry it with butter, some ham and vegetables, and then stew it with good stock, in quantity sufficient (some say a quart to a bird), and after straining put the best pieces of meat in at the last moment, to warm up with a glass of claret. Or you may cut up the birds into joints to begin with, fry them in butter, and then add the stock, the vege- tables and the etceteras, proceeding in ordinary soup fashion till the thing is done. Some in this last stage advocate the adding of a young cabbage in pieces, with wine or not, as liked. And as the birds have, in this case, no ordinary cooking but the slight fry, and no pounding or other mollification, it is necessary COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 285 to ' simmer till tender,' which in the case of an old grouse or black-cock may be a considerable time. For the really hungry man this is, no doubt, the best way of all ; but as a dinner dish it is perhaps, as has been hinted, too solid for the mere overture to which we have now reduced soup. In the days of the ancestors, they ate it late instead of early in the order of dishes ; and I am not certain that they were wrong. There are few things more engaging about grouse than the excellent appearance that it makes in cold cookery, whether by itself, in salads, or in pies. Chaudfroid of grouse (it is quite useless for purists to warn us that the word has nothing to do with chaud and nothing \\i\hfroid, that its being chaud is an acci- dent, and that its creator was one Chauffroix) is excel- lent. So are grouse potted whole (baked, with wine and butter, and afterwards stowed singly into pots with clarified butter poured over), or in joints, or in pounded paste. So is the cold roast bird in the severest simplicity, especially if he has not been cut into when hot. So is grouse salad, of which a savoury, but rather violent, if not even slightly vulgar, variety assigned to Soyer is to be found in all the books with more or fe\ver changes. The general principle is that, the joints of not too much roasted grouse being laid on a bed of salad and fenced round with garnishings of hard- 286 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE boiled egg, gherkins, beetroot, c., a dressing of what the French would call an unusually corse kind is poured over and if possible slightly iced. In the most aggressive prescription I have seen for this, no less than two table- spoonfuls of chopped shallots and as much of tarragon and chervil figure. But anybody who can make a salad at all can, of course, adjust the dressing to his or her fancy, and the garnishing likewise. Grouse pie is of a higher order than these, although the odd changes of fashion have banished it from the chief meal of the day to breakfast, luncheon, and supper, at neither of which does anything better often appear. I do not know that anybody eats grouse pie hot, though I can conceive no particular or valid reason against it. It may be made, of course, in all the gradations of pies the homely old variety with edible crust, the 'raised pie,' whereof the crust is not intended to be eaten, though persons of unsophisticated habits and healthy appetite may be observed some- times to attempt the feat and the pie in which there is no pretence of crust at all, but which is concocted in a more or less ornamental case of fireproof china. (It was this last, perhaps, of which the poet of the Lakes, where there is much moor-game, wrote ' celestial with terrine ' though his foolish printers usually spell it 'terrene.') And so the complexity of the materials COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 287 and methods observes similar gradations, which by connection or accident very often adjust themselves to the three varieties of casing just mentioned. The simplest form of grouse pie merely requires the birds (jointed, halved, or sometimes whole), a proportion (a pound to a brace is usual) of rump steak cut into knobs, seasoning, crust, and a sufficiency of good gravy (which may or may not be touched up with lemon juice and claret) to fill up and moisten the mixture. To this, of course, the usual enrichments of hard eggs (whether of the domestic fowl or, as the youthful heir of Glenroy in Destiny suggests, plovers' eggs), mush- rooms, truffles, forcemeat balls, and so forth, may be added. These additions may further be said to be customary in the raised grouse pie, and invariable in that which is made in a tcrrine. These latter forms merge themselves very much in the general ' game pie,' an excellent thing in its way no doubt. But I do not know that it is so good as the simple grouse pie with nothing added but steak, seasoning, an alliaceous touch of some sort, and a few eggs and mushrooms. And so we come at last to the more elaborate varieties of cooking this noble animal. In that utter- ance of Soyer's above quoted he is made to confess that 'his art cannot improve grouse,' that in good 288 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE years the flavour is such as to baffle more ornamental treatment, while in others there is nothing particular to be done with the fowl. Nevertheless, people will do things with it ; and some of the things they do must be told with the general caution, or at least opinion, that they are vanity. In the first place there is a way of pressing grouse which, since the initial process is to boil or stew the bird to rags, must be specially applicable, and should be chiefly or only applied, to the very oldest specimens. Having inflicted this fiery and watery torment on them you pull the meat off the bones, season it pretty freely, and clothe it with jelly (either with ordinary aspic or by fortifying the liquor in which it was boiled with gelatine), adding eggs, truffles, and anything else you please before letting it get solid in a mould or dish. It stands to reason that this is only a way though not at all a bad way of using birds not otherwise eatable. Salmis of grouse stands much higher indeed, it is probably the best of its kind, except that made of wild duck ; and inasmuch as there must always be remnants of roast birds, it is almost a necessary sup- plement to simpler cookery, besides being extremely good of itself. But it is necessary to remember several things about a salmis. The first is, that though the birds are always cooked first, it is indispensable that COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 289 the sauce or gravy, or whatever you choose ' to call it, should have a thorough flavour of them, which is not to be attained by merely warming the pieces of game in it. This may be given, of course, in various ways, either by stewing the bones, skin, trimmings, and less worthy pieces of the grouse in the stock used, or by adding somefluree or ' essence of game ; ' but it must be attained somehow. The next thing to re- member is that this gravy or sauce when finished should never be a mere bath or slop. Madame Lebour- Fawssett says it should be ' of the consistency of well- made melted butter,' and I agree with her. Lastly, re- member that there must always be wine in a salmis; and that it is of great importance what wine it is. English books will recommend port or sherry, which, in my humble judgment, are extremely bad wines for all savoury cooking purposes. Pale dry sherry is, for that end, mostly quite useless, though I own that if I were rich I should try the experiment of boiling a ham in Manzanilla. The now despised, though in its way gorgeous, 'old brown' is apt to overpower every other flavour, and is too sweet, objections which apply still more strongly to port and even to Madeira, which is sometimes recommended, and which is cer- tainly preferable to either port or sherry. Besides, all these wines, and still more the brown 'cooking' u 290 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE brandy, which it is whispered is sometimes used, provoke undue thirst and general discomfort. A sound red Bordeaux with flavour and some body for brown meats, and a good (not an acid or wiry) Chablis or Pouilly for white, are probably the best things for the purpose. And I must again praise the French lady above cited for recommending equal parts of stock and wine as the main body of salmis sauce. The mixture is added to a foundation of well-warmed and browned butter and flour, plenty of seasoning, including herbs, some shallot rather than onion, and at the' last a little lemon juice, remembering the warnings above given. Nothing more but patience, careful watching, and still greater care when the game has been put in the mixture never to let it boil, is required to make a good salmis. But all this is required, and without it the thing cannot be a success. There is no perceptible difference between the better class of receipts for hashing grouse and those for a salmis of it. If there is any, it is that the hash gravy may be a little thinner ; but that is a matter of taste, and it is not uncommon to find cookery books in which the titles of the receipts for the two processes might be changed and little or no harm done. The fact is that ( salmis ' (a term of which even the great COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 291 Littre did not know the origin, but which I venture to think a mere abbreviation of ' salmigondis ') is neither more nor less than a hash or ragout of game or wild birds, which has had its name extended with- out strict propriety to the tame duck, but no farther. Stewed grouse, which is, or was, common in Scot- land, is a sort of application of the process of hashing to birds not previously cooked, and presumably old. You cut them up, fry them with butter and shallot, or garlic, take out the latter and then simmer them gently for half an hour with equal but not large quantities of stock and wine. There should be a good deal of pepper. Grouse can of course be made into quenelles, kro- meskis, croquettes, salpicons, bouchces, and all the other varieties of rissoles in which pounded or minced meat is conveyed into fanciful and easily consumed shapes of small size. They might be made into 3. pain or quenelle on a great scale ; they can be scuffled . and are very good so. It is further obvious and easy to stuff them in roasting or accompany them in pieces with all kinds of forcemeat, from the simplest to the most complicated, from the plain liver-and-bread- crumb to compounds a la financicre and a la Lucitllns, in which truffles and cockscombs and the like figure. Grouse cutlets the birds being usually halved, partly 292 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE boned, fried, and then simmered in espagnole or some similar sauce are well enough, and can be sophisti- cated before being served up by having truffles and other associations stuck on them. It is also some- times recommended that they should be prepared in this way before being made into a pie. Most of the books contain a receipt usually stated (conscientiously) to be German, for marinading grouse, which might be useful either in the case of birds accidentally kept too long or in that of very aged ones, or, as observed above, to tame the wildness of the rougher members of the tribe. Otherwise I cannot conceive it to be necessary to treat good red grouse in this way, however useful something of the same kind may be to make pork taste like wild boar, rabbit like hare, and very dry roe-venison like the flesh of a hart of grease. You take (the particulars never vary) a quarter of a pint of vinegar, a score of juniper berries, some peppercorns, and two or three bay leaves. You steep the birds in this for three days, frequently turning them and spooning the marinade over them. You then stuff them with turkey stuffing, lard the breasts, roast and serve. 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