13 August 2015
Grousing About
by J R Thomas
George Earl’s great painting “Going North – Kings Cross” depicts an astonishing hubbub of activity at King’s Cross Station the day before the Glorious Twelfth of 1893. The platform (no barriers then of course) was crowded with spaniels, setters, pointers (but no labradors – their day was yet to come) great wickerwork baskets fishing rods and tennis rackets; servants in heavy tweed. Heavy tweed! On 11th August 1893, in a hot sweaty August! Those Victorians were made of stern stuff.
And then bellowing across all this, grand Victorian gentlemen in hooded capes and deerstalkers (again, in August?) and ladies in long skirts and tailored jackets and elegant hats; excitement everywhere, the greeting of friends and fellow sportsman. For this was the turning point of the season, when anybody with any pretension to greatness or wealth or standing left London and fled to the country. And for the best of the quality, the upper crust of society, that meant the north, or better still Scotland, for the grouse shooting.
You might think that this depicts a world long passed, a historical insight into a rich and layered society at play. But if, on the 11th August this year, you stood by any of the major roads that cross the Scottish border and stopped any Range Rover, you would find – well, in spite of the aircon, not tweeds and capes and fancy hats, but certainly the cream of society heading to the Highlands, complete with shotguns and sporting dogs, even tennis rackets, ready for the excitements of the 12th August. The detail may have changed, but the habits remain the same. The Glorious Twelfth is still the highlight of many a social season.
Grouse remain one of the great challenges to any man, or lady, who aspires to shoot. It is a most difficult bird, flying incredibly fast at low level, hugging the contour of the moors, with an astonishing ability to suddenly change direction. The birds sit fast in their camouflaged plumage in the heather until the beaters (the workers of the moors, armed with sticks and home-made flags) are almost upon them, then rise in groups and flee; hopefully, skimming towards the distant line of shooters. These are concealed in turf or stone butts, low walls to hide them from the grouse but also to protect them from their neighbours.
One of the risks of grouse shooting is the sheer speed and the low level at which everything happens. Unlike pheasants, the grouse do not rise high above the shooters, but approach at head height; and it is remarkably easy to swing round and fire the gun at the bird skimming past… directly at the next door butt. Many a distinguished gent has had a pellet or two, or more, in the arm or face. Guests are usually placed in the butts by a random draw, then look nervously across to see who their neighbours are. Sometimes it is literally necessary to keep a low profile…
Incidentally, in spite of stories one might have heard, it is much worse form to shoot a beater; your fellow guests are rich and are there for a game in which they have calculated the risks; the beaters are there for economic necessity with no butt to protect them.
Grouse are strange and exceptionally wild birds. They live only on moor land, and they prefer their moorland heather to be young. They are exceptionally tasty, not just on ducal dining tables and in West End hotels, but also to many predator birds, whose numbers are growing with increasingly rigorous protection. Grouse are impossible to domesticate, or even to rear, in controlled conditions. They do not like human company and have gradually retreated from many areas where they were previously found – almost entirely from Wales; and from Devon – the last reported Devon black grouse was in 2005 – and from many moors in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. That may be climate change – they are apparently retreating north – but moor owners suspect that it is as much to do with ever larger numbers of leisure walkers on the southern moors, over longer seasons.
All that gamekeepers can do to encourage the large numbers which every shoot owner likes to see, is to keep down vermin on the moors – this, of course, means rats and stoats, not predatory, but protected, birds of prey. The large numbers of gamekeepers required is a significant source of employment in places where there is not much else.
Like many nervous shy types, grouse suffer from various debilitating illnesses, though this is one area where modern science has come to the gamekeeper’s aid, by producing medicated grit. The birds will chew on grit (better than tobacco) and this will fend off some of the more insidious pestilences. Nothing can help them in a severe winter though, which can reduce numbers enormously. Until the advent of medicated grit about eleven years ago, a bad winter now and again was thought to be a beneficial thing, in reducing and refreshing stock. For centuries there was a cycle, of about eight years on most grouse moors, which went: disease and near wipe out; two years of little stock and no shooting; recovery for three years with modest shooting, three years of full stock and magnificent shooting; disease and near wipe out.
Since medicated grit has come along there has not been a bad year. Grouse numbers on many moors have been at record levels, though bad late spring weather has reduced the numbers in 2015 -and disease problems are starting to reappear.
Shooters pay very large sums for a day’s grouse shooting. £100, or more, a brace (two birds) is common now, so a day in which eight guns intend to shoot 125 brace, a reasonable but not over ambitious day, will entail a bill of £1,560 per head, lunch included. A relatively modest moor in North Yorkshire had a record day in 2008, when 534 grouse were shot – £53,400 for the eight guns out that day (except that they were guests of the American lessee of the moor). That is not that uncommon, though the increasingly controversial nature of the sport means that publicising such enormous numbers of birds shot is becoming regarded as bad form.
Whatever you think of it as sport – and we will come back to that – the economics of this to the most remote parts of Britain are very compelling. It employs significant numbers on a permanent basis and a lot more seasonally. The spin offs in the hotel keeping and eating business, especially at the luxury end, are enormously valuable, and the upland estates often draw the bulk of their income from running or leasing shoots, much of which goes back into the local economy.
But is it truly sport? Is it the Glorious, or Inglorious, Twelfth? The shooting of birds for sport is rapidly becoming as controversial as fox-hunting. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (“RSPB”) has some sympathy with lowland shooting – pheasants and partridge, duck and woodcock, mainly because the conservation and management of the countryside for game shooting also creates beneficial habitats for many other bird species. But when it comes to grouse they are growing increasingly hostile. Partly this is the poor record, or at least, poor reputation, that upland gamekeepers have when it comes to dealing with the RSPB’s favourite cause, and main fund raising driver, birds of prey. We have touched on hen harriers before in these pages; grouse and hen harriers do not mix and the latter do have a tendency to disappear on keepered moors.
And of course, in an age when popular disquiet about wealth and privilege is growing ever stronger, grouse shooting is a wonderfully easy target for provoking public muttering. Harold MacMillan, when Prime Minister in the 1950’s, had no hesitation in letting it be known that he would be spending August on the grouse moor, and was even willingly photographed there with a couple of cabinet ministers and a brace of Dukes. Mr Cameron would not dare do that now; being Prime Minister means giving up such recreations. In Scotland, the SNP have the grouse moor owners in their sights; the recent reintroduction of sporting rates (on grouse moors, not football grounds) is likely to be the first small step of many in closing down the grouse moors. So this August, as that Range Rover tries to pass you on the A9 to Inverness, let him go though. He is spending a lot of money in places that need it, and he may not be driving in that direction for that much longer.
