140 A HUNDKED YEARS 



fully cracked by the ancestors of our stalkers and 

 gillies. 



" For some years we employed as our gillie Donald 

 Munro of Clare (on Wyvis), the most thorough poacher 

 I ever met with. We could never reconcile him to 

 letting a bird rise before we fired. It would be a clever 

 grouse whose head Donald did not see the moment the 

 dogs pointed ; then with a dig at my elbow and a shrug 

 sideways, he would show me two heads in a line, and 

 when I made them get up before firing he was perfectly 

 sick at my folly in wasting two shots when one would 

 have killed both birds had I fired when they were on 

 the ground and in line. He always carried a ganger's 

 iron-pointed stick, and if close when the birds rose he 

 would fling his stick at them with all his might, hoping 

 to knock one down without such lamentable waste of 

 powder and shot. Indeed, one day his iron point flew 

 in among a covey with such force that it pierced a grouse 

 right through, and so it had to stop, while four barrels 

 stopped other four birds. * Weel done, thon's behter; 

 we'll be coming on by-and-by !' he exclaimed. 



" A blue leveret getting up once before us would 

 have come to bag had not Donald, who detested hares 

 as * no canny brutes,' seized my gun, saying, * The 

 stirk wasna worth a shot.' He told us he only once had 

 a real proper ' go ' at grouse. In a snow-storm he 

 stalked an immense pack of them on Wyvis, a white 

 shirt over him and a white neckerchief covering his 

 face. He had his big musket and a great handful of 

 No. 3 as the gun charge, and on that day he bagged 

 thirty grouse at the cost of only three or four charges. 



