desirable. As I have observed, wild bred birds are the cheapest 

 and most easily and safely reared; evidently they are better for 

 sport and better able to take care of themselves than hand- 

 reared birds. 



Probably ninety per cent of the farms where these birds 

 occur are now posted against shooting and the number of 

 farms so protected is increasing, There are hundreds of 

 thousands of square miles where the grouse shooting can be 

 made good as it is in Scotland, provided the farmers be dealt 

 with fairly. A grouse preserve, properly conducted, will prove 

 to be a money-maker. Since late in the year this grouse has 

 a well sustained flight and often will go a mile or more before 

 alighting, the farm where any practical preserving is under- 

 taken should be a big one, or the shooting on a number of 

 farms should be under one management. Certainly no one will 

 be damaged if such industry be encouraged on the farms which 

 are now posted against all gunners or on the farms where the 

 grouse have become extinct. 



shooting in Scotland is the grand opera of the 

 vJT world's shooting. Many thousands of sportsmen go to the 

 moors every August to shoot the red grouse. The birds are bred 

 wild and are shot for the most part by driving, when the birds are 

 flushed and sent over the guns. So popular are the moors that 

 a vast throng is attracted. The president of an English rail- 

 road is reported to have said: "The grouse pay our dividends/' 

 Many sportsmen from the Continent of Europe and many 

 Americans go to Scotland on the 12th of August, when the 

 season opens, and one season an English magazine stated that 

 an American sportsman had the best dogs on the moors. Com- 

 plaints have been heard about our countrymen because they are 

 said to have raised the prices of the shooting rentals and to 

 have taken some of the more desirable places from Englishmen 

 who formerly rented them from year to year. Tons of grouse 

 are shipped to the English markets; many thousands of these 



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