il8 SHOOTING THE GROUSE 



Three guns is an unreasonable number to send 

 out in one party, unless you have an abnormal stock 

 of grouse, and are anxious to kill all you can. The 

 difficulties of dealing properly with the point, of getting 

 up at the right moment, of all three shooting at the same 

 bird, and other matters of varying skill and courtesy, 

 are much increased. And if the grouse are lying well 

 it is rather hard on the moor. Yet it is too often 

 done. The young men of to-day mostly shoot pretty 

 well, some few very well, and at any rate are pretty 

 destructive at close-lying young birds ; and three ot 

 them, with every appliance for quick loading and firing, 

 will, as I have already pointed out with regard to 

 partridges, kill far too many young birds, while they 

 are more than likely to spare most of the old ones. 

 These should always be selected where possible as 

 your first victims, and I think that when you are 

 working a wild beat on high ground, where birds are 

 not too plentiful, you should not, when you come 

 across a brood, follow it up to the death and massacre 

 the whole family, but rather deliberately leave a 

 brace of young birds here and there, and turn your 

 attention as much as possible to the more difficult and 

 fascinating art of circumventing the old inhabitants of 

 the ground, my opinion of whom I have recorded in 

 the chapter on Scotch Driving. The following extract 



