SPORT ANCIENT AND MODERN 



moor where he knows there are plenty of 

 birds, hides himself as well as he can, and, 

 when the cocks begin to crow round about at 

 dawn, imitates as nearly as possible, either 

 with some instrument or his unaided breath, 

 the call of the hen. Dry frosty weather is 

 the best for the business. We have very 

 much condensed Mr. Macpherson's graphic 

 description of this curious practice which he 

 says, though not given up altogether ' has 

 lately fallen into disuse.' 



It goes without saying that a tenant any- 

 where can, if he so chooses, do a great deal 

 of harm to his landlord from a sporting point 

 of view. But there is an additional way by 

 which a man with a very small bit of land 

 indeed, can, in a grouse district, cause grevious 

 annoyanse and loss to his neighbours. The 

 cause of offence may only be a tiny strip, a 

 sour pasture, heatherless, grouseless, perhaps 

 not worth sixpence an acre for any purpose 

 but one. But if this strip is in the right place 

 (from its owner's point of view) and there 

 is good grouse ground round it, it will act like 

 the fly in the ointment ; like a grain of sand 

 in the eye putting the whole body wrong. 

 Its want of food and shelter may be so evident 

 that birds seldom light on it, but they have to 

 fly over it, and nets judiciously arranged and 

 managed will in the course of a season capture 

 a very large number of them, and do very 

 great harm to the adjoining beats. It would 

 be interesting to find out, the process would 

 be a difficult one, how many grouse such a 

 patch would give in a season. There is 

 always a large demand for strong birds to turn 

 out, and a satisfactory price to be got for 

 them. If, as is the case sometimes, a man 

 rents a moor avowedly for the purpose of 

 netting, and limited in number by his agree- 

 ment, get his birds in this way, he would not 

 do more harm than one who shot the same 

 number, though probably some parts of a 

 moor might be too hardly worked while others 

 were scarcely touched. This seems to be a 

 fair way of supplying a legitimate want. But 

 it is quite another matter when the ideal case 

 we mentioned first, which is a very real case 

 indeed to many owners of moors, comes into 

 working. A wide district of great yearly 

 value might conceivably be quite bared of 

 birds, quite ruined, by judicious working of 

 nets on a narrow strip of land in itself worth 

 just nothing at all. There is some analogy 

 between a fowler with a few acres of land 

 spoiling a grouse moor, and a fisherman with 

 a few yards of water ruining a salmon river, 

 both working with a net, but the second pays 

 often a big rent. And the law as it stands 

 can help neither of them. 



To some owners of moorland this question 

 of netting is a most serious one ; the case is 

 imaginable of a poor man depending for his 

 income on the rental of a fine moor, and 

 being practically ruined by the operations of 

 netters round him. In the autumn of 1897, 

 a somewhat acrimonious correspondence on 

 this subject was carried on in the Field. It 

 is, in spite of what was said in these letters, 

 difficult to see how legislation can help those 

 who are injured. Any bill to render it illegal 

 for a man to catch wild birds, or let others 

 catch them, on his own ground, would have 

 very little chance of becoming law. Some 

 hard words were used against those who 

 bought live grouse for the purpose of ' turning 

 down ' ; the number of people doing this 

 must be very considerable, and probably the 

 greater majority of them have not the smallest 

 idea that they are doing any injury to any 

 one by their purchases ; and in some cases 

 neither are they, for if a moor is rented for 

 the purpose and a fair amount of grouse taken 

 off it by netting instead of shooting, no one 

 has any right to complain. The point as to 

 whether turning out grouse was beneficial to 

 new districts was discussed in the Field, and 

 one or two correspondents asserted it was not. 

 For our part we have not the very slightest 

 doubt on the matter, for we have several 

 times seen the most marked improvement 

 rapidly take place in a stock of grouse 

 where healthy strange birds had been intro- 

 duced. All question of painting or marking 

 grouse in any way seems quite unreasonable 

 and useless ; if the stock in the first or 

 second season (supposing these are normal) 

 does not speak for itself, the identification 

 of individual birds is merely of academic 

 interest. Attempts have been made to net 

 against the netters, and so tire them out 

 and drive them away, but this involves 

 expense and trouble which very few would 

 be willing to undertake. To buy up bits 

 of ground which, worthless in themselves, 

 are valuable for erecting nets on, would be 

 an endless and costly and often impossible 

 task. 



If it were made perfectly plain to every 

 one interested in grouse that serious injury 

 was done in some districts by this practice of 

 netting, and then, if those interested in 

 stopping it, were to see whether they could 

 not among themselves do something towards 

 supplying a perfectly natural and legitimate 

 want, viz. the introduction of fresh blood, a 

 great advance would have been made towards 

 putting an end to a system which, while it is 

 of benefit to the public, is so harmful to indi- 

 viduals. 



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