212 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



till things recovered. Nowadays we shoot a little harder than 

 usual, kill off all the bad birds, and leave a fair stock, which 

 with easy shooting soon comes round again. For some years 

 we have been unfortunate with these periods. Thus in 1894 a 

 very large stock of birds was left, which in the ordinary course 

 would have been the foundation of record seasons in the next 

 two years, but the terrible winter of 1895, which killed so many 

 thousands of grouse, spoilt this period, and things had to begin 

 afresh, though very large stocks had worked up again by 1901. 

 With the terrible storm of the spring of 1902, which practically 

 destroyed most of the older heather on the East Coast, the 

 period was again prevented from giving the results it should 

 have done. We have now got up the stocks again to very 

 large dimensions, and with luck and the absence of disease 

 should break all records in the next seasons. 



" I take it that the more food there is for grouse the better. 

 The evidence is that a grouse makes several thousand pecks of 

 heather each day before he gets his full supply of food. I think 

 the bird only feeds for a very limited time each night, and the 

 shorter the distance he has to go for his food the better, and as 

 he feeds mostly just as it is getting dusk he is not very well 

 able to distinguish between good and bad heather, and often 

 gets a craw full of stuff which does not agree with him. If you 

 notice (as it is on most of the Welsh moors) where the sheep 

 have grazed the heather up to a wire fence, on the other side of 

 the fence the heather is perfectly good, and every grouse will be 

 found feeding on it. If through the late spring or from other 

 causes one cannot get a portion of the moor burnt, that part 

 will invariably have less grouse on it than where there is young 

 heather. 



" I do not think sheep of a certain class do much harm on a 

 grouse moor if they are properly looked after. The trouble is 

 that shepherds do not take enough pains to keep things quiet. 

 Breeding ewes are very bad when the lambing takes place on 

 the heather, as the shepherd must be continually moving about 

 among them, and disturbing the ground at the very time the 

 grouse are nesting. Provided sheep are lambed on the green 

 fields below the heather, and provided the shepherd is careful 

 and goes about his work quietly, I think sheep do no great 

 harm ; and undoubtedly the paths they make through the 

 heather are an advantage to the grouse, which are then enabled 

 to move their broods about more easily. There is much more 

 heather where there are no sheep, and the more heather you 

 have the more grouse there will be. On a driving moor 



