RED GROUSE 225 



say, Make your grouse polygamous by force of circumstances, 

 and each hen will be contented with half the ground she other- 

 wise would have considered hers by right of masculine strife. 



In considering and comparing present-day bags with those 

 of earlier years, it is necessary to avoid comparing now well 

 managed moors with themselves at a time when they were 

 badly managed. There are all degrees of bad management, 

 and what we have to do is to go to the moors that yielded 

 the best at the various dates and consider what was the 

 management that brought this about. Some of the best 

 moors in Scotland seem to have been very poorly managed 

 in the great year of 1872. There is Menzies Castle moor, for 

 instance, which lies only half a dozen miles or so from the 

 record-breaking Grandtully moor, and yet in 1872, when the 

 latter surprised all grouse shooters, the former was said to be 

 very badly off for grouse, and the birds killed over dogs were 

 nearly all old ones. Nevertheless, be it noted that the bags 

 of old birds made were then far above the average of present- 

 day shootings, which not only shows what was expected by 

 sportsmen in those times, but also how the old birds sat to dogs. 

 There were some peregrines to keep them in the long heather. 



All the old records of English moors point to the capacity 

 of the ground for carrying grouse, but to their scarcity never- 

 theless. The Scotch moors, on the contrary, seem to have had 

 as many birds in the first years of the nineteenth century as 

 they had at any time. Colonel Thornton, in his description 

 of his Highland tour, spoke of big packs of 3000 birds as 

 common in the winter, and in October he found the grouse 

 lie too well in the Duke of Gordon's country, whereas shortly 

 afterwards on a I2th of August the celebrated Colonel Hawker 

 could do nothing with the wild Yorkshire grouse, where the 

 birds were also particularly scarce. There is no doubt that this 

 scarcity was brought about by Act of Parliament, which fixed 

 the opening season that suited Scotland, and by a fortnight's 

 earlier breeding just made it impossible to kill the old cocks in 

 Yorkshire. They, in turn, would not breed themselves or let 

 others do so, so that the practice in Yorkshire became almost 

 is 



