244 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



it may not have a name elsewhere. The method was for a 

 single gun to approach hillocks on the shady side and walk 

 round them to the sunny side, when grouse that had long 

 become too wild to approach openly would often lie and afford 

 good easy marks by this method. This is only workable 

 on nice sunny days, and only practicable as late as October 

 and November between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. 



There is a wet-day method by which the author has killed 

 a good many grouse. It is with a retriever to walk the roads 

 that traverse the moors, or, better still, to ride a shooting pony 

 along them. The wildest grouse will sometimes take no notice 

 of a passenger along the well recognised roads, and they 

 must be very unreasonable indeed if they mind a mounted 

 man. Your retriever will find all the grouse on the windward 

 side of the roads, and they will generally rise within shot. 

 Why they should affect the roadsides in wet weather is not 

 so easily explained, but probably it is that they prefer to sit 

 on the roads themselves, where their feathers are not in contact 

 with wet heather. If so, they just move off in time not to be 

 seen by the coming traveller. 



It has been said that grouse lie better to a black-and-tan 

 and to a red setter than to parti-coloured dogs in which white 

 prevails. There is no truth in this in a general way. After 

 white dogs have been used until grouse will no longer lie, 

 they will often lie to either a black-and-tan or a red dog, but 

 only for a day, and only a few of them for that short 

 addition to the length of the dogging season. 



Possibly they take the black-and-tan for a collie, and the 

 red dog for a fox. On one occasion the author saw grouse 

 treat a red dog in a way extraordinary anywhere, except in 

 the west and north of Scotland and in Ireland ; but this was 

 in the Lowlands of Scotland, where the grouse were wild by 

 instinct. The birds were seen to be standing up in front of the 

 pointing Irishman and flicking their tails in his face, and even 

 when the dog drew on they merely just kept their distance, 

 still flicking their tails. There was not the slightest attempt 

 at hiding. Probably this is the method they have when 



