GROUSE AND BLACK -GAME SHOOTING. 103 



cannot be taken to search the ground. They often wander 

 a good way from each other, and after hearing a shot will 

 lie till they are almost trod upon. 



On some of our moors, grouse are as plentiful as 

 partridges in the preserved turnip-fields of Norfolk: no 

 man would then break his beat to follow a pack ; but let 

 him select the lowest and most likely ground, as near the 

 centre of his range as possible, for his evening shooting. 

 Grouse, and indeed all game, when raised, generally fly to 

 lower ground, and when they begin to move about on the 

 feed, are more easily found by the dogs ; for which 

 reason the evening is always the most successful time of 

 the day.* 



The experienced grouse-shooter well knows how little it 

 will avail him to attempt to find out the best part of a 

 moor with which he is unacquainted, by a distant coup- 

 cFceil, or by theory, however plausible. On the same 

 range the packs will be strongest and most numerous 



* Should the sportsman knock down an old cock and hen, and after- 

 wards have the mortification to see the " squeaking " pack rise all round 

 him, my advice is not to massacre them from the idea that, if left alone, 

 they must necessarily die a more cruel death. I know most keepers will 

 say that the young birds would starve, and I was of the same opinion ; 

 but I began to doubt the truth of it some time since, and a few years 

 ago had an opportunity of proving its fallacy. On a part of my moor 

 where the birds were very scarce, I got a point, and after killing a brace 

 was proceeding to pick them up, when the young pack rose, five in 

 number, as decided " squeakers " as ever struck remorse into the callous 

 heart of the shooter. I at once determined to ascertain whether poults 

 left in so unprotected a state must die. So, after ranging the ground most 

 carefully for a considerable distance, to be certain there was no other pack 



