THE MOOR 163 



driving in 1871, the bag was 2836 birds, while in 1893 

 it had risen to 4480, in 1901 to 7127 ; what it was over 

 dogs before the driving began we are not told. But 

 whether the moor is driven or dogged, the keeper should 

 be allowed in the late autumn, after the systematic 

 shooting days are passed, to take occasional walks over 

 his ground and endeavour to shoot down as many old 

 cocks as he is able. How much this precaution is 

 necessary may be emphasised by an instance which 

 came under the notice of the present writer in the 

 month of January 1903. He was one of a party of 

 guns in an improvised partridge drive in the county 

 of Ayr, and in one of the beats, being an outside gun, 

 he was stationed at the end of a field which lay on the 

 fringe of the moor. He was surprised to find, as the 

 beaters came towards the guns, that the air seemed 

 filled with the calls of old cock grouse, and on looking 

 to the right he could see them rising and going away 

 every half-minute or so. The climax was reached when 

 the beaters were entering the last field, when, instead 

 of partridges, six or eight old cock grouse came over his 

 gun. He hesitates to prophesy what the condition of 

 that moor will be in a few years. When the tenant 

 discussed the point with the keeper, the only reply he 

 received was the futile one that he had tried for years 

 to get near the cocks to shoot them, but not for a 

 moment did the latter realise that their presence was 

 a reflection upon his capacity as a keeper. This matter 

 of the killing of old cocks is one of the questions upon 



