268 



average of weights should be a fairly heavy one. The forests have been 

 well let, and one scarcely hears of a single one without a tenant. The- 

 rents which are being paid are as high as ever, and as an example may be^ 

 quoted the deer forest of Auchnashellach, in Western Ross, which Lord 

 Wimborne has let this season to the Postmaster-Geneial and Mr. A. von 

 Andre. The forest, one of the finest in the north, extends to 50,000 acres, 

 and the rent is £4,500— not a bad sum to pay for a couple of months' 

 shooting, though it is not to be compared with the £10,000 or more which 

 Mr. W. L. Winans has been paying annually for his Highland moors, in. 

 which he has not fired a shot for the last eight years. 



The great grouse districts of Scotland are the moors of Perthshire and of 

 Galloway, and there the prospects are of the brightest sort. The moors 

 last year ha<l been shot sparingly and there was a strong brood of healthy 

 birds left on them. The dry spring weather was most favourable for 

 nesting, and the warm and early summer brought on the young birds to 

 such a state of maturity that, by the middle of July, they could scarcely be 

 distinguished from the old grouse. The coveys are large all over. Half a 

 dozen in a covey is not an unusual number, and on some moors they number 

 nine and ten. The reports show all but entire absence of disease, and 

 only on high ground and on dry shootings has the lack of moisture had a 

 hurtful influence. The same applies to all kinds of winged game, and 

 similar accounts come in from all the Scottish moors. The only fear is that 

 the weather, which has been so phenomenally brilliant during the earlier 

 part of summer, may not hold. 



The article which appeared in the D.T. oi " The Twelfth," 1893, i& 

 most interesting, giving, as it does, a charming extract from the diary 

 of a man who is, evidently, a sportsman. With infinite pleasure I put it 

 into my book. I wish I knew his name, so as to record it : — 



Happy indeed should be the sportsman who wakes this morning Avith th& 

 knowledge that for a whole month to come keepers, gillies, and dogs will be 

 at his beck and call so soon as it pleases him to tub and breakfast. To a 

 keen man there is no pleasanter sensation than the consciousness that for an 

 absolutely fixed period — a time long enough to insure him against all freaks 

 of the clerk of the weather — he will be at liberty day after day to tramp the 

 moors while sound lungs and tough sinews carry him up hill and down 

 dale in search of the bonnie red grouse. Some " Twelfths " are fine and hot, 

 some fine and cold, some pelt with rain and blow with Avind that drives the 

 moisture through and through all protection; other " Twelfths " are foggy, 

 drizzly, and close, and in 1884 there was one special opening day marked by 

 thunderstorms of phenomenal severity and mournful tragedy, for on that 

 day Lord Lauderdale and his pony were killed by lightning whilst shooting 

 on his moors in Berwickshire. As this sad occurrence took place but a few 

 miles from where I was beginning my campaign against the grouse, the 

 melancholy event is still strongly impressed on my memory. The same 

 storm overtook our party just as we reached the top of a hill 2,000ft. high, 

 and for a long time we laid flat on the heather, at a distance from our guns,, 

 literally afraid to stir. Not 300 yards from us a flock of sheep had taken 

 refuge under an overhanging cliff of rock, and, as nine of them Avere killed 

 by lightning, our precautions and state of "funk " were fully Avarranted. 



On moors AAdiere a good stock of birds Avas left last year, the season 

 commencing to-day AA'ill be nearly as good as the great grouse year of 1881. 



