CHAP, III.] SNARING GROUSE. 31 
one mallard, a snipe, a woodcock, two teal, and two hares; and 
right glad was I to ease my shoulder of that portion of the game 
which I carried to help Donald, who would at any time have 
preferred assisting me to stalk a red deer than to kill and carry 
grouse. Although my day’s sport did not amount to any great 
number, the variety of game, and the beautiful and wild scenery 
I had passed through, made me enjoy it more than if I had been 
shooting in the best and easiest muir in Scotland, and killing 
fifty or sixty brace of birds. 
In preserving and increasing a stock of grouse, the first thing 
is to kill the vermin of every kind, and none more carefully than 
the grey crows, as these keen-sighted birds destroy an immense 
number of eggs. The grouse should also be well watched in the 
neighbourhood of any small farms or corn-fields that may be on 
the ground, as incredible numbers are caught in horsehair snares 
on the sheaves of corn. A system of netting grouse has been 
practised by some of the poachers lately, and when the birds are 
not wild they catch great numbers in this manner ; and as in nine 
cases out of ten the shepherds are in the habit of assisting and 
harbouring the poachers, as well as allowing their dogs to destroy 
as many eggs and young birds as they like, these men require 
as much watching as possible. I have generally found it entirely 
useless to believe a word that. they tell me respecting the 
encroachments of poachers, even if they do not poach them- 
selves. With a clever sheep-dog and a stick I would engage 
to kill three parts of every covey of young grouse which I found 
in July and the first part of August ; and, in fact, the shepherds 
generally do kill great numbers in this noiseless and destructive 
manner. As the black game for the most part breed in planta- 
tions, where sheep and shepherds have no business to be found, 
they are less likely to be killed in this way. But the young ones, 
till nearly full grown, lie so close, that it is quite easy to catch 
half the brood. 
When able to run, the old hen leads them to the vicinity of 
some wet and mossy place in or near the woodlands, where the 
seeds of the coarse grass and of other plants, and the insects that 
abound near the water, afford the young birds plenty of food. 
The hen takes great care of her young, fluttering near any in- 
