Practical Game -Preserving. 218 



crofter, and the dishonest gillie who aids and abets, there 

 is quite another class of more wholesale poachers which 

 enlists the services of such of the crofters who are not above 

 sharing risks and profits, and will, at times, go to the 

 extent of " nobbling " watchers and other of the smaller 

 fry who are supposed to be looking after the grouse in the 

 interests of those who shoot and not in those who poach. 



To some extent the iniquitous form of grouse robbery 

 which flourished a few years back has been reduced. The 

 practice I allude to is that of absolute outsiders leasing 

 small farms and moors, " for the shooting," which adjoin 

 large and properly preserved moors and manors, and who 

 simply use these as a centre from which to raid the grouse 

 from the surrounding properties. 



The habits of the game-bird which prompt its long, 

 low flights at even-time through the valleys and gullies, 

 alongside the burns and the tarns, provide exactly the oppor- 

 tunities which the poacher with his stand-nets seeks. They 

 are, too, most difficult to guard against, because these 

 evening flights, although of almost regular occurrence, do 

 not always follow the same line, and may, when the move- 

 ments of the grouse are carefully watched, be frequently 

 deflected into a desired direction by such simple expedients 

 as a man suddenly rising from a hidden position, in itself 

 an occurrence absolutely devoid of suspicion on the part 

 of a dishonest watcher, a grazier, or a herdsman. The 

 stand-nets are erected upon the ground where they have 

 every legal right to be, though, possibly, no moral right 

 whatever. There is no Prevention of Crimes Act in the 

 category of the Game Laws which applies to this practice, 

 and there is always the not entirely remote contingency 

 that the owner or lessee of a moor may stand and watch his 

 birds netted without possibility of adequate compensation. 

 He can do absolutely nothing to restrict or to prevent 



