221 



Red Grouse. 



persistent watching can prevent it, and in almost all cases 

 the employment of dogs by the keepers to give notice of the 

 presence of poachers, who otherwise may be neither seen 

 nor heard, is almost a necessity. 



Following the opening of the grouse-shooting season 

 numbers of birds are taken in stand-nets by such loafers 

 and poachers as follow, not actually in person, accord- 

 ing to their judgment and local knowledge, the shooting- 

 parties, and are able to gauge fairly accurately the 

 directions in which the unhit birds will be returning at 

 evening to the haunts from which they have been driven 

 during the day. For the most part, observation is with- 

 drawn from the shooting-grounds, and as the birds return 

 up the gullies and valleys, and along the water-courses, the 

 stand-nets are raised upon long slender stakes, and in the 

 deepening gloom of the evening capture many a bird 

 which may have escaped the guns. 



Grouse are also snared in many ways, but there is no 

 need to describe fully the details of make and mode of 

 application of the several snares and springes which grouse- 

 poachers bring to their aid. These devices have come 

 amongst latter-day keepers to be regarded as old-fashioned 

 and troublesome ; but I opine that if their use were better 

 known to the present generation they would the more 

 readily spot them or the signs of their being illegally 

 employed than is at present the case, and so limit the 

 extent of the depredations committed by means of their 

 aid. The snares and springes used for taking grouse are 

 so set as to secure their victim by the head and strangle it, 

 or anyhow to reduce it quickly to such a condition as to 

 render it incapable of causing alarm and attracting atten- 

 tion before it is secured and killed by the poacher. The 

 snares used are much like those usually employed for ^ 

 smaller birds, and the ground-springe and the standing- 



