THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
past. Here Mr Hugh Gladstone, of Capenoch, killed with three other guns, 
114 black-game on the Auchanbrae beat on October 25, 1910, and seventy- 
two black-game on the Auchanhessname beat on the following day; the 
same year three guns killed over seventy Blackcocks in a short day on 
the High Moss of Cree, the property of the Earl of Galloway (on which 
moor a falling Blackcock struck the muzzle of a gun with such a force 
as to snap the small of the stock in two) ; while on the Earl of Stair’s 
estates in Wigtownshire, Viscount Dalrymple, shooting over Barnshangan 
moor with a party of five other guns, in October, 1905, killed 105 black- 
game (almost all of which were cocks), besides 111 brace of Grouse, some 
twenty brace of Partridges, and six other varieties of game. It is interesting 
to note, as an example of the disastrous effect of the protracted drought 
of last summer (1911) among the young black-game, that in the autumn, 
out of a total of 150 Blackcocks killed on the Lochinch moors only two 
were young birds. 
Except in the three northern border counties, black-game are now 
far from plentiful in any part of England. They are either extinct or else 
steadily decreasing in all their former strongholds, such as the moors of 
Devon and Somerset, and the forests of Wolmer and Bere. In the volume 
which should be our standard authority on the game-birds of Britain, 
it is stated twice that 100 black-game have recently been killed in a day 
on the Earl of Lichfield’s moor at Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire, but 
the statement has unfortunately no foundation in fact.* 
The Earl of Lichfield has kindly furnished me with an excerpt from his 
game book, showing the best results during recent years on this prolific 
little moor : 
Black 
Date 
Beat 
Guns 
Game 
Grouse 
1897. 
Oct. 21 . 
Cannock Chase 
. 7 . 
41 . 
122 
1898. 
Oct. 20 . 
9 } 
99 
. 8 . 
40 . 
127 
1899. 
Oct. 19 . 
99 
99 
. 8 . 
23 . 
209 
1910. 
Oct. 28 . 
99 
9 9 
. 8 . 
9 . 
182 
Only 1,200 acres are driven in the day ; the black-game are indigenous, 
but the Grouse were probably introduced at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. It has the distinction of being the southernmost grouse moor 
in England; it is also “ common land,” and visited by crowds of people 
in summer time. It is a hunting country, and on the last of the days given 
* The Natural History of British Game Birds, by Mr J. G. Millais, 1909, pp. 20 and 22. The writer must plead 
guilty to having copied this statement without verification, deeming the source of information to be sufficient 
guarantee for its accuracy (Grouse and Grouse Moors, 1910). 
42 
