THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
sixty brace being killed in a day by driving ; butj as he truly remarks, the 
pleasant way is to go out alone with one keeper and a steady old dog, 
when, if all goes well, a bag of ten or fifteen brace may be secured. The 
best bags of Ptarmigan are credited to the Hon. Geoffrey Hill who in 
August and September 1866, shot on August 25, 122 ; on August 29, 82 ; 
and on September 17, 60 birds. Lord Walsingham once shot forty-seven 
on the summit of Ben Hope in Sutherland and had he reached the ground 
in the morning instead of in the afternoon, the number of birds found 
would certainly have enabled him to make a very much larger bag. On 
August 22, 1898, 45| brace of Ptarmigan were shot at Drumochter, 
Inverness-shire, although Mr G. S. Albright, who reported it, omitted to 
state how many guns contributed to the bag. For one gun, Mr Millais 
says, forty birds have often been shot in a day, but a larger bag is rare. 
In a single drive at Gaick twenty -seven have been killed, while sixty brace 
have been bagged there in one day by several guns. The average weight of 
a Ptarmigan is 20 oz. or rather less than that of a Red grouse. 
It is after Ptarmigan have assumed the winter plumage that the task 
of seeking them becomes both arduous and dangerous in the extreme, for 
when the winter snow lies deep, and mist, snowstorms, and extreme 
cold have to be faced, it needs a hardy and robust constitution to withstand 
the rigours of the climate, and to find pleasure in so doing. The nerves, 
too, must be in good order, for a sudden slip on a treacherous slope may 
end in dire disaster. 
From the fact of their haunts being at high altitudes Ptarmigan are not 
very often molested by shooters ; an additional safeguard being the fact 
that so many of the ptarmigan hills are situated in deer forests, where 
the ordinary game shooter is not received as a rule with much wel- 
come. In such localities these birds are generally free to live their own 
wild life, mostly secure from human molestation. Long may they remain 
so. 
R. F. MEYSEY-THOMPSON. 
100 
