Twenty-Six Years Reminiscences of Scotch Grouse Moors

Season 1867

This was indeed a disastrous season; it was really frightful. Fred's worst fears were more than realised. In the spring disease raged with intense virulence, dead birds lying about in scores on the green ground by the waterside and elsewhere – many in full plumage and apparently in full health. Before the 12th, with the exception of a few broods on the rough ground, there was practically, so to speak, not a bird left upon the grouse ground.

The whole district was in the same condition; and it goes without saying that we did not go near the place. Fred said, gloomily enough, "There will be no grouse shooting for three years," and he was practically right.

David Black reported that the spates on the river brought down dead birds in such quantities as to choke the surface of the eddies and backwaters.

I was almost in despair; I was very keen on the shooting, and I had struggled hard for five years to get it, and realised but two good seasons out of the five.

Season 1868

Of course, we let the grouse alone for this season, as well as in 1867. There were very few to let alone; but the disease was gone, and we comforted ourselves the best way we could with the low-ground shooting in October.

David Black had worked up the low ground well. When we first took the place there were very few partridges. The first season there was a covey of twenty-two birds close to the lodge. We let them alone, and they had multiplied, and in addition there were also a few odd pairs in other parts of the ground. We had shot none, and they had had three years jubilee and pretty good breeding seasons.

In these high, stormy countries, during heavy snows the poor things can get very little food, and naturally draw down into the stackyards for food and shelter, and, if not carefully looked after, get potted by the farmer, but are not of much good to him, as they are little better than skin and bone.

Black looked after them. I don't think that our former keeper troubled himself, or the stock would have got up quicker; and there was now a fine stock of all sorts of low-country game, pheasants excepted. Of course, by a fine stock I mean a fine stock for a wild stormy country.

We had a most enjoyable fortnight's shooting over dogs. In the twelve days we managed to make a mixed bag of 600 head – partridge, snipe, plover, brown hares, rabbits, &c.

The grouse we let alone, except a stray old cock now and again that had survived through the epidemic – very handsome to look at, but, like the monarch of the glen, very tough, and unsavoury on the table.

Of course, on that wild ground the covies of partridges were, looking at the extent of ground, few and far between.

The dogs hunted the small turnip fields and the ground round the edges of the oat stubbles, say, for a hundred yards about. It might be wooded burn sides, or deep feg or heather, and, perhaps, whins and broom. The birds took a lot of finding. Of course, we got other stuff, meanwhile, on the way; and the covey once found, and flushed again and again in neaps, brackens, heather, or what not, the dogs kept pegging them until the covey was pretty well cleared up. Sometimes a covey would utterly beat us by settling into heavy patches of gorse that the dogs would not face – at any rate, not work properly; and as to walking them up with a retriever, they would run about, but knew better than to flush.

After that very naturally we went down every October until the end of the lease, and the last season we had 190 brace of partridges alone.

When hunting near the moor edges we often got a few grouse that were down to the stubble; and in these delightful mixed bags over dogs, how a couple of brace of fine grouse were appreciated.

These mixed bags in the crisp October air, the walking, the variety of sport, though not the quantity, beat the August shooting for enjoyment of sport. You would not know what the dog's point might mean; it might in some ground be hare, snipe, partridge, or grouse. I have made doubles at hare and snipe. The hares were splendid. You may not believe it, but Fred made a double at hares that weighed 22lb. the brace.

One season I stopped over for an extra day by myself – it would be the 18th of October – on the rough ground, and made the following mixed bag over dogs:

4 Grouse, stalked on the plough from behind the dykes.

6 Partridges.

2 Woodcock (very unusual).

4 Snipe.

9 Brown hares.

2 Golden plover.

1 Green plover.

1 Rabbit.

–

29 Head.

Grouse, when they get on the plough, are sometimes very stupid, in the above case I stalked the four birds, there were but four; I shot one on the ground, did not show myself, let the bird lie; the others then just fluttered up and flew fifty yards; and down within reach of the dyke, got another, then the other two again fluttered up and down again, that time I jumped up and showed myself and got the pair right and left as they rose.

Season 1869

Black said that we might go down in August and stretch our legs, and kill a few grouse on the rough ground, so down we went, and made about sixty brace of grouse and a lot of sundries, especially golden plover. Of these there were quantities, and in ordinary August months we were far too busy with grouse to heed them.

One afternoon a pack of green and a pack of golden plover were very busy fighting and screaming for the possession of a hill side, and so busy that they took little or no heed of us, and four barrels dropped twelve couple, of course, some of the cripples needed another barrel.

There is one way, and an almost certain way of circumventing flocks of golden plover: they are very inquisitive birds, you will see them on the face of the hill, mostly small round hills; let the keeper sit down with the dogs, say 100 yards in front of them, and whilst they are watching him, slip quietly round the hill, over the top, down on the flock before they are aware of you, and a family shot into the brown with two barrels of No. 8 will sometimes bring down two or three couple.

We had a good deal of trouble with fellows coming up from Huntly, fishing. Powell had let anybody come, and it was difficult to stop it. One morning we saw a young fellow putting a salmon rod together on the other side of the river, I sent over the under keeper, Sandy, a big, strong Highlander, to put him off; but he would not budge, he stated that we were going out for our sport, shooting, and he meant to have his sport, fishing. Sandy was again sent over to intimate that if he fished he was to take his rod and put him personally into the salmon pool. "What, take my rod and put me in the river, contrary to law?" Sandy simply said he had no option, it was the master's orders, and he took the rod as a beginning. I was summoned for illegally taking the rod, and took out a counter summons for the fishing, each party was fined by the sheriff, the fisher much heavier than we were, but my decisive action stopped all further trouble. If I had not taken the rod I should not have got the fellow's name.

Season 1870

Three years weary patience was rewarded in the fourth year with a fine grouse season, and, not being quite so thick upon the ground as in ordinary good seasons, the grouse sat better, and in the second and third weeks we made better bags than was customary.

Our lease was running out, this was the sixth season.

The factor did his best to induce us to renew for another seven years. I was anxious to do so, notwithstanding our disappointments, but my chum did not seem to care to do it, and I hardly liked to do so without him, and very much I afterwards regretted it.

The factor had always used us well, in the best possible manner, he had an old-fashioned notion that decent folks who paid a good round sum for sport and gave no trouble, were entitled to consideration, and to have something for their money; the modern factor quite discards ideas so very ridiculous.

In the spring of this season I was down with my second son for some trout fishing in the river, and we had some pleasant sport, being favoured with two or three small rises of water and a good show of March browns. We managed to make nice little baskets of 6lb. to 7lb. each on most days, fishing the Beldornie water as well as our own.

We had, neither of us, ever seen a red deer – anyhow, on his native heath – and we decided to make a day out to Glen Fiddoch Forest.

We knew that it was five miles across the Glenmarkie ground to the extreme point of our outside march at Auchendown Castle, and how much further we knew not. That, bear in mind, was before the days of ordnance maps.

We were all good walkers, that is, David and myself, and my son Oliver; he held a front place in athletics at Rugby School.

We crossed the moor south of Auchendown, and then got at last on to the road track to Glen Fiddoch Lodge. Altogether, it was a long tramp, the last few miles following up the Fiddoch burn, but time and labour at last landed us at the lodge.

The lodge was very old-fashioned, was all on the ground floor, with rooms on one side of a long building, and a passage on the other side.

The housekeeper was a civil old body: would give us some tea, which we appreciated, and made much of us in every way; showed us the room that had been used by the Queen the year before, when visiting the Duke. Everything was simple in the extreme. I am sure that no broker would have bid over eighteen pence for the washing stand in the Queen's bedroom.

On our way we saw deer by scores on the hill sides, and also round the lodge.

All was very pleasant up to now, but there was the walk back. By the time we reached Auchendown we had had enough, and there was the five miles across heavy moorland yet to be done. Some people say that your native heath, and the springiness of the heather, make walking pleasant and easy, but don't believe it; my notion has always been that one mile of moorland is equal to two on the hard road.

David was fairly done. It is not the first time that I had walked down the natives, both in Ireland and in Scotland, but I never expected to see David brought to a stand.

Well, we laid down and rested a good hour, refreshed with biscuits and whiskey and water, and put the five miles behind us before dark.

Season 1871

The proprietor, to our very great surprise and astonishment, intimated to us and to the tenants of the arable farms on the Fife estates, that, on the expiration of the current sporting leases, they should have the right to kill ground game on their arable farms, how and when they liked.

This was a knock down blow. I am inclined to think that the factor had an inkling of it when he pressed us to renew; that he wanted to make his sporting leases safe, so that they should not be affected by it.

There were forty tenants in Glenmarkie who would have the right to shoot, and, naturally, I did not see my way to preserve game on the low ground in the teeth of that, so, with great reluctance, we told our good factor that we should have to go.

He offered considerable reduction in rent – anything to induce us to stop, except rescinding the ground game fad, and that he could not do.

The only reason that could have suggested such action on the part of the proprietor must have been political, probably to outbid M'Combie, the Radical candidate for Aberdeenshire; but so it was, and there was no way of getting over it.

The stock of grouse upon the ground was very large, and the late Mr. O. joined us in the grouse time, and after the first two days he and Fred shot together.

In the first two days shooting together Fred and I made over the same dogs over one hundred brace a-day. The total bag in the two days was two hundred and ten brace of grouse, and some sundries; and I have but little doubt that, if I had been bent on a swagger bag, shooting by myself, commencing at 8 a.m. in place of 11 a.m., I could have made a hundred brace in one day to my own gun.

After that I managed the birds pretty well by myself, and when they became skittish, by starting about from 12 to 1 o'clock, and hunting the wild ground into good sitting ground, taking time for lunch, and beginning to work the birds about 3 to 4 o'clock, I made pretty shooting.

I had to work the dog myself, the gillie keeping down in the heather out of sight.

Old Rap was gone, I hope to where good dogs go, for he deserved it if dogs can deserve it.

His two sons, Duke and Prince, did my work. Duke was a nice-mannered, tractable, gentle beast, but Prince was a rank tartar.

So soon as you loosed him from the couples, he would do some rank trick, get on the foot of a hare, or what not; then come in to the whip, get it hot, wag his tail, and then for some time go to work with a skill and courage far beyond Duke, then again to the whip, and so he went on to the end of his days.

One afternoon I had a laughable sell – the laugh was against me, though. My chums were not going out, so I drove my birds carefully into sitting ground, that was principally on what was their beat.

I got a fine lot of birds into good ground, and at 3 p.m. rose up from lunch to make what I knew would be a good afternoon's work, rather out of the common.

As I got up, who should I see but David and the two chums coming round the shoulder of the hill, into the ground I had carefully filled with birds. They had point after point, and made an unexpectedly fine afternoon's shooting, about twenty-five brace of birds. They had not the slightest notion how it came about. I said nothing, not I, as I had rather stretched a point by driving into their beat, but David knew that something had been done to get them this good shooting, and worked it out of my gillie after we got home, and a pretty laugh there was, and no thanks.

Of course I got no shooting that afternoon; perhaps a brace or two before lunch, and a brace or two after.

It was a charming season; exceptionally nice weather, no gales, plenty of sun, and just enough rain to keep things pleasant and scent good.

My own bag was three hundred and ninety-one and a-half brace, and one hundred and fourteen brace of partridges in October, besides a lot of brown hares, plover, snipe, &c.

Altogether we had a good way over six hundred brace, and a special good time with the low ground in October.

The snipe shooting was far better in the earlier years of our lease. It was, indeed, very good, especially in one swamp of a few acres, that was too soft for cattle to tread it, and there the snipe bred in large quantities; but an enterprising farmer came along with some large pipe drains, and settled the snipe. It was a sad pity, but you cannot hammer into proprietors that the value of the snipe shooting far exceeds the couple of pounds extra value of grazing caused by draining, in fact, that snipe shooting would with some men be the turning point of whether they took the shooting or not.

It was getting time to look about me for another shooting, and, making enquiries, I had the offer of a celebrated moor not far away, up in Strathspey.

The moor was noted for swagger bags on the first few days, so I sent David to inspect and report, which he did faithfully and fully. It was a grand place, and the rent moderate.

He was given every information, and shown the game books with a record of twenty-five years (that takes us back in the records of disease for nearly half-a-century). On the average, it showed but three good seasons out of seven.

I was very much surprised, and I did not feel inclined to face that, but many to whom money is no object, and who can shoot elsewhere as well, would say, "Yes, we will pay seven years' rent and expenses for three years of extraordinary sport in the three good seasons." It ended in my declining it.

Some two or three years previously I had been in Caithness for a fortnight's salmon fishing at the end of February, on the Thurso. If I remember rightly, Mr. R. L. Price had given me his rod on the river for that time.

Then, at Braal Castle I made the acquaintance of William Dunbar, an acquaintance that lasted so long as Dunbar lived, and still continues with his widow, and his daughter, Mrs. Sutherland.

Dunbar was a very remarkable man in his way. He made his living by taking shootings and fishings from Caithness proprietors.

Acting under his advice, the proprietor opened up the main strath, by making a road from the county road at Strathmore, past Dalnawillan and Glutt, to join the road at Braemore on to Dunbeath, and so open up access to Glutt and Dalnawillan from the south, without going round by Wick or Thurso.

He also built Strathmore and Dalnawillan lodges and keepers' houses, kennels, &c.

Dunbar leased from the proprietor the whole of the fishings and shootings from the sea to the Sutherland march, and in addition many smaller shootings in the Wick and Watton districts from other proprietors, who all knew little or nothing about sporting subjects (and, as a matter of fact, they and their factors know as little now), still less how to make them available for, and how to introduce them to, southern sportsmen. As it was, Dunbar was really a perfect godsend to the various proprietors, and to the county of Caithness generally, from the large sums of money brought into the county by his shooting and fishing friends and tenants.

The Ulbster shootings, which constituted the main strath when I first knew Dunbar, were divided as follows, or thereabouts, including about 5000 acres leased from other proprietors: —

The Thurso salmon angling was let to six rods, and the anglers lodged in the early months at Braal Castle, and later on at Strathmore Lodge.

In those days the lower beats fished well in February and March, the fish running from 8lb. to 10lb., with an occasional big one; but now in the early months they run about double the weight, few and far between, and make up almost at once for Loch More and the upper beats. The reason for the change is not far to seek.

Dunbar had a happy knack in letting shootings and fishings. He understood sport, was frank, truthful, and kept back nothing. It did not need an old hand to read between the lines of his statements.

He was pretty keen in making his bargains, but once made he did his best to make things comfortable for his clients. He went for a connection, and he made one. There was not a grain of meanness or littleness in his composition; whether in the bond or not he did the fair thing. He knew how to deal with gentlemen, and men felt safe in his hands, and voids in his shootings and fishings were rare.

He was popular in Caithness with all classes.

Fred elected not to continue grouse shooting, and our pleasant partnership came to an end, and I had to decide what I would do.

When in Caithness, I had picked up all the information I could gather as to Caithness moors.

In all ways they were the very opposite to Glenmarkie. Grouse sat well for quite a month, rather more on the hill moors, and rather less on the low moors, and nowhere did they pack, except in heavy snowstorms when the ground was all white, and they made away to the lower grounds for food.

There was nothing like the quantity of grouse that I had at Glenmarkie, but the ranges were larger – wide ranging dogs and good walking imperative; but when dogs got birds they sat well.

There was also a considerable quantity of wild fowl, wild geese, ducks, and blue hares; very few on Glenmarkie. No low ground shooting, in fact, no arable on the hill moors.

The heather was short and stunted, with stretches of deer grass and flows; in fact, no good heather on the hill moors. Excepting on the burn banks and dry knolls, the ground was mostly peat bog, too soft to carry a pannier pony, and the birds had to be carried in panniers on gillies' backs.

The trout fishing in the upper streams and burns of the Thurso that fed Loch More was pretty good. The trout were plentiful but small, running about four to the pound, but they came quick and lively. The loch fishing was not much account; perhaps I should except one loch, that yielded heavy trout of fine quality, but very shy.

Glenmarkie was a Christian-like place, but the principal moors of Caithness were a howling wilderness, not a tree and scarcely a shrub; but it was a wilderness of weird beauty in changing lights. The outlook from the top of Ben Alasky on a wild stormy day, with changing sunlight and storms, over the loch bespattered land, backed up by the cliffs of Orkney, was one of the things to see and to remember.

To me this wild and weird land has great charms.

Well, I wrote to Dunbar in the early summer to say that my lease was expiring, and that I wanted a shooting for 1872, and on a long lease.

He offered me one or two small ones in the Watton and Wick districts, but I told him that I must have Glutt, Dalnawillan, or Strathmore. He replied that all were let on lease, and could not be had.