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.