It has been the fashion to say that since grouse driving became a
science the proportion of birds killed and left upon the moors is only a
question of the will of the occupier. This season, in Scotland at any
rate, has proved that this is not the case. Although there were not many
moors perhaps where more grouse ought to have been killed, there were a
good many where it was attempted to slay more than proved to be
possible. The fact is, when the grouse take to the tops they are
practically safe; especially is this the case when these tops are the
“march” between two shootings. Then the grouse see the flankers as King
Louis of France saw the figures of men in Tenier’s pictures. They look
“like maggots,” and grouse are not afraid of those immature insects,
although they do not eat them. It is the height and the angle that make
all the difference in driving grouse that have become wild enough to
take to the “tops,” for the very object of resorting to these altitudes
seems to be the better to keep watch and ward against the arrival of the
enemy.
As the season advances in the Highlands, bags quickly sink from hundreds
of brace per day to tens, and very soon after this they would sink to
units were it thought worth while to organise driving parties for the
units; but it is not, and consequently the Highland grouse are growing
to be almost as difficult to regulate in point of numbers, and more
difficult in point of sex, than they were before driving came in. For
the latter practice has everywhere increased the wild habit; it has not
merely taught existing birds wildness for the time being, but the habit
of standing up to look for danger instead of crouching in the heather to
hide from it, has become hereditary and instinctive where driving has
been the longest practised. Unless moors are very hilly this habit does
not much matter, because, provided grouse can be properly flanked and
flagged, they can also be driven, but on the tops in Scotland this is
not possible, and the outcome is unfortunately that too many of the hens
and the young males get killed on the flat ground. The old cocks are the
first to take possession of their fastnesses, the tops, and there they
remain until, in the breeding season, they take possession of the best
breeding sites and drive away all the younger and more healthy birds.
The worst feature of this is that these old cocks are like master swans,
and think they require a kingdom for themselves, a kingdom without
subjects, for none of their kind are permitted to live near them.
Consequently the birds left to breed may be numerous, and yet be of no
use. They have to move off at breeding time because of the persecution
of the old birds. There is no much employed method of getting rid of
these old cocks when driving them fails in the hills. There was one
before the days of driving, but it is almost a lost art. This was called
“becking.”
The practice of becking was very simple and easy to learn, indeed the
grouse themselves teach it better than any schoolmaster. Any time in
August, when the shooting lodge is really on the moor and not under it,
one has but to sleep with an open window, and the first sound of the
coming day to greet the awakening sleeper will be object lessons in
becking. It is a habit of the proud old cock grouse to challenge each
other in the morning. This they do by fluttering up into the air
vertically some ten or a dozen feet and crowing. Rarely is the challenge
accepted in the autumn, probably because these old grouse have long ago
settled their differences, and one no longer trespasses on the ground of
the other. Each is king of his brood and ready to defend his castle, but
neither will enter willingly into the domain of another bird. Nature is
at peace with herself. But when the moorland keeper arises before light
and gets upon the moor before the grouse are awake, when he hides in
some peat hag, or other shelter, and starts to crow, every old cock
grouse within earshot becomes angry at the unknown voice of an intruder,
and instantly the challenge is accepted. The intruder not being in a
position to go out in search of mortal combat the oldest inhabitant
comes to seek him, but instead meets a charge of shot, which
unceremoniously, and in revolt of sporting feeling, knocks him over on
the ground without giving him the proverbial chance for his life.
Before driving game came in, this was the only way to find grouse for
the table, after the spirit of winter wildness had entered into the
birds. Nobody thought of it as sport, but the keepers knew of it as a
necessity in preserving, for the reason that it killed off the old cocks
and none besides. It was an automatic selection of the most unfit, and
had it been practised beyond the necessity of the table of the owner,
would have done much more for the stock than any other thing could. But
it was confined and limited by the state of the larder. Now even this
demand has stopped, because cold storage supplies the table with better
birds, that is young ones, killed perhaps on August 12th in one year,
and eaten on August 11th upon the next, and admirable birds they are,
too.
But not only has the necessity of the table ceased to operate for the
good of the grouse stock, but driving the birds has rendered “becking” a
lost labour in many places.
It is no good going out to beck on ground where the broods once were,
after they have all united as one vast pack and gone somewhere else.
That is too obvious almost to name, but suppose the neighbourhood of a
big pack is found, and the “becking” keeper attempts to call up the old
grouse, he soon finds out that the voice of the charmer has ceased to
charm. What is the reason? Well, when there are practically one hundred
challenges issued at the same time from every direction, and in voices
unfamiliar to the hearers, the grouse become so used to the call to
battle, that they take no notice of the battle-cry. If they did the
attempt to find the offender by his challenge, would be like the attempt
to flush a land-rail by following his “croak.” Voices resound on every
side, and an angry bird soon finds that the only outlet to pent-up wrath
is to challenge too, but not to search for challengers that are in as
many directions as echo itself.
Once I read somewhere how a keeper had surprised himself in a morning’s
“becking.” Soon after taking up position he was greeted by a return
challenge, and the proud old cock soon appeared on a little “knowie” not
far off. The keeper shot, but when the smoke had cleared there stood the
bird as proud as ever, he shot again, and the black powder smoke hung in
the still morning air, but it cleared at last, and still the bird was
there to challenge. He shot again, again, and yet again, and at last,
when the smoke cleared, the bird had evidently been killed. So he crept
forth from his hiding place to gather this very refractory old cock. But
instead of finding him, he found five fathers of broods which had each
heard the stranger, and wanted to give him battle. Each in turn had seen
his predecessor strutting on the “knowie,” and thinking the strange
voice belonged to it, had arrived to do battle exactly at the instant
his wished-for antagonist had “bitten the peat.” But, as the keeper
probably knew very well, it would have been quite natural had he missed
each of five birds in turn, for grouse, standing in the heather, require
to be at least ten or fifteen yards nearer the gunner than when they are
flying, and if they are not that much nearer it is just a little more
easy to miss than to kill. Probably the reason is that the heather turns
a good many pellets that might have hit, and also that when wings are
closed, and the birds are facing the gunner, the only vitals are the
head and neck. The wings glance a great many of the pellets.
I do not profess to be able to call grouse, but I have done the shooting
while a keeper has successfully called up grouse after grouse. The
puzzle is, why they do not mind the shooting. Obviously they are not
troubled with “nerves,” and are so much preoccupied in their wish to
make the stranger “leave that,” that they forget to enquire what made
the thunder.
On the occasion referred to, I was provided with a very full choke
twelve bore, which killed at least fifteen yards further away than an
ordinary game gun, so that when a grouse appeared on a little “knowie,”
I was prompt to align him and to pay no attention to the keeper’s advice
that it was “beyont range.” I knew that keepers usually took only very
certain chances, and that the cult of the choke bore was not within my
companion, so I let off and my grouse disappeared. I, too, was evidently
in for great good luck, like the keeper quoted above, for no sooner had
one been knocked over than another was up and seeking for war; but not
for five times, only four. After this there was a pause too long for
patience, and I went forward to gather my game, and end the morning’s
sport. The first grouse I came to was only wounded, he had an injured
eye or head, and sat bunched up with the bad eye towards me. It ought to
have been an easy bird to gather, but over confidence, or want of care,
made him suspicious, and he flew away, and when I pulled trigger at him
I found that I had not cocked my gun. There was no other grouse to be
found, and it became obvious that I had only had one quick change artist
to deal with all the time; he had evidently been knocked off his perch
by shot that had not penetrated, or had made him uncomfortable enough
for him to move at each shot.
I am told that the principal difference between a good shot and a bad
one at driven grouse is, that the former knows how to select the easy
birds. Without going as far as that I can say with certainty that a
grouse, five yards too far off, becomes about twenty times as difficult
as he is five yards nearer.
But although this experience of mine was as far from a brilliant success
as could be thought of, yet I believe that “becking” is absolutely
necessary to the highest possible preservation wherever the grouse do
not pack. I should say it was just as useful where they do pack if it
could be carried out, but it cannot. When hunger begins to harass the
birds in the winter months, they often divide the sexes, like the high
churches, as Sir Fred Millbank observed thirty years ago, and obviously
when the cocks are all in the fellowship of the unemployed they are not
looking out for somebody to have a row with. Nevertheless, there is
often much open weather between the end of grouse driving and the end of
the season, on December 10th, and where it can be practised
successfully, it is well to remember, in the interests of the breeding
stock, that “becking” is the only automatic selection of old cocks that
has ever been practised, and had probably something to do with the fact
that there were more grouse in Scotland in 1872, and before, than there
are in these days of scientific heather management and artistic killing
of grouse. On dog moors it is particularly necessary, and on them can be
easily made successful.
One excellent sportsman of Shropshire, who was not unknown on the Chirk
Castle moors, used to tell me that it was quite wonderful how well
grouse kept, as he often had them in March. He explained that it was
only the cocks that kept so long; and this was before cold storage was
thought of.