Twenty-Six Years Reminiscences of Scotch Grouse Moors

Not a single hitch or contretemps occurred during the day. Certainly both myself and my gillie, Johnny Sinclair, were desperately careful, examining and proving knots of the gut casting line after every fish. We were in for a good thing, and nothing that care and attention would do was neglected.

That was the best day ever made on a Thurso river beat and still holds the record, and in all probability will continue to do so.

It was a very hard day's work; as the fish meant it, I meant it, and I kept the fly going without intermission, with an interval of ten minutes for lunch, from 9.30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The next day, a Saturday, and also the Sunday, I laid up in the lodge with lumbago.

My good fortune still pursued me. My last fish at the end of the month was upon Loch More, and was the heaviest fish of the season, viz., 29lb., a magnificent clean run fish, and he was taken on the same silver grey that had killed fourteen fish on the great day. That fly killed twenty-three fish in the month, and is new assigned an honorary post in the fly box.

At the end of June, having obtained the necessary permission from the higher powers, I fished the Baden lochs in Sutherlandshire for trout with the fly.

The lochs are three in number, and communicate, all on one level, by two short water ways, and, collectively, they cover some miles of ground.

Except to one shooting lodge they are nearly inaccessible, and the boats upon the lochs, belonging to the lodges, even if they had been available to me, were too large, needing two gillies to row them, and for trout fishing a large boat is a great drawback; you can't go to work too quietly, or too gently either, in boats or tackle. The shepherds' boat was light enough, but unsafe.

It is a notion that Sutherlandshire lochs need a large gaudy fly, but year by year I have been reducing the size of flies, and fining down the gut.

Again, what is called a fishing breeze is a mistake: if it comes, of course you must make the best of it; but to kill trout cleverly and quickly let me have fine tackle, a light 10ft. rod, and just a ruffle on the water, and if rain is falling and dimpling the water, the less wind the better; of course, if you fish big gaudy flies and double handed rods, you get little without a breeze.

To solve matters, I arranged to lodge with a shepherd not far from the side of the top loch; he gave me a room, and made me pretty comfortable, and with tea and whisky, good red fleshed trout, eggs, and a ham to cut at, I got along pretty well. Anyhow, I was on the ground, and close to my work, which was the main thing if I meant business.

I sent my own boat and gillie by rail, and then carted it over, so I had the right boat for the work, and a safe boat too, which is a point I always look to, as the squalls of wind get up very suddenly on those large lochs amongst the mountains.

I fished with great success, commencing June 30, and fished for seven consecutive days, Sunday, of course, excepted.

My total bag was 534 trout, weighing 198-1/2lb., which is an average of over 28lb. per day; my best day was 113 fish, weighing 42-1/2lb.

I have not come across any trout fishing scores that will beat this record of seven days fishing.

Fortune had again favoured me, excepting one day, when it was a blazing sun; they were all good fishing weather.

When August came, to my own gun my bag of grouse was five hundred and a half brace.

Of all sport I know nothing so deeply exciting as the steady head and tail rise of a heavy salmon, say a 20lb. fish, and the firm tug that you feel as he goes down.

Remember what Major Treherne says, "Don't strike, that tug has fastened the hook if it is to fasten;" but there is nothing so quietly satisfying as the feel on your hip of a heavy pannier of brown trout.

About the salmon you do as your gillie tells you, plant your foot on that rock, or on that sod, and cast there, and the fish comes (when he does come), as the fly swings round two yards below, or rather comes when he does come, the coming being a long way the exception; but the basket of brown trout has been your own doing – you have cast your little flies yard by yard where your own experience tells you the brown trout will come, and the gay little chap does come.

It is all your own act and deed: the gillie has had no hand in it, except bewailing the loss of time after those messing trout, when elsewhere there might be "just a chance" of the salmon that don't come.

I take it that it is every bit as sportsmanslike in its way to kill the little brown snipe, or the little brown trout, as to stalk the monarch of the glen, or rise the monarch of the stream. As regards the snipe, he is good to eat, and the monarch of the glen certainly not. I suppose for punishment of my sins, I once had to live for a week on the latter.

In passing, I may remark as to size of Scotch trout taken with the fly.

In my twenty-six years experience of Scotch fly fishing I have been accessory to the taking of only four fish exceeding 2lb. each in weight.

It is my experience that, excepting two or three lochs in Caithness and Sutherland, that the few fish that exceed 1lb., so soon as they attain that weight become predatory, feeding on their own species, that flies and insects will not maintain fish of that size in condition.

Season 1887

Circumstances prevented my family going down (my boys were scattered in professional pursuits), so I determined to let Dalnawillan for August and September, and shoot at Rumsdale as a bachelor, and with two other men.

The weather turned out very disappointing and unsettled – daily storm showers; so consequently the results on both moors did not come up to my expectations.

In Rumsdale (why, I don't know) the weather was worse than in any other part of Caithness.

Only one day was I out without being interfered with by rainstorms.

In Dalnawillan the weather was rather better, and in Strathmore heavy and dull, but not much amiss.

In October, I went down to Dalnawillan with two other guns. There bad weather again followed us, but we managed to make 177 brace.

This season was the culminating season of that cycle, and we ought to have had better bags, but wet weather makes the birds wild and skittish. I had expected 1200 brace on Dalnawillan, and 800 on Rumsdale, as a minimum; the birds were there to do it.

Season 1888

All things come to an end, and the seventeen years lease was drawing to a close.

This would be my last season, and I shot at Dalnawillan with two of my sons and a friend.

My family did not go down.

Unfortunately I was very lame with rheumatism in one leg, and could only get about a few hours every other day, puddling over the near beats and working the dogs myself, with a boy to lead a spare dog, and a gillie to carry the birds.

The other party were out every day, weather permitting, two guns to the party, and taking turn and turn about.

Disease was now again getting due. We had some indication the previous season, and this season we had them all over the moor – barren birds, small broods, a bad bird now and again; in fact, a repetition identical with the commencement of the attack of 1881, and about the same result as to bag, which, however, gave a fair amount of shooting.

On moors south and east there was little or no shooting; but Strathmore on the north was much better.

On the 13th I went over to Thurso to say good bye to old friends, and the next morning I was away south, thus terminating my grouse shooting days and my long and pleasant connection with Caithness and its people, and the wild moorlands of Dal-a-vhuilinn or the Miller's Dale.

A Hare Day

The blue, or alpine hare, is, as all Scotch sportsmen know, a great nuisance in grouse shooting over dogs.

Do what you will there is in every dog an innate longing to chase or point ground game in preference to birds, and if blue hares are shot upon the grouse moor in the sight of the dogs, nothing that you can do will prevent the dog from pointing or drawing on the track of other hares.

On well regulated moors blue hares are looked upon as vermin, and all possible are killed in the late winter months, when they are white, by the keeper, and sent to market; but they make very small prices, not more than 9d. to a 1s. after paying carriage.

When at Dalnawillan in October, before leaving it was the rule to have a hare driving day on Ben Alasky with two or three guns, the result being generally about ninety hares and a few brace of grouse, and the number killed have been included in the record of sundries.

All the gillies, boys, shepherds, &c., were on that occasion pressed into the service.

There were two hills adjoining one to the other, Ben Alasky and Glass Kerry, both about 1100ft. high, and both were driven.

The party started about 11 a.m. from the lodge, beaters and guns forming a line, taking the ground before them to about half way up Glass Kerry, getting on the way two or three hares and a brace or two of grouse.

Then the guns were sent forward to their posts.

The line of beaters sweep round the hill.

Perhaps fifteen to twenty hares may be had. Luncheon is then taken on the ridge connecting the two hills.

After luncheon the beaters in line start well at the bottom of Ben Alasky, gradually beating round and round in a spiral until they reach the summit.

It may take two hours.

It is the habit of the blue hare to mount the hill, but some few break back.

The guns are in three butts, the first butt on the summit of the hill, and the other two on the slope below.

Odd grouse skim over the butts and fall to a clever shot.

At times the hares come up in considerable numbers, and the single gun (no loader) gets hot; but if a hare escapes the one butt it gets across the fire of another butt, and so very little escapes.

Then comes the collection of the slain and crippled, and loading men and gillies with the slain.

The reader may say, Why not send a cart or pannier pony? simply because the peat moss of Caithness is too soft to carry a pony.

It was a pleasing little shoot, and the weather at that time of year being generally stormy, the outlook from the hill was very grand.

Remarks on the Outcome of Disease

A perusal of the foregoing reminiscences will show that grouse shooting, like other sports, is very uncertain, and that really good shooting cannot apparently be looked for in more than four seasons out of seven, consequent on the ravages of disease.

With the exception of portions of Southern Perthshire say the district west of Dunkeld, embracing the Breadalbane Moors, which for many years have had comparative immunity from disease, but will have it sooner or later, the moors of Aberdeen, Banff, Inverness, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness are attacked at pretty regular intervals, and an old and experienced hand may spot the years of disease pretty well in advance.

In Sutherlandshire the recovery is rather slower than in Caithness, and the period of good shooting rather less.

On the smaller moors on the north-east of Caithness mixed up with the arable land there is certainly very much less disease, and when the birds get a touch, it is called a bad breeding season; as the tenant of a very fair moor in that district put it, "We never have disease, but we had a season of poor shooting as the birds did not breed that year." Of course, that meant disease.

I take it that in that district, the climate being better, the ground carrying few birds and being sprinkled in patches mixed with arable, that the risk of contagion is less, besides which, from the tendency of birds to draw down from the higher to the lower grounds in the storms of winter, the gaps caused by disease get filled up.

The same remarks will apply to Orkney, and, more favourably still, excepting that they do not fill up from the higher ground; but in Orkney the moors are very small, and no great quantity of grouse.

Are we to draw our conclusion from the experience of previous years, not of one cycle, but of several.

If we are to avail ourselves of past experience, the inference derived is that disease does run in cycles, and that it is a provision of Providence to ensure the survival of the fittest, and thus prevent the gradual decadence of the grouse.

It would appear that grouse shooting runs in years pretty much thus:

1st year. – Say disease; shoot down and stamp out as far as possible.

2nd year. – A jubilee; but shoot old cocks.

3rd year. – A jubilee; but shoot old cocks.

4th year. – Moderate shooting; be careful not to overdo it to the serious detriment of the good years before you.

5th year. – } Grand shooting. Shoot down all

6th year. – } you can, and so get off all you can

7th year. – } before disease does it for you.

But if the moor be shot ever so lightly in the second and third years it is simply killing the goose for the golden egg, your moor will not recover its stock and give good shooting until the seventh year or the eve of the next cycle.

The laird will say, "Eh! I shall get breeding stock from my neighbours;" but what if his neighbours are at the same foolish game.

My own experience has been not to let a moor, excepting on lease, until I am quite certain that it can properly afford the number of birds to which I may limit it, and I think that I have pretty clearly shown that it will not afford birds at all in the first and second years, perhaps a few in the third, the killing of old cocks excepted, which should be done by the keeper.

The present modern practice of letting moors from year to year, quite irrespective of whether from the ravages of disease there are grouse to afford shooting, and so leading to the destruction of the little breeding stock that may exist, has ruined and destroyed the reputation of many fine moors that will carry heavy stocks of birds if properly treated.

They year after year yield little or no sport, and naturally get a bad repute until they are again caught by disease and shelved for further years.

The laird has to make up his mind to one of two options:

1. To let his moor on lease at a low reasonable rent; or

2. To retain his moorland, and nurse the birds until the moor is full, and then let at a higher rent either for one year or more.

Any other course is suicidal to him in the long run; he may deceive his client, and perhaps himself, and get a heavy rent for one year and then he is done.

In the season of 1883, with a full knowledge that the moor has been cleaned out with disease and over shooting in 1882, I was asked, will you let me Rumsdale with a limit of 150 brace for £100.

My reply was, that firstly there was not 150 brace upon the moor, and that if I let it I should be cheating him, and that if I did, shooting the little there was would do me far more damage by the loss of the breeding stock than the value of the £100, or three or four times the £100.

It is difficult to educate people to the knowledge of the fact that the breeding of grouse is like the breeding of other animals or birds, and that grouse are not in some mysterious way showered down by Providence like manna in the desert.

It is appreciated as regards pheasants, but appears that it has yet to be learned as regard grouse.

I have remarked that as a rule moors are more readily let, and higher rents are obtained in the disease year, the year following the cycle of three or four big years, than at any other period.

Men are jubilant and excited over the successes of the three or four previous years, the prestige and the glamour are fostered by those in the interest of letting, and folks are unwilling to believe, as I was in the season of 1866, that such magnificent sport can collapse almost at once to nothing.

Disappointments result for a couple of years or more, and then moors become very unsavoury, and really good places are on hand, and at moderate rents for the ensuing three or four years.

It is evident that if history is to repeat itself, that, looking at the cost of keeper and other expenses, it is cheaper to rent for three or four years at a high rent than to take for seven years at a low rent, taking your chance, or, more properly speaking, the certainty, of the fat and the lean.

Anyone about to take a moor of fair repute may, by taking the necessary trouble before he signs the agent's agreement to pay £500 or £1000 for what Providence may send him, ensure himself the sport represented by the high rent.

According to the amenities of the place – for the number of brace to be killed is not the only factor in fixing the price – the rent will vary from 10s. to 20s. a brace, and an intending tenant should not grudge it if he gets the sport.

Let the moor be run with dogs by a competent keeper, and he will tell you if there is sufficient breeding stock to breed the promised 1000 brace.

Then ascertain, positively and absolutely, when the last attack of disease occurred; it will be the year after the last successful season.

Then take the moor for a term of years, ending in the seventh year from the date of the disease year.

Those moors that suffer the most in their disease year, like the moor in Strathspey, referred to in Season 1871, will probably afford the heaviest shooting in their good years.

Grouse, of course, have other drawbacks besides disease.

If the moors are on high ground, they are liable to have eggs frosted in late frosts, or young grouse killed by late snowstorms, as occurred in Season 1864 on Glenshee. Again, you may have a lazy, whiskey drinking keeper, who neglects vermin-killing; but, as a rule, once out of the egg, the young bird is safe.

Heather Burning and Draining

Indiscriminate burning of heather is another great drawback on Sutherland and Caithness moors.

In Caithness, it will take fourteen or more years to grow deep, good heather on the hill moors, and in Sutherland eight or ten.

The upper moors of Caithness, and also of parts of Sutherland, carry very little really good heather; in fact, only on the burn banks or dry knolls does it grow.

The remainder of the ground is broken, knotty peat bog, with short stunty heather, and stretches of deer grass, with wet flows on the upper flats. All good shooting ground in fine weather, and birds like it then.

Birds rely on the deep heather for shelter and food in the winter. Burn that out, and they go where they can find it, and don't return. It is just the same as if you burn down a crofter's house and his crops, he must move on to somewhere else.

Some of the best moors in Caithness have been ruined, and cannot be recovered for very many years, to the very serious loss of the proprietors, from incessant burning and shooting down breeding stock after disease, both attributable to the almost culpable negligence, certainly ignorance, of those in charge of the regulation of the burning and the letting of the moors.

The burning is a far more serious business than the shooting down of stock.

One fool of a factor did say to me (he is dead and gone, or I would not name it), "Perish every grouse, before a blade of grass shall suffer."

The sheep rent on the moor to which the above referred is gone because sheep do not now pay on that ground, and the grouse rent – the best rent of the two – is also gone, because the heather is burned off clean as the back of your hand.

In Dalnawillan, heather burning has been with me a constant wrangle with the proprietor or his representatives, or the sheep farmers, no matter the clear agreements to the contrary, protecting the heather. If I was fighting anybody's battle, it was in the interest of the proprietor; the question was one far more important to him than to me.

Burning, to do it properly, is a very expensive process on such extensive ranges as the Caithness moors.

In Dalnawillan and Rumsdale, it needed four parties during the early part of April, to do it properly, four men in each party. One man to kindle, and keep on kindling; the other three men armed with birch brooms, watching and regulating the course of the fire, beating it out where it unduly spreads, or beating it out altogether to rekindle in case of a change of wind in a wrong direction.

Unless the weather is quite dry for a week or more, the rough ground and deer grass, both of which it is most desirable to burn in the interest of grouse and sheep, will not burn, and when your staff of men are collected and got together, a sudden storm of rain or snow comes on, and you are delayed for a week, and perhaps put off altogether for that season.

Naturally, if you are prevented by weather from burning, the sheep farmer is annoyed, because he does not get his burning done. He argues, "Let me burn; I will burn as much in a day as you will in a week." And so he would, but it would be the fine old heather that will burn, and the shooting value of the moor destroyed for many long years.

I do not say that sheep farmers or their shepherds desire to burn, and damage the shooting tenant, and also the proprietor (not that the latter or his factor understand the question or appreciate the damage) by burning out patches of good heather, the burning of which destroys the cover appertaining to hundreds of acres, and so destroys the shooting.

One shepherd certainly, said he liked the ground burned, because it was easier walking.

But if the shepherd is to burn, what can he do by himself.

He can do no more than kindle a fire, and let the winds of heaven take it how and where it likes.

To get a good fire, he will get his back to the wind, and kindle a well-heathered burn, and make a good clear sweep for half-a-mile, and so destroy the shelter of five or six hundred or more acres for a dozen years or more.

I have seen two miles in a blaze at one time, but not on my ground; it was too well looked after.

Surface Draining

I am convinced that much may be done in improving grouse ground in the north of Scotland. Make ground habitable and suitable for grouse, and they will come without any further trouble.

Grouse like wettish ground, especially in hot weather, presuming that there is dry ground available for them to nest upon, and feed and sit upon in wet weather.

Now, by judicious surface draining, much may be done.

When the ground slopes from the low hills, the surface water works over the face of the ground, thoroughly soddening it, and rotting the heather that would otherwise grow.

The drains are simply small sheep drains cut on the surface, slantingly across the slope, wherever there is fall enough just to run the water.

The drain intercepts the water, runs it off, preventing it from running over the ground below the drain, and immediately dries the ground immediately below the drain. Heather grows some yards wide, and there the birds will sit and nest, and you have created increased grouse ground.

The expense, in view of the benefit is very trifling. A pair of drainers during the summer months, say a cost of £50, will get over a very large extent of ground.

The proprietor was constantly endeavouring to sell the property, in which event my lease would drop through, and he was impervious to any arrangements as to draining, otherwise I should have done the whole of the Dalnawillan ground. As it was, I did do some odd bits, at my own cost. One beat, near the lodge, I scored over with a few hundred yards of draining, and converted it from a bad to a good beat.

Such draining, of course, improves the ground for sheep as well as grouse.

I presume the time will come when proprietors will see that profit will accrue from cultivating their moors for the purpose of carrying grouse, by endeavouring in all ways to improve the heather by judicious burning and draining, in sufficient amounts to carry as large a stock as is reasonable for the extent of ground. I see no reason whatever, if you offer as favourable conditions to the birds, why they should not be as plentiful on ground A as on ground B; as a matter of fact they will be.