I. Along the Heather
It is always with exhilaration that the sportsman hears the first wing-rush of the season, and sees his first covey of grouse whirl along the heathery waste. The gun is thrown up, and on the instant the bird is singled. At the report a few feathers are struck up from the winger. Almost instantly the fury of its pinionings ceases, its flight droops, and becomes more and more unsteady, till with a thud it reaches the grass just as your retriever gets within distance.
In our district of rough shootings, the twelfth is the only festival the gunner observes, for the grouse is our stable game-bird. But though restricted in its variety of sport, ours, also, is one of the few areas in which genuine old-fashioned shooting is to be had. The exigencies of falling revenues has stopped the heavy stocking and close preserving formerly the custom, and our birds are almost always wild—wild with the freedom of the spreading moorland, not with the wildness of terror. Beating is rarely resorted to by the occupiers of our shootings, for men are scarce in upland valleys.
The evening of the eleventh closed down over the steeps in lurid fashion, and at dark a storm was whistling along the nearby braes. Our keeper, however, held that by sunrise the worst of the tempest would be spent, and that a clear day was in store for us. However, when we arose the gale still shrieked along the uplands, driving huge banks of cloud before it. The rain had ceased some hours before, but every dell was occupied with a roaring flood, and the bosky places were palpably saturated. The keeper, who appeared to have spent the whole of the wild night patrolling the only route by which poachers could reach the moor, was decidedly of opinion that, bad as the weather was, it was still improving rapidly. The clouds, whirling ghostlike in the uncertain light, were less frequent, and did not fall so far down the slopes. Now and again the surf of billowy white passed clear of the fellside for a few seconds.
Up and be doing was advised; and, as we were in friendly rivalry with the holders of the other moors as to whose gun should fall the earliest bird of the season, in a few seconds we were striding through the woods, listening to the eerie voice of the gale in the reeling pine-tops, or to the gushing down secluded ghylls of creamy torrents.
In ten minutes we were on the bleak moor; the pressure of the wind was so strong that we could barely keep our feet. The grass was beaded with raindrops; the tangled bushes through which here and there we had to force a passage shook drenching showers upon us. Walking along some half-mile, we got into the shelter of a great rib of mountain; and here the keeper anticipated sport. So far not a bird had stirred, or even called; whether they had deserted the exposed brae or were unwilling to rise, I cannot say.
Now, looking across the deep, narrow valley, we espied at a great distance another shooting-party passing through the heather in extended line. Our keeper chuckled:
‘T’ Ferns folk’ll not git t’ first birrd to-day.‘
I was not so certain, for I had seen two wee puffs of smoke rise from the centre of their line. But though the slow advance checked, there was no crowding together to congratulate a successful first shot.
The presence of rivals spurred us on, but, try as we would, not a bird could be found in the wet, quiet hollow; then, worse than all, a fine gray veil drew itself between us and our distant view, growing rapidly more dense, till we could see but a few yards.
‘Ferns wins,’ groaned I; but the ever-confident Jack claimed that it would require a finer shot than any of theirs to down a bird on that gusty moor. ‘But what of the flukes—eh?‘
‘We’ve as much chance as they. Keep a sharp lookout as we come opposite to these screes, and fire at the first thing that moves.’
Of course, this was what we were bound to do. In a few minutes the cloud blew aside, and just as its final skirts were rushing from the heather and scree in front, up rose with wild clamouring a covey of grouse. There was a sharp crackle as four guns belched forth together on them. Down went three birds. Whose was the first? Well, each claimed the honour, but the gamekeeper, as final referee, laid down that when shots are simultaneous the order of birds reaching the ground must count. The scene of this informal court was dramatic: the weathered old man, his kindly face lit up with delight at our referring the matter to him; the three splendid dusky-red birds laid neatly in front; the dogs wandering around, probably contrasting this delay with our usual pushing habits; and our four faces showing varying degrees of anxiety as we awaited the veteran’s decision. For a minute he sat silent and motionless, his gray-clad body standing out against the dark heather and gray-lichened crag of the rolling, windy moor, and when his first point was again agreed to, he declared that the cock was the first down. As I was the only one who had singled him, it was my first grouse.
Now half an hour more we waited for better light, with a possible lifting of the mist-curtain sufficiently high for sport to be more than intermittent. And after a while things certainly began to be brighter. As we patrolled along, the birds rose better and the guns got into better use. But all day the wind remained powerful enough to aid the birds’ escape.
Another year the circumstances of shooting were easier, the weather was fine, our stock promising, and our first bird was got very early. One of the dogs ranging in very delight in front flushed a small covey from a dot of heather just beyond the garden palings, and our youngest gun dropped a straggler. The chances of a kill at the long range were so remote that no one else attempted a shot.
Than the moors on a fine September morning I cannot conceive a fairer space. At midsummer the bees drone sleepily over the blooming heather, the little runnels murmur distantly from their grass-hidden courses. Of bird-life little is to be seen; the grouse cower among the heather until near sundown. As we stand by the weedy tarn this morning, however, there is ample evidence that the spreading mantle of chocolate and green is thronged with life. Here the path crosses a boggy tract where dirty jets of water spurt over our boots; now we encounter bouldery ground, and the path winds among the greater fragments. Anon we brush through a narrow channel running athwart a waste of heather.
‘There they go!’ There is a sharp rustle among the grass, some hurried wing-beats and a hoarse call ‘come-back, come-back,’ and a splendid covey of grouse sail away from us. But not a gun is raised, for the gamekeeper has expressly stipulated that in this basin of green swamp and sparkling dot of water, chosen haunt at all times of wild-duck, not a shot is yet to be fired. Regretfully we trudge upward on the rugged path to the top of the slope.
Now the dogs are released, and the line of guns shakes out. The old keeper, as a special favour in return for early summer inquiries about his broods, walks close beside, constituting himself my loader. I know this moor well; for several years I have watched the seasons pass over its face of spreading bracken and stiff, erect heather; otherwise I might be impatient.
‘It’s a bit noisy for t’ birds here,’ is an apology hazarded by the old man; ‘a good many sheep have been driven across there this last week.’ ('Across there,’ indicated by a sweep of his arm, is a moorland road, lonesome-looking enough to-day.)
A gun is discharged at the far end of our line—I cannot see exactly by whom, as we are in a slight fold of the moor, then quite a small volley. A covey has flown right down the line of guns. In a moment the birds whir across my line of vision, but they are too far away for a shot. This glen illumined by the morning sunshine is like a piece from fairyland. Sphagnum in all stages, golden and white and green, and gray-green bent; tinkling streamlets and moss-hung rocks; every blade of grass, every branchlet of heather, every frond of fern and bracken, is decked with beads of dew, and the sunshine revels in each and every drop as though it were a crystal prism, throwing off glories and halos of rainbow hues.
In a minute we clear this little gully and are again level with the others. Each man carries his own game-bag (save myself, whom the veteran serves), and will do his own loading; but game is sparse, and for five brace apiece we may have to tramp as many miles. However, there is always magnificent scenery and bracing air, and now and again there will be lively incidents—sequences of shots as rapid as you can fire and exchange shells. ‘Nerves’ on such occasions are almost sure to leave you with an empty game-bag.
So along we tramp, shooting where any opportunity arises. The dogs go through their work thoroughly and cheerfully; we guns are young and athletic, so that the long walk does not tire us. At lunch-time we are close to a disused sheepfold, in the lee of which our meal is spread. During the half-hour rest we indulged in we got the old keeper to tell us stories from his own experience. He has been on various estates, and commanded all sorts of shooting; but with middle age the homing instinct turned him to the land of the fells and lakes again. He had amassed what was to him a competency, but his hands could not drop the gun altogether, and he gladly accepted his present position—a lucrative pleasure, not a labour to him. And this was the story he told us, between puffs of a black clay pipe, as he sat on a lichened stone with his back against the wall of the sheepfold:
‘Many years ago, near one of the best shooting estates in the Fells Country, there lived two poachers. Their ancestors had been frugal and thrifty, so that a small farm—twenty or thirty acres, maybe—and a cottage were left to these two. To meet them on the country roads or in their fields, they were simple, slow-speaking farmers like their neighbours. But to see them making nets and snares when the storm howled round the little house—as I have done—they were smart craftsmen. And in the dark woods and leas, or by the salmon streams, the most alert watcher could never find Dick and Ned. They could thread the worst-tangled glades without a sound, for they knew every inch of them. As to game, whether fin, fur, or feather, Dick and Ned were sure somehow to get a large share of it. Their house and bit of land lay between two wide sheep-farms. Their only sister had died when the lads were sixteen, their parents some time before, and after that bereavement the only companions they took were a dog and a cat. Concerning which there is a story.
‘The two men were sat at breakfast, when Dick said, in his chanting voice:
‘“Ned, thoo likes thy dog.”
‘“Dick, thoo likes thy cat.”
‘And at this the two joined battle. And when at last a chance caller at the house intervened and drew them apart, both men were dripping with blood. As quickly as they had fought they fell back to the old intimate intercourse, Ned alone remarking:
‘“Well, ah’ll hae to kill thee some day, Dick, and ah’ll might as weel ha’ done it noo.”