2. In reference to Scotland
3. In regard to Wales
Theoretically the stock of grouse ought to depend upon the amount of food present on the moorlands on which they live. In practice it does nothing of the kind—at least, not if we consider heather to be the food of the grouse. A sheep will eat twenty times as much food as a grouse, and if only half the sheep diet is heather, which is giving them a larger proportion of grass than they can get on most moors, then in theory it ought to be that the clearing of one sheep off an acre upon which there was but one grouse should result in an addition of ten grouse to that acre. But in practice it is doubtful whether it results in one single added grouse, or even one additional to 100 acres. But this is not any proof that the removal of sheep is bad policy. There are so many other things that have to be taken into account. Whether the sheep do harm or good by themselves is not certain, but in any case the shepherding is very bad for grouse chicks that have just strength enough to go a long way down hill and none to get back again to the brooding parent birds. The latter cannot carry their young like a woodcock, nor can they, like a Parliamentary bird of fame, be in two places at once. The author has not been able to arrive at any very definite conclusion in regard to the negative or positive value of the presence of sheep themselves, the evidence is so very conflicting. On the Ruabon Hills there are 5000 sheep on the 7000 acres of the most productive grouse ground in Wales; moreover, there are 70 commoners who each have a few dogs, and the latter’s business is to keep the sheep off the cultivated fields, either in the presence of their masters or not, as convenience and occasion serves. Then, on Mr. Lloyd Price’s bigger moor of Rhiwlas, the sheep have been reduced to a minimum, and belong to the keeper. Yet here 1000 brace has been about the best of the bags, but they have been improving. Now, if these two moors grew heather of equal merit, and if they were at equal elevations, we could say at once that sheep are valuable to grouse. But these things are very different on those two moors, and we can say nothing, but merely record the facts. Again, in Yorkshire the fashion has been to decrease the sheep to disappearing point; but when Lord Walsingham made his great personal bag of 1070 grouse in the day on a 2200 acre moor, there were 1400 sheep upon it, and there were nearly 2000 grouse killed there in that season. Even now, in Yorkshire, Askrigg is about as productive, acre for acre, as any moor, and it is common land, and fairly swarms with sheep. On the other hand, this is not true of Broomhead, where a grouse and a half to the acre have been got before now, but it was true of practically all the moors where great bags were made in 1871 and 1872 and before. And as the general grouse stock has never again reached the level of those years, it may be that there is some value in sheep that has not been discovered, and to which we cannot give a name. Some people believe that the sheep help the grouse in winter, by uncovering the heather when it is snow-buried. Probably there is a good deal to be said for that, but more upon high ground than low moors, because of course the object is to keep the grouse at home, and prevent them from migrating down the straths in those large packs that may or may not return again. On the lowest moors in the district it is probable that there is less advantage in keeping the birds from seeking winter food elsewhere. They must needs go for it below the heather belt, and this ground will not keep them in the spring, as the lower moors undoubtedly keep a large number of those grouse that in hard weather visit them from higher moors. No doubt many half-starved grouse get killed when they visit lower grouse, and arable ground, but unless the snow disappears very early in the spring the lowest moors are always favoured by some visitors stopping to breed. For them this is a change of blood, which possibly the higher elevation birds never do get. Be this as it may, there is always some moor in a neighbourhood, just as there is a piece of ground on nearly every shooting, that will at all times have more grouse upon it than are bred there, except when birds are too young to travel far. It is difficult to put a limit on these winter movements, or to give any idea how far the birds may not go for “black ground.”
This seems to depend a good deal upon the way the snow comes and stops. It may be affirmed that no matter how far it may be off them, if grouse can see black ground when their own is under frozen snow they will go to it. This in turn may be covered up, and then they will again go downwards. The late Mr. Dunbar, who sublet most of Sir Tollemache Sinclair’s shootings in Caithness, told the author that he had known the Caithness grouse driven to the seashore in hard weather, when the heather was all covered with snow. It would be a most excellent arrangement of Nature that the grouse go for food wherever it is to be had, if it were left to Nature, but it is not. People on the cultivated farms regard the arrival of the grouse as a great day, in which Providence has sought them out for a blessing, just as the Israelites in the Wilderness thought about the quail, which were possibly merely seeking their own migratory ends, like the starving grouse. Those on the lower moors see increased numbers of grouse, and kill them, knowing that if they do not somebody else will. So that the general result of this migration is that the total stock of the whole county, or country, is kept much lower than any sportsmen or owners of moors wish, and instead of being 1200 pairs left to breed on 4500 acres, which is Mr. Rimington Wilson’s estimate for his crack moor near Sheffield, the spring stock the country over does not average, in the belief of the writer, more than 250 pairs on every 4500 acres, and in this estimate he does not include the grass hills, the floe ground, or the ptarmigan tops, or deer forests.
By the habits of the grouse the owners of moors are compelled, therefore, more or less to pool their breeding stocks. Nothing seems likely to overcome the difficulty except a system of winter feeding in snow-time, and this is much more easily discussed than accomplished. Even if oat stacks with the corn in the straw, and more oats added to it to avoid unnecessary carting of straw, were erected, and protected in the early autumn, in various parts of a moor, these to be of any use would require to be visited in the very worst of the snow, in order that the protection might be removed and the grouse might start to scratch about for food. But there are many parts of many moors where an expedition at such a time would be a work of danger, for many a life has been lost in the snowstorms of the Highlands.
This digression into winter feeding of grouse arose out of the question of sheep or no sheep. Difficult as this is in Yorkshire, Wales, and the Lowlands of Scotland, it is very much more complicated in the Highlands, where sheep have to be considered not alone as an addition to grouse moors, but also as a protection to the deer forests. It is necessary to the forest owners that they should not lose their rentals by the movements of deer to grouse ground in the stalking season.
Where one forest adjoins another, exchange is no robbery; but where they adjoin sheep ground the only two possible ways of preventing a loss of deer are wire deer fences and the presence of sheep and shepherds. The former is out of favour, and will probably never come in again. It converts forests into parks, and park deer have no sporting value. Consequently, only the sheep and the shepherds are left. To remove them anywhere in the neighbourhood of forests is automatically to stock the ground with deer. This may be a wise or an unwise policy as circumstances arise, but it is very bad for the established forests to lose their best beasts, which take years to grow. Then to have deer forests interspersed through the more cultivated districts of the Highlands would probably lead to a revolution, or at least to the unauthorised destruction of the deer when they attacked the farmers’ crops.
The burning of the heather is rarely done half well enough. It is very expensive in districts far removed from considerable population. There is so much delay caused by waiting for the weather. The ideal conditions are wet ground and dry air and heather, in order that the tops of the plant shall be thoroughly burned and the roots and the heather seed in the ground not much heated. But to wait for such ideal conditions would be rarely to burn at all, and consequently risks are taken, but even as it is, not nearly enough heather is burned. On some moors the author has visited he could say there were 1000 acres of heather and that one match would destroy it all. Where such enormous beds of old heather do exist, it might be bolder than wise to apply that match and leave the rest to chance. But it always runs this risk even when grouse are sitting on their eggs. There are not many nests in such ground, nevertheless it is a pity to destroy it all, for this old heather is the most valuable when snow is on the moor, but the mere fact of burning strips through it greatly increases this value as well as every other. It assists the snow to drift, which in covering some parts deeply leaves the other bare. Shelter and food is what the grouse most want in the storm, and the very long heather supplies both to a very great extent. But a very little of it will go a long way for this purpose. The grouse never eat it at other times, so that it is all left for winter feeding. These long old heather patches may also have a value in collecting grouse on driving days, but they have none for dog work; for grouse will not resort to them unless forced to, and dogs cannot work to advantage in them.
Some people prefer burning in small patches to burning in strips, and theoretically the former can be defended as enabling more birds to feed when out of sight of their brethren and enemies. Nevertheless, the grouse stocks in both England and Scotland reached their apex when most of, if not all, the burning was done in strips.
A too heavy stock of breeding ewes, in contrast to as heavy a stock of feeding or fat sheep, is said to destroy heather, and cause grass to supplant it. Although the author has several times had cause to believe this to be quite true, he has never actually seen these results.