Another cause of heather destruction has come under his personal observation, and is very serious indeed when it occurs. It comes in the form of a small beetle which some ten years ago (then, it is believed, unnamed by science) attacked thousands of acres of the heather (calluna), but would not touch the bell heather (erica). It destroyed and bit through the roots of the plants, half starved the sheep in consequence, and caused the grouse to entirely leave some of the moors in the neighbourhood of Castle Douglas. The only stay to it was fire, and square miles of heather were consequently burnt. On going over the ground ten years afterwards, it was observed by the author that only a very occasional root of heather had re-started, so that most of the roots must have been killed, and there was evidently no seed in the ground. But all the bell heather plants re-started to grow after the cremation of heather and beetles together. Judging by the destruction wrought, here is a pest that, under favourable circumstances to itself, might destroy all the heather in the country, and incidentally grouse shooting as well. The name of this beetle is Lochmæa suturalis.
Draining is receiving a great deal of attention, and well is the subject worth it. The worst kind of land on any moor is what is called “floe” ground. For the grouse it is useless, and nothing and nobody seems able to make any use of it. It is not good for fish in the winter when it forms a lake, nor for grouse in the summer when its islets of stunted heather become dry hillocks surrounded by death-traps for little grouse, not only because of their inability to get from one tussock to another without swimming, but probably also because of the millions of insects they breed. The midge flies swarm when these places are wet, and possibly carry grouse disease in their bites from diseased grouse to the healthy, which thereby become diseased. Probably few grouse chicks are drowned in such places, because the old birds instinctively avoid them for nesting. But neither they nor their chicks can avoid the midges, and, as the author pointed out some years ago, in an article in the Fortnightly Review, if Dr. Klein’s investigation of the disease did really result in the discovery of the true cause of it, namely the bacilli he cultivated from diseased grouse, then everything else he did pointed to the conclusion that only by direct injection under the skin could grouse disease be given from one creature to another, except in close confinement, as when birds healthy and diseased were confined together under one cloth and in a room. Since the writing of that article the Grouse Committee has been appointed, and Mr. Rimington Wilson, who is upon it, has been good enough to inform the author that one of the points being investigated is the midge theory.
A great many people think that the Committee will do no good, but surely in the present state of science it is only a question of money. Probably critics mean that if the bacilli of the disease is discovered, or re-discovered, we shall be no more forward, as the way to exterminate them or their possible hosts will still have to be inquired into. But if it should be discovered that the midges can convey the disease, and that is an extremely easy thing to test, then we need not bother about the life history of the interesting bacilli, but start and drain the breeding-places of their intermediate hosts—the midge flies. This would have one advantage outside all consideration of disease, for it would add possibly one-third to the productive area of the average Highland moor. Probably Mr. Rimington Wilson’s Broomhead moor is the most free of any from disease, and it is generally considered also about the driest moor in Yorkshire. All moors are quite well enough stocked with midges, but occasionally in hot wet weather they come in clouds. It was so in the autumn of 1873, and it was so again in the autumn before the last outbreak of grouse disease in the Highlands. It has been said that grouse disease is always present, and breaks out when the grouse are weakly and food is scarce. These may be contributory circumstances, but that is doubtful. In the hard winter of 1895—or was it 1896?—thousands of grouse died from starvation, but none from disease.
The different methods of killing grouse one year are supposed to have a great deal of influence on the breeding success of their collateral relations the next. Apparently this is as if one said that an honest tradesman was successful and had a large family because his brother the highwayman was hanged instead of being beheaded. But this is only the superficial side of the question, which is one of the survival of the fittest. It is said with a good deal of truth that to drive the grouse is an automatic selection of the old birds for the poulterer, and of the young ones for breeding. This is no doubt quite true, but at the same time grouse driving has only been followed by enormous increases of stock in England, and not in the Highlands of Scotland. The apex of grouse stock in both countries was reached in 1872, and the question arises why it was brought about by driving in the South Country, and, on the contrary, practically before driving had made any headway in Scotland. The difference of effect of what was the same system in both can probably be accounted for partly in several different ways. Both “becking” and “kiting” are also automatic selections not only of the old birds, but particularly of the old cocks. This is easy enough to understand in regard to “becking,” but is only to be discovered by experience in “kiting.” It appears that the hens are not often shot under a kite, and the reason is supposed to be that they are the more timid, and make off before the kite gets near. Both these systems were practised in the Highlands before driving was introduced, but so they were also in Yorkshire. In the Highlands the grouse were not so wild but that the shooter could select the old cock of a brood and kill him over the dogs. In Yorkshire this could not be done; it was difficult to get near the youngest broods, to say nothing of the old cocks, and it had been difficult for half a century, as is pointed out in the chapter headed “Grouse that lie and Grouse that fly.” Then, when these old cocks became widowers and joined others similarly afflicted, nothing could sufficiently reduce their numbers, and it was not reduction but extermination that was wanted. Driving in Yorkshire accomplished this, for there are no rocky “tops” there which defy the drivers. In Scotland, on the other hand, the wilder the old cocks grow the more certainly they get upon these “tops,” and the safer they become from the gun. When driving is put off until the 1st of September or thereabouts, as it mostly is in Scotland, the driving is not an automatic selection of a large proportion of the old birds; on the contrary, they soon get up on the “tops” when disturbance often occurs below, and they leave the hens and the broods to “face the music” in the strath. Thus, on the rolling moors of Yorkshire the wilder the old cocks become the more certainly they get driven to the guns, whereas in Scotland the more certainly they find security on the tops that never yet have been successfully driven. Before peregrines were mostly destroyed, the old cocks dare not venture on those covertless tops. From these facts it can be gathered that it is not the driving that makes all the difference, but merely the killing of barren and old birds, and that it does not matter how this is accomplished so that it is done thoroughly. The assumption is that it was done thoroughly in Scotland before driving began, and that it was impossible to do it in England, where the birds were a fortnight earlier and out of all comparison wilder. At any rate, we cannot deny that before grouse butts were seen on one moor in fifty in Scotland, the grouse stock had arrived at its highest point; that between 10,000 and 11,000 grouse had fallen before dogs at Glenbuchat in the season of 1872; that over 7000 had been killed in a month at Delnadamph, in Aberdeenshire; and also that 220 brace had been killed to one gun over dogs at Grandtully, in Perthshire, in a single day, as had a similar bag a couple of decades before by Colonel Campbell of Monzie. Only once since has as large a bag been made by one gun in the day, and that was twenty years ago. Now Scotch moors do not equal the season’s bags recorded above, nor do men make as big single gun-bags over dogs. Only once in 1905, and again in 1906, have a pair of guns shooting together equalled 100 brace in the day.
Another question arises here naturally. It is: Are the birds wilder than they were thirty-five years ago, and does driving at the end of the season make them wilder for the next season? No doubt it makes the old cocks wilder, but the grouse hen is only just as wild as her brood always. Even in Yorkshire, before the brood can fly the grouse hen lies to be trodden up; she grows wild exactly in proportion to the wildness of her chicks, and if we are to believe the biologists, acquired character is not transmitted to offspring. The author believes that the principal necessity in all grouse preservation is to kill a large proportion of the old cocks whether they have had broods or not, and consequently where wildness makes them secure they should not be made wild by end of the season driving, either with or without a preliminary of dog work. Had the author the planning and management of Highland moors now as he had years ago, he would get rid of these already-made-wild old cocks by driving each beat the day before dogging it, but with drivers just so far apart as appeared to be necessary to make sure of moving the old cocks but not the broods, which in any case will not drive well as early as the first week of shooting. The clearance of the objectionable brigade, which if left alone the first bad weather will send to the “tops,” is as necessary for a driving moor as for a dog moor, and as it is for one which has previously been both. The greater market value of the dog moors in the Highlands over the driving moors in England (grouse for grouse) makes it necessary to find a way to negative the damage done by making the old cocks wild. But the writer is not sure that the manner of going up to dogs is not responsible for half the apparent wildness of the old cocks. It is well known that nothing makes any birds fly so quickly as the thought that they are seen. Walking straight to a dog’s point, the handler in the middle and a gun on each side of him, convinces any self-respecting old cock that he is seen, and off he goes. On the other hand, if the handler advances in the tracks of one of the shooters, and these walk up 40 yards wide of the dog on either side, they may then safely pass the point a considerable distance, and if it is necessary, they can, with the handler, go back to the dog. If birds have allowed them to pass thus, they will also allow them to close in on them, for they will feel themselves surrounded. The old cock meantime has assuredly run forward, and nine times out of ten also turned to right or left, and the chances are great that one of the shooters will by these tactics just head him off, and get a possible shot at a bird that would otherwise have stood no chance of being killed.
The walking wide, in first driving, is practised on the Ruabon moors by Mr. Wynne Corrie in order to secure a greater proportion of old cocks and let off more young birds than would otherwise be the case. Mr. Corrie has given the author some very valuable information upon his management of the Ruabon Hills, but clearly if such tactics are necessary on a moor where the old birds cannot by wildness take to the “tops” and save themselves, they are ten times more necessary where this can be and is always done. In Caithness-shire the old cocks can be killed at any time of the season; they run there; and a dog that rodes well and fast is a necessity. Mr. W. Arkwright, of pointer celebrity, makes a practice of hunting down these old birds until he makes his grouse moor similar to that paradise regained as a sign of which seven women were to cling to one man. In practice it is only two hens that cling to one cock, and this upset of the natural order has also been observed on the Ruabon Hills, particularly in 1905; and the keeper there tells the writer that when it occurs he always notices that it is followed by a good season. Here are two opposite methods accomplishing the same end, and the author knows enough of the subject, besides, to be able to say, Make your grouse polygamous by force of circumstances, and each hen will be contented with half the ground she otherwise would have considered hers by right of masculine strife.
In considering and comparing present-day bags with those of earlier years, it is necessary to avoid comparing now well managed moors with themselves at a time when they were badly managed. There are all degrees of bad management, and what we have to do is to go to the moors that yielded the best at the various dates and consider what was the management that brought this about. Some of the best moors in Scotland seem to have been very poorly managed in the great year of 1872. There is Menzies Castle moor, for instance, which lies only half a dozen miles or so from the record-breaking Grandtully moor, and yet in 1872, when the latter surprised all grouse shooters, the former was said to be very badly off for grouse, and the birds killed over dogs were nearly all old ones. Nevertheless, be it noted that the bags of old birds made were then far above the average of present-day shootings, which not only shows what was expected by sportsmen in those times, but also how the old birds sat to dogs. There were some peregrines to keep them in the long heather.
All the old records of English moors point to the capacity of the ground for carrying grouse, but to their scarcity nevertheless. The Scotch moors, on the contrary, seem to have had as many birds in the first years of the nineteenth century as they had at any time. Colonel Thornton, in his description of his Highland tour, spoke of big packs of 3000 birds as common in the winter, and in October he found the grouse lie too well in the Duke of Gordon’s country, whereas shortly afterwards on a 12th of August the celebrated Colonel Hawker could do nothing with the wild Yorkshire grouse, where the birds were also particularly scarce. There is no doubt that this scarcity was brought about by Act of Parliament, which fixed the opening season that suited Scotland, and by a fortnight’s earlier breeding just made it impossible to kill the old cocks in Yorkshire. They, in turn, would not breed themselves or let others do so, so that the practice in Yorkshire became almost precisely what it is now in those deer forests where they desire to exterminate the grouse, and do it by leaving them entirely alone.
In 1849 there was driving in Yorkshire; for in that year, on Sir Spencer Stanhope’s moor, Durnford Bridge, there were 448 grouse killed in one day.
The following bags will show what happened in Yorkshire at a glance, but nothing of this sort of rapid increase, as a consequence of driving the birds, will be found as applying to Scotland:—