Mr. Wynne Corrie has improved the best season’s bag at Ruabon Hills by about 1000 brace, or one-third more than the previous best. He has given the author four reasons to which he attributes the improvement, and as his is nearly the only South Country grouse moor that at once shows a great stock and also a great improvement over season’s bags of four decades ago, they are here stated:—
1. Leaving as large a head of breeding birds as possible.
2. Improvement of the heather.
3. Sunk butts.
4. Not shooting any grouse over dogs.
Probably it will be gathered from the records of bags made that the system of only driving, in Yorkshire, has not increased the birds since 1872, and that dog work and driving afterwards has also had the same stagnant or retarding effect in Scotland, where also driving alone has made no improvement either, that when it could be said of moors that they produced as well as their neighbours, of similar area and conditions, under previous management. This is all very disappointing to those who give time and money to moor improvement, and sacrifice their shooting several years in order to get up the head of game. It is not pleasant to have to mention these partial failures, but it is felt that if we do not look facts in the face as they are, there is little chance of improvement. There is, in fact, a something besides disease that keeps the grouse stock below a certain point in the best of years, and, as Allan Brown says, causes a little grouse to require as much land to itself as a cow.
These bags are not quoted, then, merely because they are records, but because they teach that there is something never yet found out that is infinitely more important to discover than the bacilli of the grouse disease. It must be more potent than disease in its effects of keeping the grouse stock down. For their numbers from a stock-breeder’s point of view seem utterly absurd. That vegetable-feeding birds weighing under 2 lbs. should want as much vegetation to themselves as sheep weighing 50 lbs. is the point, and there must be a reason for it, although it has never yet been discovered or even searched for, as far as is known to the author. But before dealing with that point it is necessary to show the present stagnation under every system.
At that period when Yorkshire grouse were only remarkable for their scarcity, Colonel Campbell of Monzie killed 184½ brace in 1843 in a day, 191 brace in 1846, and another bag of 222½ brace with no date mentioned. On the Menzies Castle moor, before mentioned, it was said the 1872 birds were mostly old and bred badly, yet five shooters obtained the following bags in the three first days, namely, 205, 117, and 168 brace; in 1905, an excellent breeding season, the bags were on the same moor 115 and 76 brace. Then at Grandtully, close by, the 1872 season yielded 220 brace to the single gun of the Maharajah Duleep Singh in a day, and in the first day of 1906 four guns got 35 brace. There were 7000 grouse killed at Delnadamph, mostly by driving, in 1872, when, elsewhere, there were no butts, as at Glenbuchat, where they killed nevertheless 10,600 grouse over dogs. Nothing like the above is done over dogs now, the nearest approach to it being at Sir John Gladstone’s moors, where upon occasion within the decade about 4000 grouse have been killed over dogs, and 6000 later by driving.
Unquestionably the best average in England has been kept up at Broomhead, the season’s bags of which have never been published, but the two best days in each season have been, and as records alone they are of great interest, even if nothing but facts could be deduced from them (see table on opposite page).
Bags made on Bowes subscription moor on 12th August 1872 were for 30 shooters over dogs as follows:—85½, 65½, 56½, 54, 49, 45, 44½, 43, 50, 40½, 41½, 41½, 36, 35, 35½, 35½, 35, 33, 33, 32, 32, 29½, 23½, 21½, 23, 21, 16, 27½, 8, 5½ brace. Total, 1099 brace.