The Complete English Wing Shot

by George Teasdale Teasdale-Buckell

The proper driving of grouse to the guns is the result of local education based on sound broad principles. The former it is obviously not possible to deal with, and the latter have already been admirably stated elsewhere, except for this: it has been assumed that grouse can be driven everywhere, but this is very far from correct. They certainly cannot be driven where they will lie well to dogs all the season. Moreover, they cannot be satisfactorily driven when they resort to the “tops” of the ranges of hills or mountains in the Highlands, where a short flight puts them 500 feet over the “flankers’” heads. These flag-men then have no more effect on the direction of the flight of the grouse than the other “insects” in the heather have, for the drivers resemble insects when crawling along so far below.

To state the principle of grouse driving shortly is possibly difficult. It is based upon a series of incidents in the perceptions of the birds, which are influenced by sight alone, and not by hearing or smelling. They should first see a driver far off in the direction it is most wished they should avoid flying to. If they take wing at this first sight, then the act of rising should bring them into sight of a line of men covering every point that they are not desired to make for. Local conditions may alter all this, as it may be that grouse have a constant flight, and take it however they are flushed, but generally they have not. The means stated generally resolves itself into a quarter-circle of beaters on the most down-wind side of a cross-wind beat, attached to a straight line of beaters in the centre and upon the most up-wind side of the beat, so that the men farthest down wind are the most advanced. On the other hand, when the drive is direct to the guns with a full wind, the line of beaters will have two horns each well advanced on either side, unless local conditions make one side dangerous and the other not so. Generally they do. The desired flight may or may not be at first in the direction of the line of shooters. The first object may be concentration, either in the air or on the ground. In the first case, the grouse having been got to go towards a concentration point in their flight, are gradually turned to the guns by men who are set at danger points, and either show themselves to or are seen by the grouse at that exact proximity that the sight of the unexpected will have most effect in turning them. It is a curious fact that when flag-men are seen at a long distance ahead of them, the grouse may or may not swerve in their flight, but seen suddenly when so near as to leave just more than enough time for turning before the impetus has carried them over the head of the man with the flag, they turn off instead of merely swerving. Consequently, the men who are set to turn grouse are a law to themselves. They show themselves at the psychological moment, according to the speed of the grouse. Only a very little is required to turn a slow up-wind pack of grouse, whereas very much will sometimes not turn fast down-wind birds. This turning the birds from the point towards which they are driven is often necessary. Thus grouse may not be willing to drive in another direction, or to drive otherwise might be to lose the birds for the day, and to have the butts where the turn in the flight occurs might be to allow the majority to go straight on into some other moor, not to be seen again that day, if ever.

When birds are, or can be, collected or concentrated upon the ground, it is much more simple. It is difficult then to make everything go right, but it does not require quite the Napoleon of tactics that the other method does. Obviously the concentration of grouse upon the ground implies a larger beat than in the other case—one in which the natural flight of the grouse will induce them to settle before they get within sight of the butts. This concentration and settlement of the birds enables a new formation of drivers to be made, for the collection of the birds may have caused driving right away from the butts in the first instance, and in most cases not directly towards them. The object of all driving is not only to put as many grouse as possible within range of the guns, but the more important part is that of keeping on the moor all those grouse that go by the butts, to be used again and again the same day.

Another way of driving grouse is based upon the same principle, except that the driving is simple, because the beats are short and direct to the guns. In this case natural common sense is much more effective than in the other two, which must depend upon local knowledge almost entirely. But in all cases men to turn the grouse if they try to break out have to be employed, and they are of no use unless they perfectly understand what the grouse will do under every circumstance that may arise. Some of these men are so clever that when shooters in the butts are watching the operations and believe the big pack has broken out, they suddenly see it turn and head straight to them. Then the gunners recognise that the “pointsman,” if the simile is admissible, knows his business better than they know it; for it is clear from their anxiety that they in a similar situation would have shown themselves too soon, and that the flag-man has timed the occasion as accurately as a railway pointsman switches a train on to another line of metals. The short driving system may be exemplified by Lord Walsingham’s great performance, when he got 1070 grouse to his own gun in the day in 20 short drives on a 2200 acre moor. The long drive system may be exemplified by the first drive in the day at Mr. Rimington Wilson’s Broomhead moor, where 6 drives in the day is the outside limit.

There is a great deal of difference of opinion upon the best form of grouse butt, and some difference upon the best distances apart for them. But these are not abstract questions, although in conversation and books they are treated as if they were. Much depends upon the manner of driving. When the birds are brought from a distance and concentrated, it is clear that they cannot have got used to the sight of the butts on the ground to which they are forced. On the other hand, in short drives the birds are practically never off their own ground, and consequently get used to the butts, however conspicuous they are, and do not fear them. In this case nothing seems to be better than the horseshoe-shaped butt built up of turfs with heather growing on the top. Slight modifications of the horseshoe formation are best made when the butts are used alternately to shoot grouse driven from opposite directions. It is then well that the entrance should be an over-lap of one end.

But where grouse are brought off their own ground, and are not used to the sight of peat cutters and their temporary stacking of the peat, it seems that sunk butts are of the most value. The latter are much the more costly to make, because they require draining at a depth of 3 or 4 feet below the surface. The manner of making these sunk butts is not to excavate to the full height of a shooter’s gun arm, but to use the turf taken out of a partial excavation for making a gradual slope up bank close to the pit, a foot or two above the surrounding surface—the object being that the bank thus made should look like a natural heather bank, and not present a black surface of peats to the sight of approaching grouse. The biggest bags ever made have been obtained with the upright peat butts; but The Mackintosh, who has had the largest day’s bag in Scotland, prefers sunk butts.

The latter gentleman also puts his butts nearer together than anyone else. The nearest are about 15 yards apart. This would not suit most people. Possibly, though, this too greatly depends upon the nature of the driving. Twenty yards apart may be far enough for very high pheasants, and may prevent two guns shooting at one bird. If grouse happened to be equally high, as some ground might easily make them, the danger of shooting other’s birds would be lessened, and butts could with advantage be nearer together than where the grouse flew low. In the beginning of driving, butts were built 80 yards apart, now they are usually made at 50 yards intervals. Low flying grouse, going half-way between butts 80 yards apart, cannot be dealt with; their nearest point to a gun is 40 yards, but at the moment when they are between the butts they cannot be safely shot at, and before they get there they are out of range.

No doubt most missing of driven grouse is caused by shooting at them too far away. This is the greatest fault of the novice. The next most productive source of missing is shooting under coming birds and over those that have passed the butts. After this, failure to allow enough ahead of fast birds, to compensate for their movement while the shot is going up, is the next most productive of missing, and shooting too much in front of slow up-wind birds runs it hard.

Beating for grouse with dogs is usually done by going to the leeward end of the day’s beat and then walking at right angles with the wind, and turning into it at every march to the shooting, or boundary to the beat. This, however, is a rule that has to be honoured by its breach, in the hill districts particularly. Thus, when beating across the wind means that one has to rise and sink at an angle of 45 degrees every time, such a method has to give way. It also often happens when a fair breeze is blowing that to start beating up wind near a boundary march means that every bird will circle round and be carried by the wind out of bounds. Then the rule again breaks down. The object is to drive the birds that are not shot into ground to be beaten in the afternoon. This is best done by an up-wind beat of the zigzag order when the wind is light, and by a down-wind beat, starting from the windward march, when the wind is fairly high, but not so high as to carry the game over the leeward march. It usually happens that wind sinks about four o’clock in the afternoon, or before. If this happens, it is a good plan to draw off and go round to begin again at the leeward side of the ground into which the morning birds have been driven. The majority of the Welsh moors are so flat that they can be beaten in any direction, like those of Caithness, but the Highland moors are as steep as the Welsh hills are before you reach the heather ground. After you are once up in Wales, the walking is easy in all directions. The Highland hills are very like those of Wales, but with this great difference, the rises from the Scotch valleys are clothed with heather and are the best grouse ground. In Wales this rise is grass and fern-clad sheep farms, and often takes half a day’s work, counting work as human energy, to surmount before shooting begins. For this reason Providence created the Welsh pony.

The grouse have a very curious habit in the wet weather of affecting the wettest and wildest parts of the moorland. Then, and only at that time, you may find them mostly on the flat floe ground, where every foot of peat is a miniature island, and where there is no shelter whatever from the storm. This is probably because the grouse do not mind rain upon them, but do very much mind brushing the wet heather with their feathers. At such times grouse are generally wild, for they will not “squat” and hide, but run very much. Then they usually have very good scent, the dogs find and point them a long way, and then draw on and on after them as the grouse run ahead. It is nevertheless just possible to get good shooting by two guns going well ahead, very wide of the dogs, and coming back to meet the point. It is the sun, not the wind or the wet, that makes grouse hide in the heather, and probably the reason is that they were originally an Arctic species, and can stand cold better than very hot sun. In support of this view it may be said that grouse disease seems to disappear in very cold weather, and moreover the red grouse are, in everything but feather colouring and the white moult of winter, the same as the willow grouse—an obviously Arctic race.