Up to the present time there are few signs of any appreciable reduction in the prices of cars, for, so far, improvements in details and the additions to their equipment have absorbed whatever may otherwise have been saved by economies in construction. Some unpretentious but serviceable little cars of limited capacity may, however, be now obtained at something over £100, whilst those who are prepared to spend double this amount will have a wide choice. Not until types become fixed and standardisation of component parts becomes possible can prices be materially reduced.
E. T.
Becking.
THE LAST SHOT AT THE GROUSE.
It has been the fashion to say that since grouse driving became a science the proportion of birds killed and left upon the moors is only a question of the will of the occupier. This season, in Scotland at any rate, has proved that this is not the case. Although there were not many moors perhaps where more grouse ought to have been killed, there were a good many where it was attempted to slay more than proved to be possible. The fact is, when the grouse take to the tops they are practically safe; especially is this the case when these tops are the “march” between two shootings. Then the grouse see the flankers as King Louis of France saw the figures of men in Tenier’s pictures. They look “like maggots,” and grouse are not afraid of those immature insects, although they do not eat them. It is the height and the angle that make all the difference in driving grouse that have become wild enough to take to the “tops,” for the very object of resorting to these altitudes seems to be the better to keep watch and ward against the arrival of the enemy.
As the season advances in the Highlands, bags quickly sink from hundreds of brace per day to tens, and very soon after this they would sink to units were it thought worth while to organise driving parties for the units; but it is not, and consequently the Highland grouse are growing to be almost as difficult to regulate in point of numbers, and more difficult in point of sex, than they were before driving came in. For the latter practice has everywhere increased the wild habit; it has not merely taught existing birds wildness for the time being, but the habit of standing up to look for danger instead of crouching in the heather to hide from it, has become hereditary and instinctive where driving has been the longest practised. Unless moors are very hilly this habit does not much matter, because, provided grouse can be properly flanked and flagged, they can also be driven, but on the tops in Scotland this is not possible, and the outcome is unfortunately that too many of the hens and the young males get killed on the flat ground. The old cocks are the first to take possession of their fastnesses, the tops, and there they remain until, in the breeding season, they take possession of the best breeding sites and drive away all the younger and more healthy birds. The worst feature of this is that these old cocks are like master swans, and think they require a kingdom for themselves, a kingdom without subjects, for none of their kind are permitted to live near them. Consequently the birds left to breed may be numerous, and yet be of no use. They have to move off at breeding time because of the persecution of the old birds. There is no much employed method of getting rid of these old cocks when driving them fails in the hills. There was one before the days of driving, but it is almost a lost art. This was called “becking.”
The practice of becking was very simple and easy to learn, indeed the grouse themselves teach it better than any schoolmaster. Any time in August, when the shooting lodge is really on the moor and not under it, one has but to sleep with an open window, and the first sound of the coming day to greet the awakening sleeper will be object lessons in becking. It is a habit of the proud old cock grouse to challenge each other in the morning. This they do by fluttering up into the air vertically some ten or a dozen feet and crowing. Rarely is the challenge accepted in the autumn, probably because these old grouse have long ago settled their differences, and one no longer trespasses on the ground of the other. Each is king of his brood and ready to defend his castle, but neither will enter willingly into the domain of another bird. Nature is at peace with herself. But when the moorland keeper arises before light and gets upon the moor before the grouse are awake, when he hides in some peat hag, or other shelter, and starts to crow, every old cock grouse within earshot becomes angry at the unknown voice of an intruder, and instantly the challenge is accepted. The intruder not being in a position to go out in search of mortal combat the oldest inhabitant comes to seek him, but instead meets a charge of shot, which unceremoniously, and in revolt of sporting feeling, knocks him over on the ground without giving him the proverbial chance for his life.
Before driving game came in, this was the only way to find grouse for the table, after the spirit of winter wildness had entered into the birds. Nobody thought of it as sport, but the keepers knew of it as a necessity in preserving, for the reason that it killed off the old cocks and none besides. It was an automatic selection of the most unfit, and had it been practised beyond the necessity of the table of the owner, would have done much more for the stock than any other thing could. But it was confined and limited by the state of the larder. Now even this demand has stopped, because cold storage supplies the table with better birds, that is young ones, killed perhaps on August 12th in one year, and eaten on August 11th upon the next, and admirable birds they are, too.
But not only has the necessity of the table ceased to operate for the good of the grouse stock, but driving the birds has rendered “becking” a lost labour in many places.