How I made acquaintance with my first grouse was very funny; I will tell the tale:
I was at Scarborough with my wife and family, and, talking shooting in the smoke room of the hotel, I was told as a great joke about the shooting on a moor of about 3000 acres near Pickering that was commonage, and free to anybody; of course, that was nonsense, the only parties having the rights of sporting were the commoners, and all others were trespassers; but that did not now matter, anybody shot upon it, but since then the commoners have been wise enough to join together and let the shooting rights at a very handsome rent.
Well, I was fired with the desire of seeing a grouse on the wing. It was rather slow for me at the seaside. I fancy that most paterfamilias find it so. Saying nothing, and cogitating the matter over, I determined to begin my first Twelfth, and accordingly I sent for a brace of my dogs from the south.
The shooting being free, it was necessary to be on the moor before daylight. Therefore I went over to Pickering by train in the afternoon of the eleventh, had some dinner at the inn, and hired a trap and man to drive me over, the driver to officiate as gilly or keeper, and, he being a Yorkshireman, anything in the way of sport could not come amiss to him. I found him keen as mustard to get me on the ground in good time, and at a good starting point.
With the first gleam of twilight the moor was ablaze with the fire of some thirty or more guns.
My first grouse was down before I could see him. Something fluttered up, I shot in the line, down came a bird, and to my intense delight I handled my first grouse—a fine old cock bird.
In three hours the whole thing was over, every bird not killed was put off on to neighbouring ground.
I had managed to get two and a half brace, and thought myself very lucky. I dare say a hundred brace were got off in that short three hours.
I took myself away to Saltersgate Inn, a comfortable wash up, some breakfast, and a nap, and in the afternoon quietly back to Pickering, and home to dinner.
That finished my grouse shooting for that season, but I had caught grouse fever.