Twenty-Six Years Reminiscences of Scotch Grouse Moors. Adams William Alexander

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      To show how very ticklish the birds were, shooting four days a week, it would take ten days to get over the beats once, and during our lease we never remember getting over the six beats before a break of weather and the birds packing.

      We carried our game, lunches, spare ammunition, &c., on a pannier pony. Our pony man, Geordie Gordon, was a character – he was Jack of all trades, minister's man, clerk to the kirk, and pony man in the shooting season, and also did what gardening was needed, his dialect the purest Aberdeen, so pure that I always needed an interpreter. He was expected to keep his eyes upon and mark wide birds. On one occasion a bird towered – "Where did he go, did you mark him, Geordie?" "Yes, yes, up, up, up – up there," said Geordie, pointing to the sky.

      Season 1866

      This season we added three puppies of Nell and Rap's to the kennel; they were liver and white like the old dogs, so we called the family Mr. and Mrs. Rap, and the young Raps, but though the puppies turned out well, none of them came up to old Rap. He would do anything, point, retrieve, catch rats, rabbiting, or anything you liked.

      He would do what not one dog in twenty, aye! in fifty, will do: if he had a slant wind of birds he turned back and took a round swing to get his wind properly; with most dogs you have to whistle and work them round by hand.

      I bred him from a pure heavy Spanish pointer dog and a well-bred English bitch, but one so rank that her owner gave her to me to breed from, and then make away with her. I kept three puppies out of the litter, but, excepting Rap, although better looking, they were no good – no real work in them. They would have sold well, but I preferred to shoot them to selling the man who would have bought them.

      One other very good-looking likely puppy I gave to the old Marquis de la – , but I believe, as the old gentleman made a pet of him, and endowed him with a collar and bells, and would have shaved him had he had anything to shave, that his sporting career was not brilliant.

      I came by Rap's father rather oddly: he belonged to a working carpenter, who had picked up the puppy at some nobleman's place where he had been working, had broken him well, and he was a very careful, slow ranger, the very thing for English shooting in the days of stubbles, and I had had my eye upon him all the early summer, and at last, about the middle of August, I negociated the purchase for £7; but the dog never came, and I could not get to hear anything about him. But in the afternoon of August 31 up comes Mr. Carpenter and his dog to "implement" the bargain, as Scotch people would say. I wanted to know how the delay came about, and, after a lot of cross-questioning, it came out that General – 's coachman and he had agreed that the dog was to be planted on the general at £12, and the difference of £5 to be divided between coachman and carpenter; but the planting did not come off, so in the eleventh hour he was brought up to me, and I was glad to take him.

      As Shot, the Spanish dog, grew old, he became very dodgy; he had the run of the house, and would get away and hunt the hedges for the labourer's dinners and bring them home, napkins and all; and, if taken into the town to the butcher's shop, he would go, and, somehow or other, get away unperceived with a piece of meat. He was never caught red handed, at any rate by the butcher, who was consequently accused of base slander.

      The staunchness of those Spanish pointers was remarkable. On one occasion he was pointing and roading, and pointing a landrail in a patch of clover; the bird was headed and rose, and flew right towards the dog's mouth. Shot opened his mouth, and closed it on the bird, and then he stood stock still without moving a muscle.

      He never attempted to meddle with game or rabbits, but if he came near a tiny rabbit just out of the burrow he would pick him up and bolt him like a pill.

      This was a very good season, the second day getting over 100 brace to the two guns, shooting together over the same dogs – getting in all about 400 brace in the season, besides hares and sundries.

      But Fred, when we left the place, was full of fear and trembling, as at the latter end we got two or three badly-diseased birds. Fred knew what disease meant; but to me it was something new yet to learn; and, looking at the magnificent stock of fine healthy birds, I made light of his fears.

      When we took the place, and afterwards went down to look at it, every inquiry was made as to disease, but not a soul would own to anything. It was stated on all hands that on Glenmarkie disease was a thing unknown, but Fred did not believe in its being so. I daresay many of my readers have been told the same flattering tale about other moors, and with the same results.

      Before leaving we discharged the keeper; we could not do with his domineering ways, and, after careful inquiry, we engaged young David Black, a son of a keeper of Lord Airlie's. He came of a good game keeping stock, and was all that we could wish for.

      He was married to an Orkney woman; we liked them both, and they have been in my service ever since, which should speak well for master and man.

      Season 1867

      This was indeed a disastrous season; it was really frightful. Fred's worst fears were more than realised. In the spring disease raged with intense virulence, dead birds lying about in scores on the green ground by the waterside and elsewhere – many in full plumage and apparently in full health. Before the 12th, with the exception of a few broods on the rough ground, there was practically, so to speak, not a bird left upon the grouse ground.

      The whole district was in the same condition; and it goes without saying that we did not go near the place. Fred said, gloomily enough, "There will be no grouse shooting for three years," and he was practically right.

      David Black reported that the spates on the river brought down dead birds in such quantities as to choke the surface of the eddies and backwaters.

      I was almost in despair; I was very keen on the shooting, and I had struggled hard for five years to get it, and realised but two good seasons out of the five.

      Season 1868

      Of course, we let the grouse alone for this season, as well as in 1867. There were very few to let alone; but the disease was gone, and we comforted ourselves the best way we could with the low-ground shooting in October.

      David Black had worked up the low ground well. When we first took the place there were very few partridges. The first season there was a covey of twenty-two birds close to the lodge. We let them alone, and they had multiplied, and in addition there were also a few odd pairs in other parts of the ground. We had shot none, and they had had three years jubilee and pretty good breeding seasons.

      In these high, stormy countries, during heavy snows the poor things can get very little food, and naturally draw down into the stackyards for food and shelter, and, if not carefully looked after, get potted by the farmer, but are not of much good to him, as they are little better than skin and bone.

      Black looked after them. I don't think that our former keeper troubled himself, or the stock would have got up quicker; and there was now a fine stock of all sorts of low-country game, pheasants excepted. Of course, by a fine stock I mean a fine stock for a wild stormy country.

      We had a most enjoyable fortnight's shooting over dogs. In the twelve days we managed to make a mixed bag of 600 head – partridge, snipe, plover, brown hares, rabbits, &c.

      The grouse we let alone, except a stray old cock now and again that had survived through the epidemic – very handsome to look at, but, like the monarch of the glen, very tough, and unsavoury on the table.

      Of course, on that wild ground the covies of partridges were, looking at the extent of ground, few and far between.

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