William Adams: Twenty-Six Years Reminiscences of Scotch Grouse Moors

My grouse shooting days are now past. Increasing years and rheumatic muscles remind me that I have had my time, and a very good time too, so now let younger men take my place and profit by my experience, if it should so please them.

Let us look back on grouse shooting twenty-six years ago. Scotland, so far as regards the sporting of the far north, was then almost a terra incognita .

Railways ended at Inverness, and to get there needed a journey to Aberdeen, and from there by the slowest of slow railways, but quick enough – life was not run at so fast a pace as now.

The more remote districts of the north and west of Scotland were as unknown as the wilds of Labrador.

Previous to that time grouse shooting was for the few; we were content with our English shootings, and very nice and pleasant they were.

Every farmer, if the shooting was in his take, preserved his game; he shot it or he let it. The stubbles were long and full of weeds, the old pastures full of feg, and there was plenty of clover, but turnips not so much grown as now, excepting in the eastern counties, about which I know very little, the hedges and ditches not kept clean as they are now.

There was much less of hand rearing of pheasants; the hens were spared certainly the second time through, and nice mixed bags were made in covert with hares and rabbits and wild pheasants, hand rearing partridges being scarcely known.

Hares are now gone consequent on the Ground Game Act, and without them the farmer does not find it worth while to preserve, as the shooting will not let without ground game.

The open shooting was mostly done by two guns shooting together over dogs; in fact, you could not find your birds or fur without them.

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.

The following season I joined some other men for a few days' shooting over dogs on a small moor in the county of Durham, and had a few pleasant enjoyable days, getting, perhaps, thirty brace in all. At that time grouse sat very fairly well to dogs for the first ten days in the English counties, as they now do in Perthshire and Aberdeenshire, but there was nothing like the quantity of birds on the English moors that there are now. One odd thing may be remarked: In all my sporting career I never shot but one curlew, and that was on this moor. Of birds, they are the wariest of the wary.

The grouse fever was upon me at full fever heat, and I was determined that I would solve the problem of Scotch grouse shooting, and, finding in the spring of this season that an Aberdeen innkeeper advertised shooting, I wrote to him to know if he could put me in the way of a small place for one gun. Of course he replied glowingly, and said that a small moor by Gartly station, in Aberdeenshire, then on his hands, was quite enough for one gun, that capital lodgings were to be had at the merchant's house, and the price of the shooting for three weeks would be but £50.

I felt quite certain that I should be done, but I also knew that knowledge and experience could only be had by paying for it, so I plunged to what was not a very costly plunge, and accordingly I sent down my English keeper from Warwickshire.

In those days trains to Scotland did not afford the luxuries of to-day. Sleepers were unknown, and in the first-class carriage the elbow did not double up. The extreme of luxury was a second-class compartment retained for two men, and bed up the best way you could.

I was again at Scarborough. It was a slow, weary business to travel to York by a stopping train, and then the whole night and half next day getting to Aberdeen. So I bethought myself of asking the London and Aberdeen S.S. Co. to take me off at Scarborough. This they agreed to do if I would lie off in the offing and wait for the boat.

I went off in the afternoon of the day. It was a fine day, fortunately, and I watched ship after ship, and at last, about 4 p.m., the big paddle wheels of the steamer loomed up.

It was the crack boat of the Aberdeen S.S. Co.; she had been chartered as a transport during the Crimean war, and was the only ship that rode out, or steamed out, the heavy gale off Balaclava that wrecked so many of our ships.

She tried to take me on board without a full stop, but I would not see it, and drifted a long way astern, causing considerable delay; but at last I was got up the side.

The captain swore great guns at the idea of stopping his ship for one passenger. I agreed with him and recommended him to swear at his directors in London; and verily believe he would have sworn at them if he had had them there to swear at.

A smooth and lovely passage, arriving at Aberdeen about 11 a.m. next morning.

On arriving off the coast of Fife we ran through a school of whales, spouting and tumbling about in the most idiotic manner.

Arrived at Aberdeen I lunched at my friend the innkeeper's, who impressed me with the exceeding merits of my take, and the grouse I should get.

In the afternoon I was away by train to Gartly, and there found my keeper and dogs.

The lodgings were very plain, but good enough, and there, fortunately for me as turned out, also, lodging and shooting a moor rented from my innkeeper at Aberdeen, was that grand old sportsman the late Mr. Ginger Stubbs.

I am pretty certain that, my £50 being in view, that my bit of ground was cut off from Stubbs moor as an afterthought.

Mr. Stubbs was excellent company, and very good-naturedly he taught me a great many useful things that I desired to know about grouse shooting.

My moor was truly small: about an hour in the morning hunted it, and then I let it rest till the afternoon, giving birds time to work back home. The whole bag was about thirty brace of grouse, some grand brown hares, and a few sundries.