Gingerbread and beer
Ludovic Kennedy
By the time this appears, another Twelfth will be over. We shall have read reports of prospects and results (poor once again above the Highland Line, bet- ter below it?), and seen pictures of the birds shot in the pre-dawn being loaded into .helicopters for shining ones in the Dorchester Hotel (the same pictures could be used, and I daresay are, year after year). This is an annual non-event entirely sponsored by the media. Would anyone notice, or care, if it went unreported?
Certainly those of us who do it would be relieved, for like others of life's pleasures it relieved, for like other of life's pleasures it is essentially private. How to write about it, then, without seeming to be elitist? How to modify the grouse-moor image epito- mised by that famous photograph of the 14th Earl of Home (as he then was) and the first Earl of Stockton (as he then wasn't) in obligatory plus-fours ambling amiably across the moors? But shooting earls are in a minority (not of earls but of shooters generally); and one doesn't wear plus-fours because it is de rigueur like tails at a wedding, but because they are ideal for walking through thick heather and for keeping out the rain.
There are two sorts of grouse-shooting, really; the one the papers favour, of the quality picnicking beside the butts, the men in deerstalkers or caps with sewn-up peaks, the women in tweeds and scarves, doling out baps and buttered gingerbread. At a respectful distance sit the beaters with their sandwiches: they will have walked some three miles that morning and will probably walk another three before the day is out. In tjte old days they were usually estate labourers: now they are more likely to be students on vacation, given a bothy to sleep in, a stack of provisions and beer, transport to visit the nearest pub or disco in the evening, and around f70 for the week. I remember a television programme a few years ago when a camera team visited the Glamis moors and Bernard Falk asked Lord Strathmore why the beaters sat apart. 'They prefer it that way' was the clever reply as though it was entirely their idea; and for once old Bernard failed to put the necessary supplementary — 'And you?'
• But no one graduates to this sort of shoot who has not first (and usuallylas a boy) done the other; walked in line with two or three others and a couple of spaniels or labradors across some modest moor which will never attain the status of butts and beaters; shooting at birds going away from you, which is a lot less testing than when they are coming towards you, and, best of all, doing it with a pointer.
The pointer is a thinnish, high-legged, tireless animal with an amazing nose. A good one lollops to and fro across the line, not more than 20 or 30 yards ahead; when he sniffs grouse, he stops and stiffens (i.e. points) often with one front paw raised dramatically. Those with guns nearest to him take up position behind, knowing that within a few feet at least one bird, possibly a dozen, are sitting invisible in the heather. The tension, as the dog's handler encour- ages him to inch forward, is almost unbear- able, and, if the grouse begin to trickle forward themselves, can last up to a minute. Without warning there is an explo- sion of wings, often where least expected; and unless one can aim and loose off within about three seconds, the opportunity will have passed. Pointers have a great sense of humour' sometimes they point at larks and, occasionally, at nothing at all.
And yet there is nothing quite to match the excitement of a day when the birds are driven; the anticipation, on entering one's butt, in finding around it a mosaic of spent cartridges, proving the activity (if not the success) of those who have been there before. Often there is a long wait, perhaps half an hour; time to daydream, smoke, toy with the Scotsman crossword. Then, from far away, the long whistle to tell us birds are on their way. You crouch down in the butt so as not to be seen, and peer over the top; and if you are lucky you will first see them coming a quarter of a mile away (though some butts are placed where you get virtually no warning at all); and you wonder if they will keep on coming or — as often happens — swerve away at the last moment. The temptation not to pull the trigger until they are almost on you is very great, but the expert takes his first bird when it is perhaps 50 yards out, thus allowing time for a second. In Edwardian days shots like Lord Walsingham would be disappointed not to drop two birds ahead, then, changing guns and turning, two behind. Nowadays, because of the declin- ing numbers of grouse (despite much re- search nobody yet knows why) and the business and expense of loaders, it is only the owners of the grandest moors who can still invite guests to bring two guns.
Indeed the costs of running a grouse- moor these days (rates, keepers' wages, transport, repairs to roads and butts, drain- age, etc) are so great that to meet them most owners, even the richest, let their moors to even richer foreigners for the first few weeks of the season. At the going rate of between £5,000 and £15,000 (depending on the prospects) per moor per week, they can hardly afford not to. With luck the foreigners will miss far more than they hit (though a proneness to hit each other has resulted in keepers fixing pegs to the front of butts to restrict the arc of fire to 45 degrees either side), and this enables owners to invite their friends in the autumn. These can be exciting days, with the low-flying grouse almost indistinguish- able from the new brown heather, and the high fliers, like a swarm of outsize locusts in packs of 50 or more, whistling over your head at around 100 feet. Why do I like it so much? Why would I gladly swop two or three days of any other sort of shooting for a good one on the moors? Many reasons. Going to some of the wildest and most beautiful country irl Britain where the emptiness lasts for miles; the look and smell of the heather, the dust of it on one's shoes, during the short time it is in bloom; the company of like-minded people and friendly, efficient dogs; the skills required of me; baps and buttered gingerbread and beer. And above all the quarry; alive, a bird so wild that no one has yet succeeded in breeding it in captivity' dead the most toothsome of all game birds to eat. I know of no better end to a day on the hill than sharing with my fellow guests what together we shot in the morning; this' in the last analysis, is why we set out. (It is only old birds incidentally, and whatever anyone says, that need to be hung). Yet much as I love it, I am not as '' fanatical as a Wodehousian peer who used to run a shoot in the Scottish Borders; During the first drive one of the party ha° a stroke, keeled over and died. After the drive the peer, knowing the beaters would_ have to be paid anyway and thinking of the. sacks of grouse he was hoping to send southsouth on the night train, said: 'I think 01, George would have wanted us to carry on:, But whatever old George might ha ht thought, the rest of the party thoug'" otherwise; and together the quick and the dead made their way down the hill.
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