Grouse shooting

Why everyone’s’s ttallkiing aboutt ....

THE ‘Rule of Six’ means we can’t have a family get-together indoors – so what if we go grouse shooting instead, given that it’s been exempted?

You’ll need deep (tweed) pockets. It can cost £3,000-plus a day per person as it’s so labour-intensive, with gamekeepers, beaters to entice the birds, picker-ups to retrieve them, hospitality staff etc. So the season, from the ‘Glorious Twelfth’ of August to December 10, is worth about £150million and 2,500 jobs to the economy. Given the cost, it rivals horseracing as ‘the sport of kings’.

So who’s a fan?

Apart from the Royals, other aficionados have included the Duke of Wellington and US President John F. Kennedy. New peer Ian Botham has run shoots, while Tory grandees, including the late Willie Whitelaw, have indulged. Notoriously, he accidentally shot his host, Sir Joseph Nickerson, in the buttocks on a moor at Middleton-in-Teesdale in 1984. He also hit a gun-loader. The Daily Mail story said ‘Willie Bags a Brace’. Referring to the normally dependable Whitelaw, Mrs Thatcher unwittingly triggered mirth when she said ‘every Prime Minister needs a Willie’.

How easy are grouse to shoot?

Not very! They fly up to 70mph, close to the ground with sudden changes of direction. Walked-up hunts, where hunters stroll behind dogs, are even harder than driven hunts, where beaters form a line to marshal birds towards guns shot from special bunkers, or ‘butts’.

Less conventionally, one poacher in Moray reportedly used to scare birds whenever a train approached, causing them to fly into its path, fatally.

How did it start?

Shooting grouse for food (it has less fat and twice the protein of chicken) goes way back and is still governed by the Game Act of 1831, which makes it illegal on Sundays.

So is it good for the countryside?

That’s disputed – to put it mildly! A 2019 report to the Scottish Government noted the science is contested, with ‘tension between the “expert” knowledge of scientists… and “local” knowledge in the field’. Main concerns are burning heather to encourage more growth and the illegal killing of birds of prey to preserve grouse. But gamekeepers claim that responsible management protects land. Heather moorland is rarer than rainforest – with 75 per cent of it in the UK.

OK. I’m sold

Fine. All you need now is a tweed cap and some Hellfire 30 gram No6 shot cartridges. And an invitation from the PM’s grouse estateowning friend David Ross…