Having a Wales of a time

Tom Twiston-davies visits the grouse capital of north Wales to see a driven shoot that is enjoying great success after a 34-year drought

The Ruabon Moors sit peacefully, almost silently, looking down upon the plains of Wrexham. However, these moors once boasted the record numbers of grouse per acre in Great Britain. According to the Williams-wynn game book, an astounding 46,000 grouse were shot on the Ruabon Moors in the period from 1903 to 1913; even a certain Winston Churchill is mentioned in the pages. You can imagine the barrage of shots that would have echoed through Rhosllanerchrugog, the large village at the base of the moors, during the season.

Overshooting throughout the 20th century, however, brought a dramatic decline to grouse numbers across all moors, but it wasn’t until 1983 that a severe wave of tick-borne disease almost drove Ruabon Moors’ grouse to depletion and effectively ended the opportunity for driven grouse.

Fast-forward more than three decades and I am driving to Harry Williams-wynn’s house in Erbistock to follow what will hopefully be the first driven grouse day in Wales for 34 years. After violently rattling the door of the wrong property at 7.45am, I eventually find Harry’s house with the reassuring sight of five or six fourwheel-drive vehicles parked outside. As I walk into the crowded sitting room, a cup of coffee is thrust into my hands. There is an excited murmur — usual for the first day of the season but there is something more here, making me wish I had a gun in my car, instead of a notebook. 16 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE

I have just enough time to chat to one William Midwood, a man of infectious good humour, who tells me how he remembers shooting here when it was last driven. A close family friend, he has been on a few walkedup days on Ruabon since, but is ecstatic for the chance to shoot driven grouse on the moor again.

We are quickly shepherded into the vehicles, which snake in a procession through the Welsh country lanes and villages. Steeper and steeper we climb, until we arrive at keeper Stuart Hart’s farmhouse at the edge of the moors. Under the directives of Harry, Stuart has been paramount to the reinvigoration of grouse numbers. He originally ran the successful partridge shoot at the foot of the moors for the Williams-wynn family, but for the last couple of years has concentrated wholly on grouse management after Harry’s appetite was whet by a few walked-up days on the moors.

Stuart comes from a family of gamekeepers; his father was

“Coveys of up to 20 grouse appear barely visible on the blue horizon making their way to the butts”