Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Serious matters
Is walked-up grouse shooting as good as it gets?
You have to be aware before you even contemplate walking-up a grouse what might be involved. Let’s begin with the weather. You’ve never seen a picture of happy, smiling people walking-up grouse in torrential rain. Or mist. Or cloud. This is because cameras do not work well in torrential rain, thick mist or low cloud.
It is also the case that people under such circumstances are very seldom happy. Or smiling.
If they are out, they will be cold, wet and miserable, wishing they were back in the lodge playing cards. And if they are back in the lodge playing cards they will be grim-faced and grumpy because their precious and much anticipated day of walking-up grouse has been cancelled because of the weather. Aye, it’s a right chancy business is grouse shooting.
Nor should it be forgotten that walking-up grouse can be damned hard work. It looks easy enough, doesn’t it? Skipping along through acres of purple heather with the sun on your back and the chatter of grouse all about. What’s not to like? Well, for a start there’s the climb. When I lived in London, Holborn underground station was home to one of the longest escalators on the network and it was said that unless you could make it up the coming-down side at least once without a heart attack, you weren’t ready for the hill.
It was not a perfect measure but it wasn’t far off the mark, let me tell you.
There are, of course, moors where Guns are transported to the top of the hill in fleets of commodious 4x4s or, for all I know, by squadrons of helicopters, but you have to ask yourself “is it sporting?” or more probably “how much?”.
On the other hand, the one massive advantage of the down escalator at Holborn is that its middle section is not infested by clouds of midges the size of Zeppelins. Deet, Jungle Formula, lavender rub and cinnamon oil are meat and drink to a Scottish midge. Well, drink at any rate, the meat course being, obviously, you. Nor should we forget about the ticks.
It’s one thing taking a beastly bug off the dog’s ear with a pair of tweezers; it is an altogether different operation to extract the brute from your own intimate parts.
Surge of adrenaline
“Nothing is as exciting as a covey of grouse exploding out of the heather”
And even assuming that you make it up to the heather line in more or less one piece and still in your right mind, the heather turns out to be more wood than flower, waist-deep to boot and acting more often as a disguise for patches of swamp that will dunk you up to your cartridge belt in goo than a proper habitat for Lagopus lagopus scotica.
But mark this, readers dear, nothing — and I mean nothing — is as exciting as a covey of grouse exploding out of the heather a couple of paces ahead of you. Nothing matches the surge of adrenaline as the gun comes to the shoulder or the flood of sporting satisfaction as one — or perhaps two — cartwheels into the heather.
Hunting wild birds in wild places is a rare and precious experience. If shooting a few brace of walked-up grouse is an excitement almost beyond compare, then sitting atop a well-tended moor with your back against a warm stone, the loch twinkling in the distance and a dog at your side looking meaningfully at the slightly worse-for-wear bun that you have rescued from your game bag, is a moment to nourish the sporting soul. Exceeded only by the arrival of those very grouse at the dinner table a day or two later, well seasoned, lightly roasted and accompanied by some proper claret, in the company of friends and family.
It really doesn’t get any better.
Do you agree with Giles? Let us know via Stletters@futurenet.com
Giles Catchpole is a freelance journalist as well as a keen Shot and angler, and he has written several humorous sporting books