Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Serious matters
Some say driven grouse aren’t actually tricky
If walked-up grouse shooting is so dandy then driven grouse must be the complete deal, right? The summit of sporting achievement? If it’s 10 times the price, it must at least be several times the experience, surely?
I’m not so sure. I have had the privilege and the joy — and it is both, believe me — of shooting driven grouse with both single and double guns and it is a fantastic but daunting experience. I admit that, with time, the daunting aspects might diminish somewhat but since I am unlikely ever to be able to cram in 50 days amid the heather before heading south to my other estates to set about my own and other peoples’ partridges, I must reconcile myself to never really being comfortable in a grouse butt.
It’s not just the sense that I shouldn’t be there. Shooting driven grouse is really difficult; and doing it well is a fair old jump from there. For a start, the whole undertaking takes place at knee height. Your grouse likes the heather and is loath ever to be very far away from it. Accordingly, as they swing across the hill their wing-tips brush the purple sward with every twist and turn. Driven downwind they are also the quickest of gamebirds and so the first problem the novice shooter faces is seeing them coming.
“Take your first bird 80 yards out,” the greybeards will intone. Well, that supposes you can see them 80 yards out. And if you do see them 80 yards out, they are now 50 yards out and you’ve just missed your first chance; and if you’ve read as far as here, you’ve just missed your second chance.
And don’t even think about turning round to take them behind because if you’ve stuffed it up when they’re coming, you’ll never manage to make an impression when they’re going because they have already gone.
“But what about the brace in front and another behind with your second gun?” I hear you cry — and believe me, I feel for you — but that is just a distant dream for the driven grouse beginner. The function of the second gun in our lives is to attempt to salvage some kind of self-esteem before
“It bears repeating — a grouse butt is no place to learn to shoot driven grouse”
every grouse in the vicinity has swept past our butt making rude gestures as they go.
I’ve said it before — but it bears repeating — a grouse butt is no place to learn to shoot driven grouse, especially not with double guns. There are plenty of outstanding shooting grounds these days and most of them have a grouse layout which, with all the multitude of traps cranked up to 11, a bag of 50 cartridges and a loader who knows what they are about, will teach you the rudiments of shooting driven grouse properly.
My advice is to do that for an hour a good handful of times before setting off for the moors in earnest if you want to make the most of your opportunity without looking foolish. Or, far worse, dangerous.
Team up
Better, in my view, to shoot a single gun and have your loader stuff it for you and to focus your attention exclusively ahead. Use your loader’s local knowledge. Agree, between you, a spot, or better still a line, in the heather where you intend to start shooting. Take your time and kill your first grouse thoroughly before looking for a second. And watch it down too. Not just to mark it but to ensure that it doesn’t come fizzing into your butt at warp speed and knock you senseless after putting a hefty kink in your barrels for good measure.
Like the man said: “Spend 10 or 15 thou’ a year for a decade or so and see if you get the hang of it!”
And that was in 1961.
Giles Catchpole is a freelance journalist as well as a keen Shot and angler, and he has written several humorous sporting books