Three guns is an unreasonable number to send out in one party, unless you have an abnormal stock of grouse, and are anxious to kill all you can. The difficulties of dealing properly with the point, of getting up at the right moment, of all three shooting at the same bird, and other matters of varying skill and courtesy, are much increased. And if the grouse are lying well it is rather hard on the moor. Yet it is too often done. The young men of to-day mostly shoot pretty well, some few very well, and at any rate are pretty destructive at close-lying young birds; and three of them, with every appliance for quick loading and firing, will, as I have already pointed out with regard to partridges, kill far too many young birds, while they are more than likely to spare most of the old ones. These should always be selected where possible as your first victims, and I think that when you are working a wild beat on high ground, where birds are not too plentiful, you should not, when you come across a brood, follow it up to the death and massacre the whole family, but rather deliberately leave a brace of young birds here and there, and turn your attention as much as possible to the more difficult and fascinating art of circumventing the old inhabitants of the ground, my opinion of whom I have recorded in the chapter on Scotch Driving. The following extract

from Daniell's 'Rural Sports' reads quaintly in the present day :

"To shew the abundance, rather than the exploit itself (which by a Sportsman, must be hoped never will be repeated), the Earl of Strathmore's Gamekeeper was matched for a considerable sum to shoot forty brace of moor-game in the course of the 12th of August upon his Lordship's moors in Yorkshire; he performed it with great ease, shooting by two o'clock forty-three brace; at eight in the morning, owing to a thick fog, he had only killed three birds, however the day cleared up by eleven, and the work of slaughter went on rapidly.'

What would the Rev. Mr. Daniell have said could he have lived to see the bags-more than once of over 1,000 brace in a day-which have since been made on this very ground, 'his lordship's moors in Yorkshire,' the now famous Wemmergill and its neighbours ?

We hope forty brace of moor-game in a day may often be killed again; but it is a good bag even now to one gun over dogs, and no doubt there will always be a sufficiency of men able and willing to do it without forfeiting the title of 'sportsman.'

CHAPTER III

SCOTCH DRIVING

THERE are many things which distinguish grouse driving in Scotland from the same sport in England, and some difficulties to be overcome in the former country which are not ordinarily met with in the latter. Nevertheless, it will be my endeavour to show that the distinctions inseparable from Scotch driving merely add an attractive variety to the sport, and that the difficulties are by no means insuperable.

Ever since the memorable season of 1872, of which more hereafter, and which, following as it did upon two very good seasons in 1870 and 1871, finally opened the eyes of the shooting world to the great possibilities of grouse, my opinion has been that on a very considerable number of Scotch moors a scientific and practical system of driving, such as has been in force in Yorkshire for years, could and would produce results to equal the totals ordinarily achieved in that county,