Shooting grouse over pointers this season

This year has been a disappointing year for all grouse hunters. Having started off with 20 days lined up for running my HPR dogs for others and shooting over them myself, all but a handful have been cancelled before we even got to the Glorious 13th August. Some of our Scottish moors have almost no young birds this year. The drought killed so many newly hatched chicks.

The last two years grouse

Every year during April and May everyone is looking at the weather and any snow on higher ground is cause for concern. If the Red Grouse has started nesting and produced eggs, a snowfall can wipe out that clutch resulting in most of the affected grouse pairs having to start nesting and laying all over again. This then produces late grouse that are not quite ready to be shot in August. Days are delayed, but it’s not a big problem if the second broods are successful.

However, a more worrying scenario is a spell of wet and cold weather in June or July, especially in June when the chicks are too big to all fit under mum and not yet waterproof, strong and mobile to feed on their own in prolonged rain. Every year this is a worry and some years we all worry unnecessarily, almost hysterically. We tear our hair out and think it is all going to be a bad grouse year only to find that the little robust bird has pulled through a tough summer yet again with almost all chicks coming out strong and well. 

But we did have two bad years back to back in most of Scotland 2016 and 2017. We had snow affecting the eggs and nests and we had some cold and wet spells later, killing off many young chicks. Red Grouse stocks were plentiful in 2016 and it was not too big a problem running small, driven days producing bags with a slightly imperfect ratio between young and old. There was enough stock to produce young the following year.

Then 2017 came along with similar problems and although some estates fared better than others, it turned out to be a bit of a lean year in most places. I remember feeling uneasy about the bags now consisting of far more old birds than young. There were days where I felt we had almost shot the stock out instead of harvesting young grouse for the table. The feeling was, in most places, that grouse are amazing and the population can explode under good conditions and we couldn’t possibly have a THIRD bad year, could we? 

There is nothing wrong with eating old grouse. Even the most tangy, strong old grouse can be cooked deliciously, but that is a story for another day…. The worry last year was that shooting at all meant shooting the breeding stock in many places.

The habit of wet-weather worries

So, as we are so used to worry about the dark rain clouds and cold temperatures, we were all full of confidence during this year’s warm early summer when you couldn’t possibly imagine anything other than an amazing breeding season for the Red Grouse in Scotland. As reports of the temperatures and the lack of rainfall started to be headline news and as we all started to note just how dry everything was, we started to think that too little rain might for once be a problem in the Scottish Highlands. I recall driving South on the A9, where one always enjoys looking at the waterfalls cascading next to the road and the picturesque views of the full lochs. This summer the burns were dry and the lochs had distinct watermarks where the waterline ought to have been. There was clearly an acute water shortage. We all had to start thinking that perhaps we had wished for too much dry weather now.

First grouse counts and rumours

Reports started emerging from game keepers, who had been on the hills, that there seemed to be very few chicks, but nobody wanted to say for certain. By the time we got to the Scottish Gamefair, where everybody meets up exchanging observations, a picture emerged and it wasn’t good. 

Instead of the cold and wet decimating our grouse, the dry weather meant that the insects, which the chicks depend on for protein in the early days, were not there. The chicks simply starved to death in the heat. The further the hen has to lead her chicks to find moisture and insects, the weaker they get and the more they are also visible to predators.

By the end of July, the counting starts in earnest and it was clear that in most places many grouse pairs had lost all their chicks. We found barren pairs and in some places we could run the dogs and found precious little. The cancellations started to come in and we have all ended up with a very small handful of opportunities. 

Disappointing for a young dog

When you run a young dog, just over two years old, then this is time to give him lots of experience. Unfortunately, my Pontus is such one dog and he will not get quite enough grouse hunting this year. They have to use their nose while negotiating very challenging terrain and they have to concentrate all day long even when tiredness sets in. They also have to learn “game handling” by understanding just how close they can get to the covey, putting just enough pressure on them to make sure they sit tight. On the other hand, if they stand back too far, they give the birds a chance to run.

Hard hunting dogs like Pontus always appreciate a warm, supporting, well made dog bed to sleep in after a day out on the moor or in the field. 

For more stories and observations on Working Pointers, please see the Tuffies Blog.

Photo credits:

Pointer and dog bed images - Luise Janniche, Tuffies

Grouse images - Mollie Lord - m'lord Photography