The grouse season 2024 has been almost universally declared a disaster. However, every poor year we hear stories of the odd moor where numbers buck the trend and provide a shootable surplus.
I was very fortunate to have been invited to join friends in North Yorkshire to try for a day in the butts. We planned for fifty brace and hoped for the best.
The team are all good friends and have shot before on numerous occasions. This time of year we are usually to be found on Muggleswick and East Allanheads in Cumbria, staying at Naworth Castle, but this year they had declared a wash-out and cancelled all the shooting.
The Bolton Estate provided the opportunity to try our luck, and hospitality was provided by D'Arcy & Imogen Wyvil of Constable Burton Hall, which proved a perfect setting for the weekend.
The problem with grouse numbers this year has been the wet weather early in the year. It has created ideal conditions for the parasytic worms which infest the grouse and kill adult birds, as well as young ones. The medicated grit we once thought had rid us of the problem is less effective than it once was and 'keepers reported picking up dead adult grouse well into the summer.
The red grouse, which lives nowhere else on the planet, survives in numbers which are historically cyclical and the grouse bounce-back strongly from relatively low numbers when blessed with a season or two of good spring weather. A lucky grouse moor may have six good years a decade.
Due to the low expectations, we were single-gunning rather than shooting with a pair. I took my 1883 Stephen Grant side-lever 16-bore hammer gun. It has 30" Damascus barrels and is choked about a Quarter left and Threequarters right. It is relatively heavy for a 16-bore, at 6lbs 10oz but that suits me and I also prefer the bar-action to the more common back-action guns that Grant made.
The weather was kind, no mist on the moor when we arrived. Earlier days had been planned and cancelled due to fog, so this was actually the first day that the grouse on this moor would be over the Guns this season. Nobody was quite sure what to expect.
I drew peg one for the first drive and listened to the gunfire from over the hill, while I watched any grouse heading our side turn away and disappear to the extreme left of my butt, a hundred yards distant. Eventually one tried its luck, breaking to my left, low, over the dry stone wall and on, I tickled it with my first barrel in front and dropped it fifty yards behind with the second.
The next drive was equally quiet, I missed one bird and killed the next. Otherwise, I was untroubled. It looked like my cartridges would last the day!
For drive three I was in the middle of the line and it got busier. The day remained warm, with a breeze of increasing strength developing steadily through the day and giving the grouse increasing lift and speed. Here I killed seven birds and missed two. Eight hit the heather on drive four and another five on the final drive. I was pretty pleased with my shooting, given that I had not shouldered a shotgun since the end of January. Quite a few second barrel kills but not much had escaped unscathed.
For ammunition I was using Gamebore Regal, 16-bore, fibre wad, 28g, No.6 shot. I use this pretty much for everything I shoot, though the Eley VIP fibre wad is also a pretty effective alternative. We are fortunate in the UK that we have a very good choice of ammunition suitable for 2 1/2" chambers in all the bore sizes commonly encountered, from .410 through to 12-bore.
We normally shoot back-to-back days but this year we were extremely pleased to have managed to get in front of any grouse at all. Every day in a grouse butt is a privilege and I would have been delighted had I shot one grouse per drive. We ended up with 87 1/2 brace, which was phenomenal.
The second day we headed for the partridge drives. The first two were in a wooded valley with moor surrounding it and the birds came thick and fast. Extremely sporting and in the most beautiful surroundings. The team can all shoot and it was a pleasure to see some excellent performances up and down the line.
The thick cover provided ample opportunity for the teams of dogs to pick up and they did so very effectively, with a mixture of labradors, spaniels and even the odd vizsla among the packs scouring the hillside and woodland.
The drives after lunch were incredible, up high on the top of a plateau, covered in tussocky grass. No game crop, the birds stayed at home and were fed on top of the hill, which stood atop high cliffs rising vertically in front of our pegs. The first drive was high, the second a good deal higher. By then the wind, though pleasantly warm, was blowing strongly and the birds were very sporting, picking a line, then dropping a wing and falling out of shot as you swung through. Still, shooting was pretty straight all along the line and we ended the day with 549 head.
Upon reflection, this was about as perfect a sporting break as it is possible to imagine. Sumptuous surroundings and catering in a privately owned country house occupied by D'Arcy's family since the 1500s, relaxed, convivial conversation into the evening and so much sport in the daylight that I doubt can be bettered.
As we packed our vehicles and headed for home on Sunday morning, everyone had a warm glow of contentment and a memory bank of priceless recollections to treasure for life.
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