Part 23

Then ascertain, positively and absolutely, when the last attack of disease occurred; it will be the year after the last successful season.

Then take the moor for a term of years, ending in the seventh year from the date of the disease year.

Those moors that suffer the most in their disease year, like the moor in Strathspey, referred to in Season 1871, will probably afford the heaviest shooting in their good years.

Grouse, of course, have other drawbacks besides disease.

If the moors are on high ground, they are liable to have eggs frosted in late frosts, or young grouse killed by late snowstorms, as occurred in Season 1864 on Glenshee. Again, you may have a lazy, whiskey drinking keeper, who neglects vermin-killing; but, as a rule, once out of the egg, the young bird is safe.

HEATHER BURNING AND DRAINING.

Indiscriminate burning of heather is another great drawback on Sutherland and Caithness moors.

In Caithness, it will take fourteen or more years to grow deep, good heather on the hill moors, and in Sutherland eight or ten.

The upper moors of Caithness, and also of parts of Sutherland, carry very little really good heather; in fact, only on the burn banks or dry knolls does it grow.

The remainder of the ground is broken, knotty peat bog, with short stunty heather, and stretches of deer grass, with wet flows on the upper flats. All good shooting ground in fine weather, and birds like it then.

Birds rely on the deep heather for shelter and food in the winter. Burn that out, and they go where they can find it, and don't return. It is just the same as if you burn down a crofter's house and his crops, he must move on to somewhere else.

Some of the best moors in Caithness have been ruined, and cannot be recovered for very many years, to the very serious loss of the proprietors, from incessant burning and shooting down breeding stock after disease, both attributable to the almost culpable negligence, certainly ignorance, of those in charge of the regulation of the burning and the letting of the moors.

The burning is a far more serious business than the shooting down of stock.

One fool of a factor did say to me (he is dead and gone, or I would not name it), "Perish every grouse, before a blade of grass shall suffer."

The sheep rent on the moor to which the above referred is gone because sheep do not now pay on that ground, and the grouse rent--the best rent of the two--is also gone, because the heather is burned off clean as the back of your hand.

In Dalnawillan, heather burning has been with me a constant wrangle with the proprietor or his representatives, or the sheep farmers, no matter the clear agreements to the contrary, protecting the heather. If I was fighting anybody's battle, it was in the interest of the proprietor; the question was one far more important to him than to me.

Burning, to do it properly, is a very expensive process on such extensive ranges as the Caithness moors.

In Dalnawillan and Rumsdale, it needed four parties during the early part of April, to do it properly, four men in each party. One man to kindle, and keep on kindling; the other three men armed with birch brooms, watching and regulating the course of the fire, beating it out where it unduly spreads, or beating it out altogether to rekindle in case of a change of wind in a wrong direction.

Unless the weather is quite dry for a week or more, the rough ground and deer grass, both of which it is most desirable to burn in the interest of grouse and sheep, will not burn, and when your staff of men are collected and got together, a sudden storm of rain or snow comes on, and you are delayed for a week, and perhaps put off altogether for that season.

Naturally, if you are prevented by weather from burning, the sheep farmer is annoyed, because he does not get his burning done. He argues, "Let me burn; I will burn as much in a day as you will in a week." And so he would, but it would be the fine old heather that will burn, and the shooting value of the moor destroyed for many long years.

I do not say that sheep farmers or their shepherds desire to burn, and damage the shooting tenant, and also the proprietor (not that the latter or his factor understand the question or appreciate the damage) by burning out patches of good heather, the burning of which destroys the cover appertaining to hundreds of acres, and so destroys the shooting.

One shepherd certainly, said he liked the ground burned, because it was easier walking.

But if the shepherd is to burn, what can he do by himself.

He can do no more than kindle a fire, and let the winds of heaven take it how and where it likes.

To get a good fire, he will get his back to the wind, and kindle a well-heathered burn, and make a good clear sweep for half-a-mile, and so destroy the shelter of five or six hundred or more acres for a dozen years or more.

I have seen two miles in a blaze at one time, but not on my ground; it was too well looked after.

SURFACE DRAINING.

I am convinced that much may be done in improving grouse ground in the north of Scotland. Make ground habitable and suitable for grouse, and they will come without any further trouble.