Charles Richard Weld was typical of well-heeled visitors to Scotland, keen to enjoy the sport offered by a richly stocked Scottish estate. For many like him, 12 August – the Glorious Twelfth – the start of the grouse shooting season, was the best time to visit Scotland. For some it was the only incentive that could lure them north.
We spring from our bed, keenly alive to the fact that another 12th of August has dawned, rush heroically beneath a shower bath, which seems to flog our back with icicles, leave the bath-room red as a boiled lobster and braced as a drum, dress, and sit down to a breakfast. … No chance of starving here. No trifling with infinitesimal portions – we eat of all, and leave such a wreck behind that a dog would fare badly which came after us …
And now for filling the liquor flasks – flasks, did I say? – barrels rather, those pretty modern inventions with glass ends through which you see the beverage. Tantalizing contrivances doubtless to the very thirsty gilly, who, if you have securely locked the bung-hole, cannot even wet his lips with the coveted liquor. But our gillies were not tantalized, for although we had imported from Tunbridge a cask of rare bitter ale, and had various wines and spirits, we preferred filling the barrels with tea without milk or sugar, having found from considerable experience that this is the most refreshing beverage during a long and fatiguing day’s shooting.
The gillies did not, of course, approve this decision, for your Scotch or at all events, Caithness gilly, has not yet acquired the knowledge that a pound of tea that may be had for three shillings and sixpence is capable of giving far more comfort than a gallon of whisky that costs sixteen shillings. So we, or rather they, carried supplementary flasks filled with fiery whisky, which they drank with the same unconcern that a child would drink a cup of milk. Indeed, I thought that the stronger the spirit the more was it esteemed …
The dog-carts are at the door, the dogs, after a world of trouble, stowed in the wells, the gillies up – nothing, we believe, forgotten, and we are off to the moors. We have a long drive before us, for our moors are not near Brawl; some of the beats are ten miles distant, the nearest four. The day is glorious; sky dappled with clouds, and a pleasant breeze blowing from the west. At the end of the avenue our party separate; good luck to each, and away we speed to heather-land. … On, still on, through the vast wilds till we come to the hamlet of Dale. Here we leave our dog-cart, and in a few minutes are in grouse-land …
As may be supposed, our shooting was not all couleur de rose. Are you a weak-limbed man? Then think not of shooting on the Brawl moors. For there are ‘hags’ that stand up like islands, and mosses in which you might disappear, to be exhumed, perhaps, in unborn ages, a fossil, the wonder of the species occupying the place now filled by man.
Nowhere, I venture to say, will you be made more aware of the truth of the adage, ‘union is strength,’ than on the Caithness moors. For nowhere are those little animated miracles, gnats or midges, more abundant than there. Talk of solitude on the moors! – why, every square yard contains a population of millions of these little harpies, that pump the blood out of you with amazing savageness and insatiability. Where they come from is a puzzle. While you are in motion not one is visible, but when you stop a mist seems to curl about your feet and legs, rising, and at the same time expanding until you become painfully sensible that the appearance is due to a cloud of gnats …
And now the sporting reader will be impatient to know the nature of our bags; for this is the true test of the quality of preserves, whether land or water. Well, our chief, who kept the game books very accurately, tells me that our sport averaged fifteen brace of grouse per day per gun, but besides grouse the bags always contained snipe and hares, and occasionally wild ducks and plover. These figures look, it is true, very insignificant by the side of those startling returns which the Scotch papers love to parade of the slaughter perpetrated on certain moors. But I agree with Christopher North in not admiring any shooting ground which resembles a poultry-yard, preferring that requiring skill and good dogs to discover the latent riches …
Of course many more grouse were killed than we could consume. The greater portion were purchased from us by Mr Dunbar, but we sent a large number to friends in England. And it may be worth stating that by packing fresh birds in boxes made to hold six and ten brace, without heather or compartments, they always reached their destination, though this was generally as distant as London, in excellent condition.