Becking

THE LAST SHOT AT THE GROUSE.

It has been the fashion to say that since grouse driving became a science the proportion of birds killed and left upon the moors is only a question of the will of the occupier. This season, in Scotland at any rate, has proved that this is not the case. Although there were not many moors perhaps where more grouse ought to have been killed, there were a good many where it was attempted to slay more than proved to be possible. The fact is, when the grouse take to the tops they are practically safe; especially is this the case when these tops are the “march” between two shootings. Then the grouse see the flankers as King Louis of France saw the figures of men in Tenier’s pictures. They look “like maggots,” and grouse are not afraid of those immature insects, although they do not eat them. It is the height and the angle that make all the difference in driving grouse that have become wild enough to take to the “tops,” for the very object of resorting to these altitudes seems to be the better to keep watch and ward against the arrival of the enemy.

As the season advances in the Highlands, bags quickly sink from hundreds of brace per day to tens, and very soon after this they would sink to units were it thought worth while to organise driving parties for the units; but it is not, and consequently the Highland grouse are growing to be almost as difficult to regulate in point of numbers, and more difficult in point of sex, than they were before driving came in. For the latter practice has everywhere increased the wild habit; it has not merely taught existing birds wildness for the time being, but the habit of standing up to look for danger instead of crouching in the heather to hide from it, has become hereditary and instinctive where driving has been the longest practised. Unless moors are very hilly this habit does not much matter, because, provided grouse can be properly flanked and flagged, they can also be driven, but on the tops in Scotland this is not possible, and the outcome is unfortunately that too many of the hens and the young males get killed on the flat ground. The old cocks are the first to take possession of their fastnesses, the tops, and there they remain until, in the breeding season, they take possession of the best breeding sites and drive away all the younger and more healthy birds. The worst feature of this is that these old cocks are like master swans, and think they require a kingdom for themselves, a kingdom without subjects, for none of their kind are permitted to live near them. Consequently the birds left to breed may be numerous, and yet be of no use. They have to move off at breeding time because of the persecution of the old birds. There is no much employed method of getting rid of these old cocks when driving them fails in the hills. There was one before the days of driving, but it is almost a lost art. This was called “becking.”

The practice of becking was very simple and easy to learn, indeed the grouse themselves teach it better than any schoolmaster. Any time in August, when the shooting lodge is really on the moor and not under it, one has but to sleep with an open window, and the first sound of the coming day to greet the awakening sleeper will be object lessons in becking. It is a habit of the proud old cock grouse to challenge each other in the morning. This they do by fluttering up into the air vertically some ten or a dozen feet and crowing. Rarely is the challenge accepted in the autumn, probably because these old grouse have long ago settled their differences, and one no longer trespasses on the ground of the other. Each is king of his brood and ready to defend his castle, but neither will enter willingly into the domain of another bird. Nature is at peace with herself. But when the moorland keeper arises before light and gets upon the moor before the grouse are awake, when he hides in some peat hag, or other shelter, and starts to crow, every old cock grouse within earshot becomes angry at the unknown voice of an intruder, and instantly the challenge is accepted. The intruder not being in a position to go out in search of mortal combat the oldest inhabitant comes to seek him, but instead meets a charge of shot, which unceremoniously, and in revolt of sporting feeling, knocks him over on the ground without giving him the proverbial chance for his life.

Before driving game came in, this was the only way to find grouse for the table, after the spirit of winter wildness had entered into the birds. Nobody thought of it as sport, but the keepers knew of it as a necessity in preserving, for the reason that it killed off the old cocks and none besides. It was an automatic selection of the most unfit, and had it been practised beyond the necessity of the table of the owner, would have done much more for the stock than any other thing could. But it was confined and limited by the state of the larder. Now even this demand has stopped, because cold storage supplies the table with better birds, that is young ones, killed perhaps on August 12th in one year, and eaten on August 11th upon the next, and admirable birds they are, too.

But not only has the necessity of the table ceased to operate for the good of the grouse stock, but driving the birds has rendered “becking” a lost labour in many places.

It is no good going out to beck on ground where the broods once were, after they have all united as one vast pack and gone somewhere else. That is too obvious almost to name, but suppose the neighbourhood of a big pack is found, and the “becking” keeper attempts to call up the old grouse, he soon finds out that the voice of the charmer has ceased to charm. What is the reason? Well, when there are practically one hundred challenges issued at the same time from every direction, and in voices unfamiliar to the hearers, the grouse become so used to the call to battle, that they take no notice of the battle-cry. If they did the attempt to find the offender by his challenge, would be like the attempt to flush a land-rail by following his “croak.” Voices resound on every side, and an angry bird soon finds that the only outlet to pent-up wrath is to challenge too, but not to search for challengers that are in as many directions as echo itself.

Once I read somewhere how a keeper had surprised himself in a morning’s “becking.” Soon after taking up position he was greeted by a return challenge, and the proud old cock soon appeared on a little “knowie” not far off. The keeper shot, but when the smoke had cleared there stood the bird as proud as ever, he shot again, and the black powder smoke hung in the still morning air, but it cleared at last, and still the bird was there to challenge. He shot again, again, and yet again, and at last, when the smoke cleared, the bird had evidently been killed. So he crept forth from his hiding place to gather this very refractory old cock. But instead of finding him, he found five fathers of broods which had each heard the stranger, and wanted to give him battle. Each in turn had seen his predecessor strutting on the “knowie,” and thinking the strange voice belonged to it, had arrived to do battle exactly at the instant his wished-for antagonist had “bitten the peat.” But, as the keeper probably knew very well, it would have been quite natural had he missed each of five birds in turn, for grouse, standing in the heather, require to be at least ten or fifteen yards nearer the gunner than when they are flying, and if they are not that much nearer it is just a little more easy to miss than to kill. Probably the reason is that the heather turns a good many pellets that might have hit, and also that when wings are closed, and the birds are facing the gunner, the only vitals are the head and neck. The wings glance a great many of the pellets.

I do not profess to be able to call grouse, but I have done the shooting while a keeper has successfully called up grouse after grouse. The puzzle is, why they do not mind the shooting. Obviously they are not troubled with “nerves,” and are so much preoccupied in their wish to make the stranger “leave that,” that they forget to enquire what made the thunder.

On the occasion referred to, I was provided with a very full choke twelve bore, which killed at least fifteen yards further away than an ordinary game gun, so that when a grouse appeared on a little “knowie,” I was prompt to align him and to pay no attention to the keeper’s advice that it was “beyont range.” I knew that keepers usually took only very certain chances, and that the cult of the choke bore was not within my companion, so I let off and my grouse disappeared. I, too, was evidently in for great good luck, like the keeper quoted above, for no sooner had one been knocked over than another was up and seeking for war; but not for five times, only four. After this there was a pause too long for patience, and I went forward to gather my game, and end the morning’s sport. The first grouse I came to was only wounded, he had an injured eye or head, and sat bunched up with the bad eye towards me. It ought to have been an easy bird to gather, but over confidence, or want of care, made him suspicious, and he flew away, and when I pulled trigger at him I found that I had not cocked my gun. There was no other grouse to be found, and it became obvious that I had only had one quick change artist to deal with all the time; he had evidently been knocked off his perch by shot that had not penetrated, or had made him uncomfortable enough for him to move at each shot.

I am told that the principal difference between a good shot and a bad one at driven grouse is, that the former knows how to select the easy birds. Without going as far as that I can say with certainty that a grouse, five yards too far off, becomes about twenty times as difficult as he is five yards nearer.

But although this experience of mine was as far from a brilliant success as could be thought of, yet I believe that “becking” is absolutely necessary to the highest possible preservation wherever the grouse do not pack. I should say it was just as useful where they do pack if it could be carried out, but it cannot. When hunger begins to harass the birds in the winter months, they often divide the sexes, like the high churches, as Sir Fred Millbank observed thirty years ago, and obviously when the cocks are all in the fellowship of the unemployed they are not looking out for somebody to have a row with. Nevertheless, there is often much open weather between the end of grouse driving and the end of the season, on December 10th, and where it can be practised successfully, it is well to remember, in the interests of the breeding stock, that “becking” is the only automatic selection of old cocks that has ever been practised, and had probably something to do with the fact that there were more grouse in Scotland in 1872, and before, than there are in these days of scientific heather management and artistic killing of grouse. On dog moors it is particularly necessary, and on them can be easily made successful.

One excellent sportsman of Shropshire, who was not unknown on the Chirk Castle moors, used to tell me that it was quite wonderful how well grouse kept, as he often had them in March. He explained that it was only the cocks that kept so long; and this was before cold storage was thought of.

B.