Memories Of Scotland or A Virginia Farm Boy in Prince Albert’s Butts

These are memories of a magic shooting week in Scotland, September 6-12, 1987. To prevent “hunting back”, the names of the places and the players will not appear.

The Setting
The place was somewhere in the Highlands of Scotland. Imagine the mountains of western Virginia, with the trees gone, and you have the terrain and the elevations. The ground was covered with heather, a low growing evergreen which looks like alfalfa in full bloom. It grows everywhere except in a few low spots where the soil is rich enough to support a fine grass like our bluegrass and stands of Scotch pine and larch.As in Virginia, sheep and stone dot the mountainside and valleys (they call them moors and glens). The other inhabitants of the moors are roe deer and red deer, hares and our noble quarry, the red grouse.

For early September weather, imagine a late November day in the Virginia mountains, temperature 40° Fahrenheit, a front roaring in from the west, cold rain falling in sheets, interspersed with brief moments of mist and sunshine, and brilliant rainbows.

The People
We shot on the lands of a laird whose family has held them for centuries. Sadly he will leave no blood descendant as heir. The laird and his lady live in a castle. He is a two-castle laird the other one is not occupied, but open for tourists and said to be haunted.

The laird looks like a laird ought to look. At age sixty-seven he stands a ramrod straight 6’4”. He has piercing blue eyes, thick almost white hair and a ruddy complexion nurtured by exposure to the weather. He invariably wears a kilt, but you would never call him a sissy. He walks with a slight limp from a combat injury in World War II, but can he walk. There he gained the title, “Captain”, still universally and affectionately applied. He is a man of dignity and grace, but very much a man’s man.

The estate, some 250,000 acres, supports a bit of sheep and cattle farming, mostly by tenants whose families have also been on the land many generations. But the principal uses of the estate are fishing on twenty-six miles of a famous salmon and trout river, stag stalking, and grouse shooting. The venison and grouse grace the finest restaurants of London and Paris. The laird and his keepers manage these resources scientifically and with dedication. The laird’s love of the land is infectious.

Our shoot is high drama. The other players are the laird’s staff, beginning with the factor (a serious little accountant in a kilt who keeps up with Pound and Pence), the head keeper, a handsome strapping lad of forty, and a dozen other keepers, each with responsibility for several thousand acres on the moors. The laird and his head keeper are the directors of the play. The other keepers and a half dozen semi-retired employees of the laird serve multiple roles as loaders, flankers, vehicle drivers and “pickers up”.

The beaters form the chorus of our play. Some twenty in number, temporary employees of the laird, they are a varied lot. Some are school age lads and lasses, some volunteers from all over Britain out to give their dogs some experience. One a wandering young lady from New Zealand who read about the job in the London classifieds. For fifty pounds a week they walk ten to fifteen miles a day up and down the moors, waving white flags on short sticks, thus driving the grouse to the guns.

We are the guns, or shooters. Nine in number, we too are a varied lot. We come from Virginia, Florida, Missouri, Minnesota, Tennessee and Kentucky. A banker, a developer, a heavy construction contractor, chief executives in the quarrying, coal and textile industries, a retired Fortune 50 group vice president, and, finally, two lawyers. We share a love of wing shooting, good fun and good whisky. Three of us are novices at red grouse shooting, the rest veterans. Five shoot Purdey guns, three just pretty guns (the difference: about $25,000 per barrel). One shoots Churchills in twenty bore, and somedays out shoots all the rest. Several of us share a hobby of raising pointing dogs — one has co-owned a National Champion.

Our ladies are of good cheer and good looks, and tolerant.

The Play
The play begins each day in the back court of the castle, around the 25-foot square tower that serves as gun room (first floor) and bird room (second floor). Here the cast gathers about nine o’clock, and waits for the laird to appear from the castle. The head keeper and the loaders are there before us, dressed in suits of the laird’s brown tweed, and throwing dice or pitching penny crackalou. Their trousers are plus-four’s, worn with green wool knee stockings and ankle high rubber shoes.  Beneath his suit jacket each wears a green V-neck sweater and a shirt and tie. A Sherlock Holmes cap — bill front and back — tops off the costume.

The laird’s fleet awaits. Seven Land Rovers carry guns and loaders and their dogs; a two-ton truck (which they call a lorry) with canvas cover carries the beaters. Trailers carry two amphibious vehicles of the sort advertised for duck marshes in the States. They are named by the ladies “Rub-a-Dub-Dubs”, for they resemble bathtubs with four wheels on each side. They will climb almost vertically loaded with six men and all their gear, but the ride is scary.

 When the laird emerges from the castle all greet him and quickly load into the Rovers. The caravan moves from the castle, set on a high bank above the salmon river, toward the high moors. In twenty minutes we stop and dismount. The laird pulls from his sporran (that’s the pocketbook that goes with the kilt) a leather purse holding nine sticks, each engraved with a hidden number. Each gun draws for his first butt. Thereafter on each drive butts are alternated by moving up two numbers. Thus the laird assures a random selection of positions along the line, to further the oft-heard adage, “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s rump all the time.”

Each gun treks to his butt, accompanied by his loader. The loader carries two shotguns (we are shooting what is called “double guns”) and a heavy bag of cartridges. The butts (or blinds) are simple arrangements about waist high. Some are like a low stacked stone duck blind; some are simply like a section of fence. The butts are set in a straight line 45 yards apart. The guns face the prevailing winds, to give the grouse a tailwind. To the left and right of the gun, on each corner of the butt, the loader drives in a bamboo stick, reminder of the safe angles and the deadly possibility of forgetting. The gun may shoot in front or behind, but he must not rake the line. Well behind the line of butts stands a lone keeper and his dog, the backer up who watches for wounded birds that make it past the line.

With guns and loaders in the butts, the head keeper signals to the beaters by walkie-talkie, and the drive begins. The beaters march in a line starting two to three miles in front of the butts, over the horizon.

The line of butts is usually set just behind a slight ridge or swell, so when the birds appear the gun has but a split second to react. All is designed for challenge for the gun.

Soon after the drive starts guns begin to pop as grouse hurl over the line of butts, sometimes in ones or twos, and sometimes in coveys of five, ten, even a hundred birds. Since we are shooting late in the season, the birds have begun to “covey up”, and we see many large coveys. We are reminded that light travels faster than sound as we see a gun raised and a bird begin to fall, followed by the gun’s report. Soon a hunting horn sounds, signal that the beaters are nearing gun range1 now the guns may only shoot behind the butts.

Birds shot per gun per drive varies from zero to twenty, depending upon the skill of the gun, and the grouses’ decision on where to cross the line of butts, a decision dictated by wind direction and terrain.

With three drives each morning, lunch in the field, and two drives each afternoon, our five days are action filled. If there are more enjoyable days on this earth, I have yet to discover them.

The Red Grouse
The red grouse lives only in the British Isles, for only there grows its life source, the heather. Like our ruffed grouse, it cannot be reared in captivity. Also like our ruff, it suffers wide swings in population from year to year, victim of parasites, avian predators, foxes and bad turns in weather conditions during nesting. Our year is a good one.

The only red about the grouse is its eyelid. Its feathers are dark brown and gray, with white flecks on the stomach and legs. In size it is much like our ruffed grouse, but with longer wings and a somewhat thinner body. Unlike our ruffed grouse, its meat is dark throughout.

In flight the red grouse is spectacular. It may soar like an eagle, or skim the ground like a cruise missile. Without the wind it flies fifty miles an hour; with its usual tailwind it can fly eighty. It maneuvers like a dove. When driven by beaters it provides the sportiest shots of all the game birds.

The best grouse shots kill most of the birds to the front of the butt. The poorer, or less experienced shots drop most of their birds behind. A double dropped to the front may produce from your loader a “Well done, sir”. A double dropped behind gets no accolades. The perfect pass is three birds downed in front and two behind. I never saw it done. It might be possible if the birds are flying into a fifty-mile-an-hour headwind.

Sandy and Other Loaders
On the Monday morning our shoot began, the head keeper, after asking my name, looked solemnly into his little notebook and said, “Your loader will be Sandy”. He pointed to an elf of a Scotsman standing with his mates, all in their tweed uniforms. How he matched us I do not know, perhaps by height comparison. The match could not have been more to my liking. For the next five days Sandy and I trudged together up and down the moors, and became friends.

Sandy stood 5’3” and weighed nine stone (that’s 126 pounds). At age sixty-seven he was retired from a career as a forestry worker and fishing gillie. He had been assisting the laird with grouse shoots for more than twenty years, serving as beater, flanker, and now the honor post of loader. Unlike most of the loaders, he did not have his own dog. With misting eyes he told me his little spaniel had died the year before, and he hadn’t the heart to start another.

Sandy was unfailingly cheerful and polite. His physical stamina amazed me. Invariably he shunned the Rub-a-Dub-Dub, walking the steepest slopes carrying my two shotguns and a bag of cartridges. They seemed to weigh nearly as much as he. But when he arrived at the butt, even the top one, he was never winded

During the week Sandy and I developed a ritual of conversation. As we settled into the butt before each drive, Sandy would comment on the strength of the ever-present wind. “That’s a bitter wind, aye”, or “I believe we are a bit more protected from the wind than in the last one”. He would then speculate on where the birds would likely fly on this drive. After inserting the bamboo sticks on each corner of the butt Sandy would pick a landmark about 40 yards to the front and say “See that rock there, sir. Try to get them at about that spot.” Invariably I got them, if at all, considerably closer, or even behind. Several times I got them at a point that caused them to hurl straight at us, once whacking Sandy on the shoulder.

On the first day I noticed Sandy wore no ear plugs, and on the second day I brought along a pair for him. Thereafter he wore them gratefully.

After each drive as the men with dogs worked to pick up downed birds, Sandy would wait patiently for one of his mates to come with his dog to find my birds. Invariably they would tease him good humoredly, often breaking into the broad Scotch brogue that made their speech as unintelligible to us as Zulu. The loader Jimmy, an inveterate tease and practical joker, delighted in giving Sandy wrong directions to the next butt, or otherwise confusing things. (At the close of shooting on Friday, Jimmy was presented by the laird, at the instigation of the beaters, with a special award — a three-foot wooden spoon, for always “stirring things up”.)

You will find here no account of my skill as a grouse shot or Sandy’s skill in the double gun loading exercise. Suffice it to say that I managed to drop just enough birds to avoid complete embarrassment, and Sandy, though not the quickest of loaders, did the job right and was tolerant of my frequent confusion in the drill.

Not all the guns were so fortunate in their loaders. One drew a bearded young keeper whose disposition can most charitably be described as sullen. According to his gun, conversation in the butt consisted only of answering direct questions.

For example:
Gun: “How will this butt be for the drive?”
Loader: “Rotten”.
End of conversation.

The most curious match of gun and loader involved my host. He was a regular guest at the estate and obviously a favorite of the laird and his lady. Yet he was assigned the strangest loader of them all, one George.

George, like my Sandy, was diminutive. His complexion was a bit redder than the average, a telltale sign (our driver later revealed to us that George was “a bit of an alcoholic”).

The loader George struggled to make each trek to the butts. Once in the butt he invariably lay down for a nap before the birds began to arrive, waking only with the first crack from my host’s gun. One day he wore thick woolen gloves, and strangely did not remove them as he commenced the loading ritual. His most bizarre performance, however, involved eating an orange during the heat of a drive. When the drive was over my host’s guns were smeared with sticky nectar, but the loader George was not apologetic.

Finally, at mid-day on Wednesday, the loader George gave up the ghost. We shot that day on moors particularly high and steep, the weather fierce. Just before lunch George announced he could take it no more, for he had the flu. My host was much relieved when a charming, lanky young man was assigned to him as replacement loader. The replacement had formerly worked for the Queen Mother, was an accomplished loader and, unlike George, an excellent conversationalist.

For some reason the laird, the head keeper and all the loaders had in their hearts a special place for the loader George. I still speculate on why — perhaps he had been a war hero, or his family an especially revered one in the area. Or perhaps it was just the natural instinct to support the downtrodden that caused the Scotsmen to rally round poor George.

The Dogs
The dogs of Scotland, like everywhere else, run the gamut in quality. Most of the loaders had either a Lab or a Spaniel. After each drive they worked to find the birds.

This ritual was invariably entertaining. The moors are populated with an incredible number of hares — long-legged rabbits which change their color from brown to white as the snow comes. Most of the dogs were inveterate hare chasers and could catch them with fair regularity. We learned that after the grouse season there was a hare season, and the same dogs were used to jump and retrieve hares as to retrieve the grouse. One could not expect a dog to be hare proof when in a few weeks it would be asked to go for the hares.

Of all the dogs, the clear standout was Nettle, a little black and white female springer, property of the loader Fred. Any of us would have paid a small fortune to stick her in our coat pocket and carry her home. She was perfectly mannered. In the Rover she curled up beside her master and lay perfectly still. Likewise in the butt, she never broke until commanded by Fred to seek. After a drive she found the birds downed by her loader’s gun in snappy fashion, returning each with soft mouth to Fred. Soon she would be helping to find the birds of other guns.

The bond between Fred and Nettle was obvious. So much so that none of us even bothered to tease him with offers for her purchase. When we praised her, he confided that she had often been pictured in the British Shooting Times, and was the favorite of every shooting party at the estate.

Nettle was classy, as was her owner Fred, a tall, handsome man in his fiftys with bright blue eyes and speech as refined as a London barrister. I will always remember the sight of little Nettle curled up on the front seat beside Fred as the caravan moved from drive to drive.

The Inn
We stayed in a charming stone inn (virtually every building in Scotland is stone) dating from the 18th century. That’s new by British standards. The furnishings were somewhat spartan, and reminded one of a tourist home in the 40s. But the place had a real warmth about it. After days of shooting high flyers we gathered at the Inn for “low flyers”, Scottish slang for a drink of The Famous Grouse Scotch whisky.

The manager and his maitre’d were London trained, with London manners. The other help were natives, very young and charming, with healthy looks, creamy complexions and ready smiles. They worked hard to make our stay at the Inn comfortable and fun, and they were successful.

I had been warned to expect poor food. I was pleasantly surprised. The hearty breakfasts were magnificent, and the dinners were good too, especially when we learned to probe a bit about the menu (we determined that the laird had arranged for us to have anything we wanted — provided it was roast beef or venison — but with a little coaxing, the rest of the menu was made available to us for a little extra).

Our only crisis at the inn was a lack of showers and a lack of any device to mix hot and cold water in one stream. This lead to the exercise of much ingenuity by the ladies in washing their hair, but somehow they managed.

Dinner at The Castle
Dinner at the castle on Wednesday night was the central social event of our shoot. In earlier years before the lady of the castle had suffered ill health, the shooting party had stayed in the castle and had all its meals there. The veterans in our group preferred the present arrangement.

At six forty-five we gather before the inn in formal attire, and were driven to the castle. We were greeted at the castle door by the laird’s butler, a huge round faced man who reminded me of Lurch from the TV series. He ushered us into a large room with much plush furniture of every conceivable era. Around the high walls hung stag head after stag head, each with a little plaque beneath it naming the shooter and the year. The earliest so marked was dated 1794, shot by one of the laird’s ancestors. Next to it was another, obviously older, with a plaque reading simply “old deer”. Also hung on the walls were sporting firearms of every generation since the invention of powder, each thoroughly shot out. Suits of armor and weapons of hand-to-hand combat adorned the entrance hall. Paintings of the laird’s ancestors, all bearing a resemblance to him, and of the laird as a young man, completed the decorations.

Besides the laird and his lady, the dinner party included several young ladies who were cousins of the laird’s step-daughter, and two young men in formal Scottish military attire — tight fitting tartan trousers and short scarlet jackets with gold epaulets. They were members of the Queen’s Guard, serving their military obligation and obviously enjoying it. One was a South African, who loved and missed his native land. There was also a very tall lady with typical British cool and civilized demeanor. At dinner she sat by my host, who learned that she was a Lady in Waiting to the Queen Mother.

After cocktails we proceeded to the banquet hall by way of a long narrow hallway, also adorned with stag head after stag head. The banquet hall was magnificent: perhaps 25’ x 60’, with dark wood paneling from floor to ceiling, eighteen stag heads, each lighted from above, and a banquet table adorned by gold candelabra four feet tall. Each place setting included enough silverware to arm an urban street gang.

The meal consisted of a beautiful salad, many fresh vegetables grown on the estate, and, inevitably, grouse.

Now grouse is considered by the British the ultimate delicacy. For some reason, however, they insist that it be “ripe”. It gets ripe by being hung by the neck in the game room until the neck gives up. Only then is it deemed fit to be cleaned and cooked.  

The result, for American tastes, is, most charitably put, a bit gamey. Another strange quirk of British cooking: they like grouse rare. While we Americans love our steak rare, most of us like our poultry well done. But enough about grouse as a food.

After dessert the lights were mysteriously turned off, leaving only the illumination above the stag heads and the candles in the massive candelabra. A bagpipe broke forth from the adjoining room. All eyes turned to the Captain, seated at the head of the table with his eyes closed, his white eyebrows glistening in the candlelight. For fifteen minutes the bagpipe wailed, producing in me a strong and eerie series of emotions. This obviously was a time to thank the Almighty and to recount the eerie history of the estate. Near the end the kilted piper came into the room, marched round the table and then back out again. When he had finally finished, the butler produced before the Captain a tray with two large glasses and a decanter of malt Scotch whisky (not whisky, as in bourbon). The Captain then called out, “George, come in please”, and the piper marched in and stood at attention at the Captain’s left. The Captain poured Scotch into the two glasses, one to the brim and the other a small amount. He handed the full one to the piper who quaffed it. The Captain sipped his drink. “Well done”, said the Captain, and he and George conversed a moment about the piping competition of the weekend before in the village. Then the Captain bade us all go into the drawing room for coffee and after dinner drinks.

Thus ended our evening at the castle. It was aptly described by the other lawyer in our group (who was dubbed on opening day The Prince by virtue of his flawless British shooting attire): “Half Camelot, Half the Munsters”.

The Last Day
As we walked to the butts for the fifth and last drive on Friday I could not believe how swiftly the week had gone by, or how much fun it had been. Everything had been pure enchantment for me: the people, the rugged and pristine countryside, the weather, the inn, the stone cottages each with a beautiful flower garden, the grouse and the shooting.

The last drive proved particularly fruitful for my butt, and although I did not shoot particularly well, there were a fair number of birds on the ground for the dogs to find. The Captain was nearby serving as a flanker. He brought in his lab which searched diligently and successfully.

As we sat by the vehicles waiting for the last of the party to arrive back at the caravan, the Captain remarked: “Well, that’s the end of our four weeks of shooting for this year, and the harvest is just about what we had wanted. We will have a few friends in for three days of informal shooting next week, and then it will be time for the deer stalking.” Someone asked, “Who will be shooting with you next week, Captain.” 

“Oh, Prince Phillip, Prince Edward, and some other friends”, said the Captain in an offhand way. I knew then I had been to the right place.