Glorious or what? Forty years of Twelfths on the hill

Photographs: David Hudson

It’s the 12th of August again and the start of a new season. The press will have all the usual stories about the Glorious Twelfth, which in some cases will serve only to demonstrate how little they understand about what grouse shooting actually involves. If you are lucky enough to be out on the day, whether shooting, beating, flanking, picking-up or generally helping, then I wish you the best of the day and, hopefully, it will be good enough to merit the word “glorious”.

But will it? Though I will not be out myself this year after knee surgery I can look back over more than 40 Twelfths on the hill. They can’t have all been glorious, so I had a flip through my gamebooks to see how some of the less enjoyable days worked out.

There was an entry for the Twelfth in the Loch Choire gamebook a year or so before we started to work there and it summed up the day in just five words: “Benefiting nothing but the midges.”

There cannot be a sportsman who has shot in the Highlands on a still, warm August day who will not know exactly what that particular Twelfth must have been like and what a relief it would have been to get back to the shelter of the lodge. If you have never experienced the Highland midge at its most annoying you cannot conceive what torture such a tiny creature can inflict. It is well dubbed “the curse of the Highlands”.

When the weather takes the Twelfth away from you

Looking through my records it was usually the weather that took away some of the enjoyment of the Twelfth. You have been looking forward to the start of the season for weeks, getting the dogs fit and doing summer brood counts, as well as getting yourself into shape for the hill. You have laid out a clean shirt and tie, best breeks and jacket, then the day brings pouring rain or thick mist and the decision is made to cancel shooting. Somehow it seems worse on the Twelfth than it would on any other day – especially when you are working for the estate and have to go off and do something else that is much less fun instead, like painting windows or carting peat.

But the days I am thinking of are the ones when you get out with the dogs and the Guns but it still doesn’t go according to plan. Take 12 August 2000, for example. We were working the dogs for a shooting party in Perthshire and I noted that low cloud and mist made it hard to see the dogs.

Since we were relying completely on the dogs to find the grouse and point them for us, it was obvious that the day was going to be difficult. It didn’t help matters that there were quite a few late broods with small birds.

A late covey rising on a sunny day is fairly easy to identify and leave for a later visit, but half-grown grouse springing from the heather into the greyness of the mist are another thing altogether. I’m afraid we had one or two very undersized birds in the bag of only three-and-a-half brace that day, though I noted that we ended the outing “tired and soggy”.

A year later we had an even worse day on the 13th rather than the 12th, which was a Sunday that year. I will quote my entry in full. “Not the Twelfth; not exactly glorious. Fresh sou’westerly, mist, rain, more rain. Muzzle-loading day. Grouse scarce and very jumpy. Gillie went AWOL for almost two hours. Henry looked tired but Jake worked well. Ruined my good boots, horrible drive home in rain. Otherwise OK.”

You will gather that it wasn’t the best of starts to the season. Gillie was a pointer bitch who had a very relaxed attitude to the recall whistle and a strong desire to see what was behind the next ridge.

The muzzle-loading Twelfth that a loose spaniel spoiled

Sometimes the day can be compromised by things that should be under control but are not. Another Twelfth was reserved for muzzle-loaders and was, as I noted, “a perfect day apart from a lack of grouse”. Apparently the dogs worked well apart from Gillie, who went missing again, but on the few occasions we did get a point one of the Guns had a spaniel that raced in and flushed the birds before the Guns were in position. Requests to keep the spaniel at heel failed to correct the situation and we ended a long day with just two grouse between five Guns. At least we had a good long walk.

But of course for every Twelfth that was a bit of a disaster there were many more when things went more or less according to the script. I remember one day when we were working the dogs for a team of Guns who were all serving Army officers. They were all very fit and very keen, and best of all they listened to our briefing and then actually did as we asked them.

The principle of shooting over pointers and setters is simple. The whole party walks along together apart from the handler, who is a little way ahead working the dog. When the dog comes on to point the handler will signal and two of the Guns will come forward to the point and shoot when the covey rises. Simple enough, but all too often when you turn round to signal the Guns to come forward they are way back behind, or not watching, or starting a long discussion about whose turn it is to shoot.

Not these gentlemen. They were always close behind without crowding the dogs and when they came up to the point they got into the right position without any urging from the handlers. If the grouse were running they watched the dog and kept track alongside so that when the grouse did rise they were in the right place and not floundering 20 yards behind with the birds getting up 30 yards in front. In short, they were the perfect team, at least as far as we were concerned, and I am sure the dogs appreciated them too. It must be very disheartening to run yourself into the ground finding grouse only to see the covey fly away unscathed or even unsaluted because the Guns haven’t followed instructions.

The days when everything came right on the hill

But for every bad day there were plenty when the sun shone, the breeze was steady and the scent was good; the grouse sat tightly and the dogs found them with apparent ease; the Guns shot with an easy grace that saw three or four birds taken from the first rise of the covey; and the retrievers found the downed birds with a quiet efficiency and never ran in. Days when the breeze was strong enough to keep the midges at bay but not so strong as to make the work hard for the dogs.

The sort of day that you had been dreaming about beforehand and that you can hardly believe has happened when you finally settle down into your armchair, with a glass of something in your fist to mull over the day’s events.

So if you are out on the moors this Twelfth of August I hope your day goes the way you wish, whether it is two or three brace walked up, half a dozen birds over dogs, or maybe a full driven day with the bag numbered by the hundred brace plus. The thing is to be there and make the best of whatever the weather, the hill and the day can throw at you. It may well be that there will not be too many more Twelfths to come if the politicians, the antis, the conservationists, the rewilders and the net-zero fanatics have their way, so make the best of it while you can.