Grouse shooting etiquette: how to conduct yourself on the moor

Photographs: Sarah Farnsworth

There is a reason an invitation to shoot grouse is treasured above almost any other in the sporting calendar. The red grouse is our only truly wild driven quarry, found nowhere else on earth, and the moors it calls home are the product of year-round labour by keepers, flankers, beaters and pickers-up who will have been thinking about your day since long before you knew it existed. Attending any shoot day is a privilege; attending a grouse day doubly so. Everything that follows flows from that single fact.

Responding to a grouse shooting invitation

It starts, as these things always do, with the invitation. Whether it arrives by letter, email or a slightly breathless phone call from a shoot captain trying to fill an unexpected vacancy, reply promptly and decisively. A firm yes or no within a day is worth more than an enthusiastic maybe within a week. If you accept, you are committed – grouse days are planned with military precision and a Gun who cancels late, short of genuine emergency, leaves a hole that is very hard to fill. Ask in advance about anything you are unsure of: expected bag, dress, whether loaders are provided, whether your dog is welcome. Nobody has ever been thought less of for asking sensible questions before a day. Plenty have been thought less of for guessing wrongly on it.

What to bring and wear for grouse shooting

Preparation matters more on the hill than anywhere else. Bring more cartridges than you think you could possibly need, because borrowing from a neighbour mid-drive is embarrassing for you and distracting for them. Dress in muted tones – the grouse has extraordinary eyesight and a line of butts topped with pale caps and gleaming jackets will turn birds long before they reach you. Waterproofs are not optional on a moor, whatever the forecast says, and nor is a degree of fitness: the walk into some butts is a proper leg-stretcher, and arriving blown and scarlet is no way to start a drive. If you have any doubt about your readiness, a session at a shooting ground on fast, low clay targets in the weeks beforehand is time well spent. Grouse are unlike anything else you will shoot all season.

Arriving on the moor: punctuality and the shoot briefing

Punctuality on the morning is non-negotiable. A grouse day runs to a timetable set by weather, wind and the stamina of the beating line, and one late Gun can disorganise the whole plan. Establish exactly where the meeting point is – moorland postcodes cover thousands of acres and satnavs surrender readily up there – and build in a margin. Once you arrive, introduce yourself to the shoot captain and the headkeeper, accept the coffee, and greet everyone you meet, from your fellow Guns to the team loading dogs into the trailer. Then listen to the briefing as though your day depends on it, because it does. The safety instructions on a grouse moor are not general guidance; they are specific to that ground, that wind and that line, and if anything is unclear, ask.

Grouse shooting safety: butts, flankers and the horn

Safety is where grouse etiquette earns its keep, because here good manners and good sense are the same thing. Grouse fly low, fast and often straight at the line, which means the swing that would be perfectly safe on a high pheasant can put shot down a neighbouring butt. Before the drive begins, establish your arcs. Find the flankers – the people out on the wings whose flag work will bring the birds to you – and make contact with them, even if it is only a wave. If it is windy they may move considerably during the drive, so many experienced Guns place a stick in front of the butt in line with each flanker as a constant physical reminder of where they are. Never, under any circumstances, shoot down the line, and when the first horn sounds to signal that the beaters are close and all shooting in front must stop, acknowledge it visibly to the Guns either side of you so everyone knows everyone has heard. If you have a loader, make sure they heard it too. From that horn, you take birds behind only – and if you are not completely certain a shot is safe, it isn’t, so leave it.

Know your limits and take your own birds

Restraint is the other great grouse virtue. The greedy shot is almost always the dangerous shot, and the Gun who blazes at everything within range, poaches the covey crossing to a neighbour or stretches at birds beyond their ability does more to spoil a day than any amount of bad weather. Know your limits, take the birds that are properly yours, and leave the marginal ones. And when you miss – you will miss, everybody misses grouse – resist the urge to explain why. Your neighbours are not interested in the sun, the wind or the suspect batch of cartridges, and the moor has a way of humbling anyone who talks a better drive than they shoot. A cheerful shrug is the correct response to a covey that makes a fool of you. It is also, not coincidentally, the fun one.

Gun handling and dogs between drives

Between drives, your gun is either sleeved or visibly broken and empty – there is no third state on a moor, and nothing marks out an inexperienced Gun faster than careless handling on the walk out. If you have brought a dog, it should be one that will sit quietly through the storm of a big drive; a whining, lunging passenger in a grouse butt is a distraction nobody deserves, least of all you.

Marking and picking your grouse

During the drive, mark your birds. Keep a running count of what you have shot and roughly where each one fell – a butt marker, a mental clock face, whatever system works for you. When the drive ends, pick any birds lying close to hand yourself, lay them neatly on the butt, and give the pickers-up an accurate tally of what remains and where. This is not fussiness; it is respect for the quarry. An honest count means every shot bird is gathered and nobody wastes half an hour searching for one that only ever existed in your imagination. Gather your empty cartridge cases while you are at it, and keep your phone in your pocket from the start of the drive to the end. A grouse moor is one of the last places on earth where nothing can reach you. Enjoy that.

Thanking the beaters, flankers and pickers-up

Then there are the people, who matter more than everything above put together. The beaters on a grouse day will walk miles of heather in whatever the sky throws at them, and they will do it drive after drive. Thank them – properly, by name where you can, and especially after a drive in which you barely fired a shot, because they walked just as far for that one. The same goes for the flankers, the pickers-up and their dogs, the keepers and the catering team. At elevenses and lunch, accept the hospitality graciously and moderately: a single nip of sloe gin is conviviality, a second is a safety question, and the sensible Gun saves the proper toast for home. Rudeness to anyone on a shoot day is the one offence for which there is no rehabilitation, and the shooting community is quite right to want no part of those who practise it.

Tipping the keeper and taking your brace

The day does not end at the final horn, and neither should you. Stay for the count, hear the bag announced, and see the day off properly. Two of its most important rituals come at the close. The first is the keeper’s tip – your host or the shoot captain will have indicated the going rate in advance, and cash in hand with a word of genuine thanks is the way to deliver it. If the team’s work deserves more, give more. The second is the brace of grouse you will be offered, which you must accept with enthusiasm even if you have never plucked a bird in your life. Grouse is the finest wild meat this country produces, plucking is easier than it looks, and turning down the very thing the day existed to provide is the one true faux pas from which no amount of tweed can save you. Find your host before you leave to say thank you, then say it again in writing a few days later. Hosts remember the Guns who wrote, and spare pegs have a way of finding them the following August.

The golden rules of grouse shooting etiquette

None of this is really about rules. Strip it back and grouse shooting etiquette is three things: keep everyone safe, respect the bird, and be generous to the people who made your day possible. Manage those and you can commit almost any minor sartorial crime and still be invited back. The moor asks a lot of everyone on it – the least a Gun can do is bring their best manners along with their best cartridges, and remember, somewhere between the first covey and the last horn, to stop and look at where they are standing. There is nowhere better. Behave like you know it.