Grouse shooting terms explained: from butts to the Glorious Twelfth

Photographs: Sarah Farnsworth

Grouse shooting has a vocabulary all of its own, much of it centuries old and almost none of it self-explanatory. If you have ever nodded along while someone described a covey packing over the flankers, this guide is for you. Each term below is defined in plain English, with enough context to use it correctly on the hill.

What is a grouse butt?

A grouse butt is a small hide, usually built of stone, turf or timber and often sunk into the ground, from which a Gun shoots driven grouse. Butts are arranged in a line across the moor, typically eight to 10 of them spaced some 40 yards apart, and positioned so that grouse driven by the beaters fly over or between them. Many are beautifully made and generations old, topped with heather or bilberry cuttings so they melt into the hill. Guns draw numbers for their butts at the start of the day and move up the line – usually by two – after each drive, so everyone gets a share of the action.

What are butt sticks?

Butt sticks are a pair of upright canes or rods fixed to the front corners of a grouse butt to mark the limit of a Gun’s safe swing. Because grouse fly low and the neighbouring butts sit at head height, a Gun swinging through the line is the single greatest danger on a driven day. The sticks are a physical barrier and a visual reminder: the gun barrels must never cross them. Some Guns add a further stick in line with each flanker so they always know where people are standing.

What is double-gunning, and what does a loader do?

Double-gunning is shooting with a matched pair of shotguns and a loader, who takes each empty gun as it comes off the shoulder and returns it loaded, so the Gun is never out of the action while a covey is crossing. The loader stands close behind in the butt and the exchange, done well, takes barely a second. Loaders on grouse days are far more than gun-passers: a good one counts the birds down, watches the flanks, marks the fallen and is a second pair of eyes on safety, including confirming the horn has sounded. On single-gun days, many Guns still take a loader purely for that safety and marking role, where they are often called a minder.

What is a flanker?

A flanker is a member of the shoot team positioned out on the wings of a grouse drive, whose job is to turn the birds towards the line of butts using a flag. Grouse hug the contours and will happily slip out of the side of a drive, so flankers crouch out of sight and rise at the critical moment, flagging hard to bend the covey back over the Guns. It is skilled, physical work and often done by the most experienced people on the moor. Guns on the end butts must know exactly where the flankers are before the drive begins – a wave to each other is the traditional confirmation.

What is a covey?

A covey is a family group of grouse – typically a hen, a cock and their young of the year – that fly together as a unit. Early in the season coveys of eight to 12 birds are common, and they burst over the butts together, which is why grouse shooting demands such fast, decisive gun work. As the season wears on, coveys merge into the much larger groups known as packs.

What is packing?

Packing is the late-season behaviour in which family coveys of grouse merge into large flocks – packs – that can number anywhere from 30 birds to several hundred. Driven by hard weather and by weeks of being shot at, packed grouse are older, wilder and wiser: they lift early, swirl unpredictably and cross the butts at extraordinary speed, often wide of the line altogether. This is why a September or October grouse day is a different sport from an August one, and why experienced Guns regard a big pack taken cleanly as the hardest shooting Britain offers.

What is a brace?

A brace is a pair of gamebirds, and it is the unit in which shooting bags are traditionally counted. A day that ends on 86 brace has accounted for 172 grouse. It is also the unit of hospitality: at the end of the day each Gun is usually offered a brace to take home for the table – and accepting it is considered basic good manners, since the whole point of the quarry is that it is superb wild food.

Why is it called the Glorious Twelfth?

The Glorious Twelfth is 12 August, the opening day of the red grouse season in Britain and one of the oldest fixtures in the sporting calendar. The date was fixed in law by the Game Act 1831, and the “glorious” epithet was added by Victorian enthusiasm for the occasion, when special trains carried Guns north and the first birds raced back to London restaurants. The season it opens runs to 10 December in England, Scotland and Wales and 30 November in Northern Ireland, with no game shooting on Sundays or Christmas Day in England and Wales. If 12 August falls on a Sunday, moors open on 13 August instead.

What is the difference between driven and walked-up grouse shooting?

In driven grouse shooting, a line of beaters pushes wild grouse forward over stationary Guns waiting in butts; in walked-up shooting, the Guns themselves walk the moor in a line and shoot birds as they are flushed ahead of them. Driven shooting is the faster, grander and considerably more expensive form, demanding large teams of beaters, flankers and pickers-up. Walked-up days are smaller, more affordable and physically harder – expect miles of heather and steep ground – and many are shot over pointing dogs. Both are shooting the same entirely wild bird; nothing about a grouse is reared or released.

What does shooting over pointers mean?

Shooting over pointers is a form of walked-up grouse shooting in which pointing breeds – English pointers and setters, most traditionally – range across the moor, scent the grouse and freeze on point until the Guns walk in and the birds are flushed. It is the oldest way of shooting grouse and, for many, the most beautiful: the sight of a pointer stopping mid-stride on a wind-blown scent is half the day. Bags are modest and measured in single figures of brace, but the blend of dog work, hunting and wild country is unlike anything else in British shooting.

What do beaters and pickers-up do on a grouse moor?

Beaters walk the moor in a wide line, often several miles per drive, flushing grouse forward towards the butts; pickers-up wait behind the line with teams of dogs and gather every shot bird after the drive. Both are essential and both work far harder than the Guns. A shot grouse can carry a long way on its own momentum before falling in deep heather, which is why pickers-up run several dogs each and why Guns are expected to mark their birds – keeping an accurate count of what fell and roughly where – and to report it honestly at the end of the drive.

What is a walking Gun?

A walking Gun is a Gun who accompanies the beating line during a drive rather than standing in a butt, taking grouse that break back over the beaters and away from the line. It is a roving, watchful role usually given to a safe and experienced shot, since every shot must be taken with a line of people nearby. Guns often take a turn walking on smaller days, and a good walking Gun can add usefully to the bag from birds the butts would never see.

What is back-gunning?

Back-gunning has two related meanings. On days when grouse are plentiful, a second line of Guns may be placed behind the butts to take birds the front line misses or cannot safely shoot – these are the back Guns. The term is also used for the shooting every Gun does at the end of a drive: once the first horn sounds and shooting in front must stop, taking birds behind the line is the only option, and turning to kill a fast, going-away grouse behind the butt is a skill all of its own.

What does the horn mean on a grouse drive?

On a driven grouse day, the first horn signals that the beaters are close enough for shooting in front of the butts to stop; from that moment Guns may only take birds behind the line. A second horn ends the drive altogether. This is the most important safety convention on the moor, because beaters and flankers are walking straight towards the Guns through the final stage of every drive. Good practice on hearing the first horn is to acknowledge it visibly to your neighbours – a raised gun or hand – so the whole line knows the whole line has heard it.

What is a cheeper?

A cheeper is a young grouse still too immature to be shot – small, weak on the wing and often still cheeping, hence the name. Sportsmanship and common sense both say the same thing: leave them. Shooting cheepers wastes the moor’s future stock and marks a Gun out for all the wrong reasons. If in doubt about a bird, let it go.

What is medicated grit?

Medicated grit is quartz grit coated with a worming treatment, put out on the moor in trays for wild grouse to help control the strongyle worm, a gut parasite that historically drove violent boom-and-bust crashes in grouse numbers. Grouse eat grit naturally to grind heather in the gizzard, so the trays deliver the medicine without handling a single bird – there is no other practical way to treat a wild population. Use is regulated as a veterinary medicine, and keepers switch the trays to plain grit well before the season opens so that no treated bird is shot for the table within the withdrawal period.

What are grouse counts?

Grouse counts are the annual censuses keepers carry out on foot with pointing dogs – pair counts in spring and brood counts in July – to establish how many grouse a moor holds and how well they have bred. The July count is the one that decides the season: the ratio of young birds to old tells a moor whether it has a shootable surplus, and if the answer is no, days are cancelled, however long ago they were booked. This is the defining discipline of a wild quarry – no moor can rear its way out of a bad breeding year – and it is why grouse invitations are treasured and never guaranteed.

What is muirburn?

Muirburn is the Scottish term for the controlled burning of old heather, carried out by keepers in winter and early spring to regenerate the young shoots grouse feed on and to reduce the fuel that drives summer wildfires. Burned in small, cool patches on rotation, it creates the mosaic of heather ages that gives moorland birds food and nesting cover side by side. In Scotland it is now a licensed activity under the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024, with a statutory code, a defined season and mandatory training for practitioners.

What is a moor, exactly?

A moor is open, unenclosed upland dominated by heather, on which red grouse live and breed entirely wild. Britain holds around 75% of the world’s heather moorland, which is why the red grouse – a bird found nowhere else on earth – matters so much here, and why the people who manage moors for grouse are also, in effect, managing one of the rarest habitats there is. Everything else in this glossary exists because of that single purple fact.