What to wear grouse shooting: how to dress for the moor

Photographs: Sarah Farnsworth

Dressing for the shooting field is normally a licence to show off. Loud checks, lurid stockings and a novelty tie are all positively encouraged – provided you can shoot well enough to carry them. The grouse moor is the great exception. Grouse have phenomenal eyesight, and a line of butts topped with pale caps and gleaming shirt cuffs will turn a covey long before it reaches the Guns. On the hill, the bird sets the dress code, and the bird says: be drab. This guide covers what to wear for driven and walked-up grouse, the rules that still apply, and where to buy it for different budgets.

Why dressing for grouse is different

Grouse shooting demands muted, dark clothing because the quarry is wild, sharp-eyed and looking straight at the line as it approaches. On a pheasant shoot your outfit is about tradition and personality; on a grouse moor it is about the bag. Add three practical realities – the season opens in August heat, the weather can turn Highland-hostile within the hour, and you may walk a long way over rough ground to reach your butt – and the moor calls for a wardrobe that is closer to technical hill kit in tweed clothing than to a costume drama.

What to wear grouse shooting: the core outfit

The classic grouse outfit is breeks, shooting stockings and garters, a shirt, a tweed or technical jacket in a muted pattern, and a dark flat cap or fedora. Underneath, early-season days are often warm enough for shirt sleeves – many moors are relaxed about ties in August, though check with your host – while a light merino layer earns its place by October. A waistcoat or gilet with generous cartridge pockets is more useful than a heavy coat, and whatever the sky looks like at breakfast, packable waterproofs go in the gunbus. No exceptions. This is the north of England and Scotland in autumn; the forecast is a work of speculative fiction.

Two safety items complete the outfit and are not optional: ear protection and shooting glasses. Grouse days involve low, fast birds and a line of neighbouring butts, and eye protection on a driven grouse day is as much about stray pellets as it is about sun and grit.

What colours should you wear on a grouse moor?

Wear heather-coloured clothing on a grouse moor: browns, olives, lovats and muted greens that blend with the hill. No white or pale shirts, no light caps, no bright accents above the waist – grouse pick out movement and contrast at extraordinary range, and the palest thing on the skyline is usually a Gun’s face and cap. This is also why many grouse tweeds lean darker and greyer than the russet estate tweeds of the low ground. If in doubt, stand in heather and ask yourself whether you would spot you.

Footwear for the moor: boots or wellies?

Sturdy, ankle-supporting walking or field boots beat wellingtons on a grouse moor in all but the wettest conditions. Butts can be a stiff climb from the road, the ground between them is tussock, bog and rock, and a turned ankle two drives from the vehicles is a miserable way to end a season. Save the wellies for standing days on low ground; on the hill, wear boots you have already broken in, with stockings underneath doing the double duty of warmth and blister prevention. Gaiters are a sensible addition in deep heather, and by the back end of the season a pair of gloves with a foldaway trigger finger will keep you shooting when the temperature drops.

The etiquette rules that still apply

The moor may suspend the shooting field’s love of peacocking, but the old rules of turnout survive intact. Breeks are never fastened over stockings – always under. Garters are tied properly, with a neat turnover and no ends flapping in the mud. And a Gun never wears head-to-toe matching tweed: a full four-piece suit in a single cloth is the uniform of the keeper and his team. Everything matching except the cap or waistcoat is the convention. None of this affects the bag in the slightest, but turnout has been half the theatre of a shoot day since the Edwardians, and getting it right costs nothing.

One more grouse-specific point: dress for the butt you are in, not the photograph. Kneepads or a kneeling mat sound deeply unglamorous until you have spent a drive crouched below the heather line of a low butt waiting for the first covey.

The golden rule of dressing for the moor

Dress so the grouse cannot see you, the weather cannot hurt you and the walk cannot beat you – in that order – and spend whatever you like doing it. The moor is refreshingly unsnobbish about labels: the hill treats a £4,000 bespoke suit and a £150 secondhand one with exactly the same rain.