Every year on the Twelfth of August, since around the mid 1800’s, on hills and moors all around the British isles, well-heeled men and women have taken to the hills with their shotguns, dogs and supporting entourage of loaders and picker-uppers to take part in the tradition known as the ‘Glorious Twelfth’.
Contentious
The sport of Grouse shooting is nowadays a highly contentious issue, the mere mention of which is liable to raise heated arguments, to some it falls under the umbrella of ‘blood sports’, outdated, cruel, responsible for damaging the environment and reinforcing social divides, for others it is a noble, beautiful tradition which benefits the environment and local communities, of course nothing is ever truly ‘black and white’, there are many shades of grey to the whole affair.
In this article I’ll try to describe some of what happens on the grouse moors on the twelfth, and any other day of the season, without straying to far into the ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ sides of the argument, although as you may see this is quite hard to achieve!
The Famous Grouse
The Red Grouse, Lagopus Lagopus scotica, is endemic to the British isles, found nowhere else in the world, and one of the few bird species which stays put on the wild and windswept moors all through the year without having to venture down into lower altitudes, unless it is a particularly bad winter.
They have very specific habitat requirements so a grouse moor needs intensive management to produce numbers which make the moor financially viable, this management, including practices like heather burning, is one of the main reasons grouse shooting is so contentious. (See the link below for an article about heather burning)
It is famously a very fast flying bird and very mobile in the air, so is regarded as being very ‘sporting’, as it requires no small amount of skill and experience with a shotgun to bring one down, in fact the Guinness book of records owes its existence to a discussion about whether the Red Grouse or the Golden Plover was the fastest game bird, an argument which has never entirely been settled.
Butts and beaters
Although some shoots practice a manner of shooting grouse called ‘walked up’, which by implication simply means walking across the moors to shoot any grouse flushed, most grouse shoots in the British isles practice ‘driven’ shooting, which is what is discussed here.
With driven shooting Grouse are made to fly over a waiting line of ‘guns’ which wait, hidden, within constructions called ‘grouse butts’ or just ‘butts’. These are traditionally built out of local stone with clods of turf and heather on top, as in the image above, or in various other styles such as the ones in the image below on Abbeystead estate in Lancashire.
A team of ‘beaters’, basically a line of people, quite often kids from the local community, who get paid anything from £10 to £30 a day, following orders from gamekeepers, or ‘shoot captains’, will walk across the moors and ‘flush’ the grouse from the heather to fly downwind towards the grouse butts. They often put up the grouse by shouting, clapping hands or waving flags which are usually made from plastic feed bags stapled onto sections of broom handle.
In order to steer the flying grouse towards the waiting guns whoever is in charge will shout, or radio, commands to sections of the line of beaters to either stop, slow down, speed up, change direction, be quiet or make more noise.
More experienced beaters may be given the task of ‘flanking’, being positioned at the ends of the line to ‘flank’ any birds which are ‘flaring’ away from the desired direction, they also act to keep the line in order.
The guns
The waiting guns will use 12 bore (a size of barrel) shotguns, traditionally ‘side-by-side’ which means two barrels side by side, and a ‘left and right’ is what they aim to get, there will also often be ‘loaders’ who’s sole job is to reload the guns as fast as possible, many guns will have a pair of guns to enable faster shooting, and there will be ‘picker uppers’ who have well trained gun dogs to retrieve the shot grouse.
When the drive is finished a horn or other signal is sounded to instruct the guns to cease firing, and everybody will take a well earned break, especially the beaters and keepers who will have done all the leg work across unstable and sometimes quite treacherous terrain in all sorts of weather.
Lunchtime
For the guns there might be flasks of coffee or tea, hip flasks of sloe-gin, or maybe even a shot of whisky, (although many will now shun the latter two nowadays). If it’s lunch-time there will be picnic hampers and ice buckets, for the keepers and beaters it’s more likely to be cool boxes full of warm bottles of fizzy pop, maybe cans of lager (though these will be strictly rationed) and sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm, but this will vary depending on the part of the country the shoot is in.
If the weathers inclement everyone might retire to a shooter’s hut or cabin which might have a fireplace or stove in it which the keepers will have cleaned out and prepared, here they will generally share out whatever provisions have been brought and swap tales (these social occasions provide very useful opportunities for making new contacts, especially business)
The head keeper will go to talk to the ‘factor’, owner of the estate, basically his boss, and briefly chat with some of the guns, if its been a particularly exciting and productive drive the guns might go to congratulate the beaters.
In one day there may up up to 5 drives, usually 4, maybe only 2 or 3 if bad weather cuts the day short, when everything is over the beaters might hop into a ‘beaters wagon’, which might be any sort of wheeled or tracked contraption, to head down off the hill, sometimes they might just walk down. The guns will often be in 4-wheel drive vehicles or a ‘gun bus’, basically another type of vehicle.
The end of the day
At the end of the day the keeper will go and pay the beaters and thank them, and there will be thankyous and handshakes too from the guns.
The keepers will have a vehicle or trailer in which to place the grouse and something to put all of the spent cartridges in, they will still have a lot of work to as well as making sure everyone is safely off the moors and on their way down, they have an enormous amount of stress on their shoulders as they won’t fully know yet whether the guns have had a good day, and therefore they are still in a job!
The beaters and gamekeepers will go home, to the local pub or even back to work!, they will be completely knackered, sometimes sunburnt, sometimes damp, the gamekeepers having hoarse voices from shouting at the beaters all day.
The guns will go to the local inn or hotel and often put a huge amount of money behind the bar, (although the days of rowdy, raucous nights of regaling shooting stories around the bar are rapidly becoming a thing of the past and many will have a long drive home or work the next day).
They’ll quite often have booked out local hotels and b&bs, and the manager of the shoot will spend a lot of time over the next few days staring at spreadsheets and ledgers trying to figure if the whole enterprise is worthwhile.
A B-H
If you would like to read more about grouse shooting this paper by Northampton University looks at all facets of the industry in great depth; nectar.northampton.ac.uk/15039/1/Sustainable_Driven_Grouse_Shooting_Master_050821.pdf
(This version re-edited aug 2024, as of writing many moors have cancelled this year’s shooting due to poor Grouse counts and heather beetle caused by the mild spring)
Northwest Nature and History 
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