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Grouse shooting is a fun and traditional sport that rural people like to do, usually the terrain on a grouse shoot is heather because thats where they spend all their time, and they even sleep it it.
On a Grouse shoot their are usually a few different people. their are the Game Keepers, who organize the shoot, control it and breed and make sure the birds are in tip top condition. Then there are the beaters, who beat the grouse out of the heather towards the guns in their buts. Then their are the picker ups who have their highly trained gundogs which are trained to pick up the birds, and some are traind to flush the birds out of the heather. And then their are the most important men of all, the guns (the men that pay to shoot) The guns pay anything from £50 - over a £1000 for a days shooting. Gun can expect to shoot fromm 50 bird to about 500.
Shooting is quite an expensive hobby. At tiny, tiny shoots you can pay about £50 per gun per day and then there the average shoot where you pay about £250 - £700 and then there are the big shooting estates like Chatsworth, Balmoral etc, where you pay over £1000 per gun, per day, But places like chatsworth and balmoral have an extremely high quality of game, intresting shot, beautiful scenery and hospitality.
Usually you can take your gundog or the picker ups have them, these are highly traing dogs, trained to retrieve your dead game. the best gundogs are ones with soft teeth, there are loads of gun dogs and here are a few, labradors, springer spaniels, cocker spaniels, german pionters, vizzlas, the most common by far is the labrador.
The red grouse is can be found in north and west England, Wales (a different sub-species) Scotland and Ireland. Grouse are declining because of the increase of predation, disease and over grazing , however had they not been managed in the first place they would never have reached such high densities and this is therefore a decline from unnaturally high population levels, all though the grouses population is much, much higher than it was before mans intervention.
They used to be widespread on most heather moorland but now they have almost disappeared from Exmoor, Dartmoor and large areas of Wales. Keepers and Estates have made huge atempts to re-introduce them in such places as the Brecklands, The New Forrest and Belgium but sadly failed apart from Belgium where they are now extinct.
Red Grouse have a rich, rufous plumage with brown win feathers. From quite a distance, both sexes look very a like but there are 2 moult in the year and the hens generally have darker markings and can be yellower in the breeding season. The keepers in yorkshire tend to call this marmalade plumage and believe the hens with ‘marmalade plumage’ to be in far better condition. The red combs above the cocks eyes are easily seen in the breeding season, and the hen can enlarge hers to a small extent but they are usually hidden.
Managing the open moorland by predator control and heather burning increase both the grouse and their potential as driven game. When queen victoria bought balmoral, it became fashionable to own an estate in Scotland and grouse have been grouse have been the cream of driven shooting ever since. Grouses habitat consists of all most entirely heather, but they are also found in some forestry areas where there is enough heather. Their diet is almost entirly the shoots, flowers and seed of ling heather, though cotton grass is vitally important for the breeding condition of the hen in spring. |
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