ARISTOCRATIC SPORT IS TAKING A HARD KNOCK

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 99, 22 September 1950, Page 6

ARISTOCRATIC SPORT IS TAKING A HARD KNOCK

The aristocratic British sport of grouse-shooting is taking the knock. Landowners and sportsmen dolefully describe the season which opened on August 12, the traditional '‘Glorious Twelfth,” as the worst ever. It closes on December 11, cables Geoffrey Scott from London. They tell of moors unlet, shooting lodges untenanted, g'hiljlies, loaders and beaters standing them up for unheard-of-wages. Even the Americans, who in recent years have been a mainstay of the sport, have been fewer and less openhanded this season.

The grouse season is one of Scotland's chief industries. Before the war revenue from letting grouse moors reached £500,000 in a good season. Hotelkeepers, bea..ers, lodge staffs and other retainers of the noble sport collected another £500,000. One Scottish landowner had an income of £15,000 a year from letting his moors. Scotland’s revenue from the present grouse season is unlikely to be more than a quarter of the revenue earned in a good pre-war season.

Crippled By Taxation Heavy taxation has crippled many of the wealthy sportsmen who before the war rented thousands of acres of moor and gave sumptuous house parties.

Many of them are staying at hotels, instead of renting and staffing houses. Some have formed syndicates to lease moorland, and ar • ranged to sell the bags to wholesale poultry merchants.

This sordid commercialism has roused bitter comment from oldtimers who write to Country Life and The Times nostalgically recalling the lordly pre-war days. The opening of a pre-war grouse season followed a stately and impressive ritual. On to each of the 800 grouse moors scattered over Scotland and the north of England swept an imposing cavalcade. First came the shooting brake —a large, open carriage loaded with sportsmen—then an inferior vehicle carrying loaders, beaters and servants, and. bringing up the rear, farmhands leading ponies with panniers to carry the dead game.

But few people in Britain now can afford the luxury of grcfu.seshooting on the old scale. £SOOO For Rent The rent of a moor for the season, though less than the pre-war figure, may still be £SOOO in a good shooting season. Staff, plus food, entertainment and transport for a house party, will cost another £2OOO.

Beaters and loaders, who were satisfied with 10/- a day before the war (and half-a-crown a day in the depression ’thirties), now get £2 a day. Cartridges cost £1 for 50 Second-hand guns cost £IOO to £l5O