The guns of August

Anybody who wants to get on in America must give handsomely to good causes. In our own essentially philistine society, the newly rich get further faster by buying grouse moors. I recently heard a tycoon observe sardonically, in an inimitable gravelly Norwegian accent: ‘Grouse-shooting makes all the English prostitutes.’

He meant that lots of people who otherwise think themselves principled, honourable, choosy about the company they keep, prostrate themselves before hosts who offer them an early entry to paradise, shooting the red grouse amid some of the most glorious landscapes in this island.

I became an addict very young, and almost ruined myself renting a little place in Sutherland where we walked miles, shooting grouse over pointers. If one of my children had started renting grouse moors aged 24, I would have rushed him into counselling. But, back in 1970, it seemed to me a perfectly rational thing to do. Indeed, for 11 months in the year I lived only in anticipation of the August morning when I would go north again.

The setting, the thrill of the sport in those great heather wildernesses, seemed incomparable — and so they still do. I shoot over pointers when I can, and also get the odd driven day — the Rolls-Royce end of the sport. The cost has gone up a bit. In 1970, I paid £500 for the right to shoot 100 brace. Today, such is the demand, the price of driven grouse-shooting nudges £200 a brace. A 100-brace day, therefore, sells for almost £20,000, or over £2,000 a gun.

At this time of year, because I love to connect the present to the past, before driving north I bury myself in 19th-century sporting books, recalling the distant days when the English discovered the Highlands.