Season Grouse Report 2022

1st December 2022

We are writing our Season Grouse Report 2022 as this years season has drawn to an end on 10th December. It has been a good season in comparison to the last five years and we have had some late days shooting throughout October and into November which have not taken place since 2017! Almost all our planned days we had in the calendar went ahead as scheduled apart from 10 cancelled days, of which 7 of these we were able to reschedule on our managed estates, so our teams had the full grouse shooting experience.

The breeding stock going into the winter / key spring period have a high proportion of young birds, which is more than we’ve had for some years. Whilst the densities are good, we do not think we have any excessive numbers of birds on the moors, although managing the Grouse harvest i.e. the numbers shot, is becoming increasingly difficult with regular raptor disturbance and the effects of climate change.

This year the birds were very well developed. Early hatches of young grouse had plentiful insects to eat and an abundance of berries. This has meant the young Grouse were fully feathered and mature by the commencement of the shooting season on 12^th August.

As seen in our Summer Grouse Report, the counts seemed fairly strong across the board but with lots of sunshine and temperature rising above 18 degrees, combined with high barometric pressure (as it was this August/September), we did not see the numbers of birds on the ground on shoot days we expected from our Summer counts... This forced a number of Moors to stop shooting earlier than expected, but for those who stuck at it, the birds were definitely seen later in the season when the temperature dropped. There is no doubt a warming climate is not good for showing Grouse and this has been seen over the past 4 years as temperatures across the country have soared above 25 degrees in August and September. We had one day on the 14^th November where it was 21 degrees and bright sunshine all day up on the Moor, something no one in the shoot line had ever witnessed before…

To conclude, we are hoping for some colder weather throughout the winter months and we will keep our fingers crossed for favourable breeding conditions again for 2023. We would like to thank all the Moors kind enough to let us bring parties to them, and also a huge thanks to our guests who have stuck by us and universally appreciated the effort and their sporting experience this season - Long may it continue!

If you would like to book any Grouse shooting for 2023, please do get straight in touch with us as we do have availability as we speak!