Your guide to safe grouse shooting

Because of the height that grouse fly at and the way they approach the butts, grouse-shooting is inherently more dangerous than any other form of driven-game-shooting. Mark Osborne has key advice on how to stay safe.

If you are inexperienced shooting driven-grouse (having shot perhaps fewer than six driven-grouse days), having an experienced shot or loader stand with you makes sense. It is unwise for any novice grouse-shot (irrespective of how many days pheasant- or partridge-shooting you have had), to shoot double guns until you have had at least half-a-dozen grouse days. Similarly, a loader on double-gun days is exactly that – he or she cannot keep you on the right track while busy loading the second gun. (You might enjoy reading George Digweed’s guide to grouse shooting.)

12 pieces of advice for safe grouse shooting

1. While competitiveness is great on the sports field and in a business environment it is unnerving and dangerous when it comes to the fore on a grouse moor. Everyone would like to be a good shot. However, the most important thing is to be a safe shot and excessive aggression, competitiveness or greed are not conducive to being a good neighbour, let alone a safe shot.

2. Many people who now shoot grouse were not fortunate enough to take up shooting at an early age. As a result, there are fewer and fewer people on the moors who learnt their sport through walked-up shooting, boundary days and the like. Instead, many of us have been taught to shoot later in life by qualified instructors. Having a qualified instructor out on the moor can be an excellent way of giving a novice gun confidence while ensuring that he or she does everything that they should do on the day, including shooting safely.

3.  The etiquette of not shooting your neighbour’s birds on a low-ground shoot still applies when on a moor, and it is far easier to shoot your neighbour when you shoot at a bird or covey of birds going to him or her. Where grouse are crossing (flying down the line rather than coming into your neighbour’s butt) it is acceptable for you to shoot at them when they are within range and it is safe to do so.

4. It is folly to believe that a safety frame, let alone a cane, will prevent you from shooting your neighbour. For safe grouse shooting, you, and you alone, must make the final decision when and whether it is safe to shoot. A cane or stick does no more than indicate the general direction of where the adjoining butts are. A frame, theoretically, has the ability to block out the neighbouring butt, but if you are at the front of the butt shooting incoming grouse and you extend your left hand and effectively reach around the frame, you can easily shoot down the line and even into the adjoining butt and beyond.

The positioning of the frame is essential and it is down to you, the gun, not the loader, to put and keep it in the right position. One of the dangers of having such safety devices is that people rely on them. Several times I have heard people saying that they couldn’t pos-sibly have been the one who perpetrated the dangerous shot, “because the frame was in the way”. Using a safety frame will probably help you to shoot more safely. However, it will not stop you from shooting your neighbour if you have a mind to do so.

5. The best safe grouse shooting advice to follow when in a grouse butt is that if a gun only fires to the front in the 90-degree arc between A and B (that is, 45 degrees either side of the mid point), then there is no chance of any gun shooting his or her neighbour.

The greatest likelihood of a dangerous shot occurring is when you shoot at incoming grouse too close to the line of butts. You have probably shot your first barrel too late and by the time you are ready to fire your second, the birds are too close to fire it safely.

Many accidental shootings occur once the first horn blows. This is because, at this time of the drive, grouse often flush in singles and the competitive gun is over-keen to shoot the bird as it flies between the butts and before his neighbour can shoot it.

There is an increased risk of danger when the grouse does not fly directly away from the butt line but angles down it.

6. It is fundamental that you never swing through the line. Shooting in front, stopping the swing, lifting the gun over the butt line and then realigning it on birds flying away behind will ensure your neighbours don’t feel vulnerable (there is nothing worse than looking down a pair of barrels) and will make a major contribution to your shooting safely.

7. There is a natural tendency when you are shooting out of the front of the butt to stand as close to the front as possible.

However, to be in exactly the same position when you shoot at a bird that has gone through the butt line, your right heel would have to be almost touching what was the front and is now the back of the butt wall. What generally happens is that once the gun turns to shoot behind, he or she moves at least half a pace, and often a pace, “forwards”, thereby altering their safe shooting position, which is where the safety peg or frame is positioned for shooting out of the front of the butt. This means that it is much easier for the gun, having moved, to then shoot down the line at a bird flying away behind.

If you move your feet when you are going to take a shot behind, you should ensure that your safety frame is wide enough to allow for this, or reposition the frame to take account of your new shooting position.

8. If you are in a line of butts on a bank, it is essential that you recognise the fact that the butts farther up the bank (and it may be much worse for the butts two or even three away), are much higher than you are and therefore even though you think that the shot is perfectly safe above your neighbour’s butt, falling shot could easily rattle around the higher or, indeed, lower numbers.

9. Many people who shoot have an imprecise knowledge of how a cartridge works. If you want to see the effects of shot, go and shoot a shotgun on a still day into a lake or other stretch of water . You will find that although the main thrust of the shot is in one direction (where you aim), there are often pellets that deviate from that direction of travel, sometimes to a surprising degree. These are called “stringers” or “fliers” and are often caused by the lead being distorted as it ricochets off the barrel wall.

You need to be aware that even though you believe the shot you are taking is safe, if you take it too close to the butt line (behind or in front), you may inadvertently shoot uncomfortably close to or even hit the neighbouring butt because of these malformed pellets. So leave considerable margin for error to take this into account.

10. It is vitally important that you understand range. Many people who have used a shotgun for a long time believe that it becomes ineffective over a certain distance – usually 50yd to 60yd unless using a very powerful cartridge. The Clay Pigeon Shooting Association advises that the safety margin when you fire a 12-bore shotgun should be 275 metres. This includes a good margin for error, but with many combinations of cartridge and choke, you could still blind someone at more than 150yd.

It is essential that everyone understands where it is safe to shoot when you are one of the outside butts. Very often it is guns in butts number 2 and 8 out of a line of 1 to 9 who have the hardest job to shoot safely, whereas the two ends butts can often shoot safely once the grouse are clear of the flankers. It is the next butts in that offer a much more constricted safe angle of fire.
Every year flankers get shot and this is almost always because guns are either greedy, have not paid proper attention (or made the effort) to find out where the flankers are, or because they have no real understanding of how far pellets travel.

Consider this from the beaters’ point of view: if you’re a gun who takes shots when beaters are within 150 to 200 yards, I’d strongly suggest you swap places with them. You’d quickly realise it’s no fun being on the receiving end of those shots, even at that distance.

11.  No reputable shooting ground allows people to shoot after consuming alcohol.  There are few statistics about shooting accidents, but the one that I think is fairly clear cut is that there are more accidents in the afternoon than in the morning on grouse shoots. I believe there is a correlation between that fact and excessive alcohol consumption at lunch-time.

A glass of wine in moderation is fine. Anything over this does not seem sensible.

12. Anyone who goes out on a grouse moor and is near a shooting position should high-quality, shot-proof glasses. It takes only one pellet to lose an eye. (More on gun safety here.)

Grouse-shooting is, to my mind, the most exhilarating and challenging form of driven-game shooting in the UK. It is incredible fun but any lack of concentration or “over-enthusiasm” could ruin someone else’s life – and it will almost certainly do the same for the person who pulled the trigger.

(You might enjoy reading:  How to shoot grouse. The must-read guide.)

 

This article was originally published in 2013 and has been updated.