Yorkshire Day in the Moors

Yorkshire Dales Moorland Group

Happy Yorkshire Day folks!

As the beautiful heather blooms begin to carpet our moors casting their mesmerising purple haze over the fells its now time for our moor managers to conduct their summer grouse counts.

The purpose of these counts is to evaluate what grouse are on the ground across the various beats ahead of the forthcoming shoot season. This data is critical for a number of reasons. Grouse counts are done to ascertain the years breeding successes and/or failures. They can reveal survival and productivity of pairs, brood sizes, incidence of disease or predation and also which parts of a moor are plentiful or diminished. All these factors play a critical role in forward planning but primarily they determine whether there will be a harvestable surplus for shooting. Since red grouse are truly wild and unique to the British Isles preserving them as a sustainable species is paramount in the minds of all moor keepers. Protecting the breeding stock is the highest priority and supplants everything else including shooting!

Using dogs to point birds or a small team to flush the grouse early in the morning are the main methods employed for counting. By doing counts very early in the day it is possible to establish truly resident birds. Counts later in the day could be affected by grouse movements for example if they are looking for grit, disturbed by an avian predator or visiting a pool to drink. First light counts are by far the most accurate way of registering grouse native to a beat.

Some keepers opt for block counts (a quartered patch of ground) whereas others prefer transect counts (between defined points). Both systems work fine if the same piece of ground is counted in the same way each year for comparison. Its necessary to maintain consistency. Most moors will count multiple areas to give a reflective and accurate picture of the status of the grouse population as a whole. The counts are then compared against historic records and respective shot bags for the same year. By making these comparisons it is possible to calculate harvest predictions with good accuracy. Other important factors are also taken into consideration when counting the grouse. These will include the optimised holding capacity of an area, whether breeding stock is increasing, stable or in decline. Fluctuations and trends can be detected through counting and as the reader will appreciate, managing grouse is not as straightforward as some think.

Here at YDMG we know that there will be many followers wondering how the grouse have faired this year. Whilst moors can vary markedly, even those neighbouring each other, the forecast over all is best described as favourable.