Grouseparties

Among the great days that mark a British sportsman's calendar--"Derby Day," "The Grand National," "Gold Cup Day," "Boat Race Day"--none is more important than "The Twelfth." By law and tradition mid-August is the time set apart for the shooting of the game red grouse. To celebrate "The Twelfth" last week, brokers, brewers, baronets and belted Earls set off with some sixteen pieces of luggage each to join fashionable grouseparties on Scotch moors.

U. S. notables who put on leather patched shooting jackets, buttoned shooting spats, filled shooting flasks and rode on shaggy Highland ponies to the moors last week, included: Banker John Pierpont Morgan at Gannochy, Forfarshire; Telegraph Tycoon Clarence Hungerford Mackay at Glentromie; Engineer and Fly-fisherman Edward R. Hewitt, grandson of Philanthropist Peter Cooper, at BalmakeIlly; Philadelphia Socialite Clarence M. Clark at Murthly Castle; General John Joseph Pershing, crack shot, set out for a party at a spot he declined to name.

The morning of "The Twelfth" found these and hundreds of others on their different moors, seated two by two in the line of grouse butts--little crescent shaped turf bunkers facing the grouse coverts. Three-quarters of a mile away the beaters started moving toward them, a line of schoolboys and gillies waving flags, beating dishpans. Crouched in the bottom of each butt was a nimble-fingered loader, ready to hand each "gun" his second weapon. Began the fastest most difficult wing shooting in the world. Flying 50 miles an hour, like rocketing black bullets, grouse zoomed straight over the butts. Hundreds of birds fell, hundreds more escaped to fly again another day.