If its Glorious it Must be English

Today is the "Glorious Twelfth".  As soon as you hear the word "glorious" attached to a date you know you're dealing with something English.  They have the Glorious 1st of June to commemorate a day when their navy more or less beat the French, they even have the Glorious Revolution to commemorate the English decision to take a boring Dutch protestant as their monarch in preference to a boring catholic of any nationality.  Today, as previously mentioned, is the Glorious Twelfth when a thin baggy tweed line is the only thing that prevents Britain from being overrun by marauding packs of ferocious grouse.  It is in fact the start of grouse shooting season (unless the glorious twelfth falls on a Sunday in which case it is postponed until Monday).

I'm not quite sure why grouse shooting is particularly glorious.  Oh I understand the appeal; there you are alone with all your friends out in the wild (or at least the overgrown) with nothing between you and the ravening grouse except several thousand dollars worth of animal killing equipment.  The heart beats faster at the very thought.  No wait; that's angina, must lay off the port.  But glorious?  Frankly, accidentally running down a dog with your car is an act of heroism by comparison.

As you might guess from the previous paragraph I'm a little conflicted by the concept of hunting.  On the one hand I'm utterly opposed to it on ethical grounds but on the other I have a sneaking suspicion that if I tried it I'd probably enjoy it.  What I'm less certain about is whether grouse shooting actually counts as hunting at all.  In a nutshell grouse shooting consists of driving to a moor, frightening some birds and shooting anything that flutters upwards.  If you're careful you should be able to achieve this without spilling your drink.  When I think of hunting I think of cautiously making ones way through woods or crags, eyes alert to every flicker of movement, freezing in uncomfortable spots for hours and getting (if you're lucky) just one opportunity to drop an animal you might see for a couple of seconds at best.  Grouse shooting is more akin to hunting in a zoo.  The success rate is higher but I can't help thinking the bragging rights diminish in proportion.

I'm sure grouse shooting requires skill, hitting a small bird on the wing isn't easy even when you're using a shotgun but it isn't what I consider hunting.  Proper hunting would consist of being stripped to the waist and taking on a tiger with a bowie knife.  If I came out on top in that struggle I would damn well be putting the thing's head on my wall no matter how politically incorrect it was.  Still I'm probably being unfair, Britain isn't exactly overrun with tigers so the hunters have to make do with what they can get.  And on the 12th of August what they can get is grouse.

In keeping with humanity's schizophrenic attitude towards animals generally the grouse is one of the best documented and understood birds in Britain.  Apparently we only really notice an animal when we're about to kill it.  The grouse shooting season only lasts from August to December after which any surviving grouse are given time off to breed.  As an animal conservation technique this seems to have worked considerably better than a number of others that don't involve killing large numbers of the animal in question.  Between January and the 11th of August it would appear that all grouse shooters spend every waking moment learning as much as they can about grouse and writing knowledgeable tracts about them.  If the grouse hold out we'll know everything there is to know in a generation or two.

Here is everything I know about grouse.  They're relatively small, they live on moorland, they are not an endangered species (ironic when you think about it) and the more pretentious of them call themselves ptarmigans, which doesn't stop them from being shot.  I'm sure that if I went out and killed a bunch I would feel compelled to learn a lot more about them but the truth of the matter is that I'm just not that interested.