THE grouse season began quietly yesterday with a small number of shoots able to celebrate the Glorious Twelfth in traditional style.

Some in northeast Scotland, Northern Ireland, North Yorkshire, and Derbyshire went ahead despite a gloomy forecast that this year was to be the quietest start to the season since the Fifties.

Martin Gillibrand, the secretary of the Moorland Association, said that a number of shoots went ahead, despite the overall reduction in the grouse population. “There are small pockets where shoots have taken place, and they have been a ray of hope in an otherwise poor day. The fact is that most shoots have not taken place,” he said.

The Glorious Twelfth marks the beginning of the grouse shooting season, with thousands taking to the moors.

This year, however, moorland experts predicted that the numbers of birds had been severely reduced through disease and poor weather conditions.

The Game Conservancy Trust said yesterday that this year’s season was “a very mixed bag”, with some estates boasting good numbers while their neighbours experienced the opposite. Ian McCall, a director of the Game Conservancy Trust, said that in some parts of Scotland, such as Deeside, Inverness and Speyside, grouse populations had continued to thrive. “It has not been universally bad,” he said.

Mr McCall said that, despite this, Scotland as a whole would experience a dip in revenue and that could have a knock-on effect on vulnerable communities. He said: “Groups come from across the Atlantic to shoot and they won’t be making the journey, which means hotels won’t be getting cheques at the end of the week.”

Colin Shedden, the Scottish director of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, said that unseasonably cold and wet weather played a major part in the poor grouse numbers. He said: “We are looking at the worst year in perhaps the last ten years, while in England they are saying it’s the worst in fifty. The breeding success of the grouse has been very poor in most areas and cold, wet weather at the end of May and beginning of June has had an adverse effect.”

The subdued season is expected to double the price of a brace of grouse from £7 to £14, according to gamekeepers. The knock-on effect will be higher prices in hotels and restaurants.

There are about 459 grouse moors across the UK, covering 1.5 million hectares from Wales and Derbyshire to the Highlands.

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