Shot in the arm for moribund grouse moors
THERE’S gold in them thar’ grouse. Scotland’s moors are undergoing a renaissance, with millions of pounds being invested in grouse shooting for the first time in decades.
Moribund grouse moors are being revived by a flood of new money from wealthy Scots businessman, City financiers and overseas investors who enjoy what is regarded as the best sports shooting in the world.
Many think nothing of paying up to 12,000 a day for an outing on the Scottish moors with like-minded friends.
News of the recovery was revealed in a survey carried out by the Scottish Countryside Alliance (SCA) in the run-up to today - the Glorious Twelfth of August, the traditional start to the four-month grouse-shooting season. Tim Baynes, moorland policy officer for the SCA, said: “There has been a lot of new investment during the past five years. There was a picture of declining grouse moors but many have now had a shot in the arm.”
Neil Kilgour, a moorland specialist with Savills property agency, said: “While traditional landowners maintain their moors to the best of their ability, new buyers - all successful self-made men - are queuing up to invest. It is a resurgence in sporting estates not seen since Victorian times.”
Despite an overall decline since the Second World War, there are still 459 grouse moors in Scotland and northern England, covering 3.7 million acres.
The SCA survey says the “low point” was probably reached in the mid-1990s, “but the last five years have seen a remarkable recovery.”
The SCA estimates that there are now at least 25 new owners injecting around 10m a year into Scottish grouse moors.
They include 5m on two estates in the Angus Glens, 2.25m on a moor near Inverness and 300,000 on a moor on Speyside.
“The investment has been mainly in moors that had gone into a downward spiral of decreasing investment and decreasing [game] bags, with too few keepers,” Baynes said.
One new owner is Robbie Douglas Miller, the former managing director of Jenners, the upmarket Edinburgh store, who took over the 3,000-acre Horseupcleugh estate in the Lammermuir Hills in the Borders in 2005.
“The estate had really been managed as a sheep farm until that time and we have now reversed that,” he said.
“We don’t have commercial shoots at the moment because we don’t have a surplus of birds but we hope to in a couple of years’ time.”
Although the main buyers continue to be British, wealthy Russians are also in the market. Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea FC, led the way, buying a 1,500-acre estate in West Sussex in 2000 and spending 1m stocking it with 20,000 grouse and pheasants.
In Scotland, Vladimir Lisin, Russia’s second richest man, beat British buyers to secure the spectacular 16th-century Aberuchill castle in Perthshire for 6.8m. The 3,300-acre estate has some of the best grouse shooting in the UK.
Despite the influx of new investment, shooting is still dependant on the climate. Prospects for the coming season are patchy across Scotland as many young birds may have been killed by the prolonged period of cold, wet weather in June.
But demand for the game bird among consumers remains high. Craig Stevenson, who runs specialist wholesaler Braehead Foods, said: ”
A decade ago the grouse industry was on its knees but it started to turn around about three years ago and last year it was very good.”
Opponents of grouse shooting also open a new line of attack today, claiming heather burning - a technique used by gamekeepers to create a better habitat for the birds - contributes to global warming by releasing billions of tons of carbon locked in the peat underneath.
