SHEEP OR STAGS ?
By GEORGE BLAKE
ON the first Sunday of April last, a mile or two above the hotel in Glen Affric, I stopped the car to watch the largest herd of red deer I have ever seen or am ever likely to see again. There were several hundreds of them, five at least, and they were of all ages and both sexes. They covered many acres of hillside from the edge of the road to the skyline. The nearest were less than a hundred yards away, and they did not stir as the party descended from the vehicle with cameras and cries of delight. All wore a faintly comic air of gentle optimism on their faces. One felt that a palmful of corn held out would bring several monarchs of the glen trotting to beg like dogs.
It was indeed hunger that held them there, beautifully motionless, for we discovered ourselves to be standing by the bin from which they are hand-fed in hard weather. One rattle on the lid of that bin, and we should have had half the red deer in Inverness-shire upon us, optimistic and trustful. And it was strange to reflect that these docile creatures were of the species that is laboriously, theatrically stalked in autumn by riflemen willing to pay for the pleasure at a rate which may be modestly computed at £50 a head. Your sportsman, to be sure, is interested only in the stags, and he must seek them at a period when the antlered male is mremely wary and given to roaming the high tops. In that sense stalking is by far a less ignoble business than the slaughter from butts of the driven grouse. Yet this proliferation of deer we had seen was a direct product of the sporting systein that makes quite a gallant song about the rareness and wariness of the stag.
The red deer is becoming a serious nuisance in Scotland. He is increasing yearly in numbers, in range, and in boldness. He is invading the sheep pastures, being a dainty feeder, and he has even taken to raiding arable lands. One Perth- shire sheep-farmer has bitterly said that Scotland from Amulree to the Atlantic is now one vast deer forest. More and more deer--fewer and fewer men : such is the track of the vicious circle largely traced by the sporting system, in itself largely a social fashion.
No informed person would think of denying the familiar argument that there are large tracts of Scotland which are fit only for deer. The Blackface Sheep Breeders' Association admits as much. What it cannot abide is the neglect of the recognised deer forests, the disrepair of fencing, the failure to drain moorlands and burn heather, and all the other little defaults of absentee landlordism that send the hungry deer a-roaming so far that sheep are almost literally butchered to make an alien holiday. That the grievance of the sheep- farmers is only too well-founded was handsomely recognised by a Commission which, sitting in 1918, was fully repre- sentative of landowning interests. It was again admitted at a series of meetings convened in 1929 at the instance of the Department of Agriculture for Scotland. No action was taken on the report of the 1919 Commission. The Bill proposed as a result of the inquiries ten years later has not even been drafted as yet. In June this year the Blackface Sheep Breeders' Association addressed an almost despairing letter to the Secretary of State for Scotland and to Scottish Members of Parliament. And then silence.
There is much prejudiced nonsense talked about the sporting system and the sins of the shooting tenant, but it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the latter, innocently enough, is the enemy of agriculture and the agent of depopu- lation. It is perfectly true that the glens, the only fertile areas on the western seaboard, were cleared for sheep long before it became the fashion to kill grouse from a given date in August. It is equally true that there was a large tendency on the part of the Highlander to desert the hard countryside fOr the town for reasons mainly industrial—and educational. It remains true, nevertheless, that the sporting system takes advantage of this group of circumstances to stabilise the unproductiveness of the Highlands and even to turn them into a sterile enclave for the rich and the privileged.
Searching for a culprit, the aggrieved Scot would unhesi- tatingly brand the native landowner rather than the Shooting Tenant. It may be crudely put that to take i50o a month for the shooting season is much easier than to fight for agriculture on grudging soil. There are in the Highlands, one fears, very few landowners who care very deeply in their hearts for the people on their estates. So, if the sovereignty of the estate is leased to a solid man from the City (whether of London or New York) the lessee is still more indifferent to local circumstances and is, very naturally, bent on having for his good money that supreme privilege of sovereignty, privacy.
This is a factor that most commentators on the subject ignore. It is, in my view, paramount. A cottar with a. lot of squalling children is a nuisance and a blot on the Highland landscape. If a farm cannot be run without philoprogenitive men, then one does without a farm. • For gamekeepers, gardeners, and such you preferably engage men who are single or childless. A fairly common act of depopulation is to abolish the village inn, thus cutting at the very heart of the communal life. Or you can use your influence with the County Council to keep the local roads in a bad way, so that the intrusive tourist will keep away.
There is no lack of evidence on all these points and more. A big part of Scotland is in the hands of privilege. It is, unfortunately, rather influential privilege.
Yet one feels, rather than knows, that the system is rapidly decaying of its own innate sterility. This has been a good season for letting, but it has been disappointing to tenants so far as grouse are concerned. One cannot help noticing that the generality of people are much less gloriously thrilled by accounts and pictures of shooting parties than they used to be. The broad-bottomed morning papers of Scotland, the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald, devote noticeably less space to moorland exploits in bird-killing than they did in another age. (We are much more interested in what the crofters of Inverness-shire think of the County Assessor for assessing their dwelling-houses apart from their agri- cultural lands and, in many cases, denying them the benefits of derating.) There seems to be more realism in the air. Perhaps a battue of driven grouse doesn't seem quite so funny and glorious after one has read the story of Guernica.
That the sporting system in Scotland must ultimately collapse is certain. But it is not quite so certain that either Nationalist Scotland or the Westminster Parliament knows what should be done next. Whomsoever the next move may lie with has a good deal of hard thinking to do about these Highlands, the most bleakly depressed area in Great Britain.
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