What are the Grouse Prospects for the Coming Season?

Last year was overall probably the worst Grouse season in living memory. Whilst there were a few (very few) Moors with a reasonable number of Grouse, it did not make much difference whether you were in the Peak District, the North Yorkshire Moors, the North Pennines, the South of Scotland or the Highlands, all had few Grouse and in many places very, very few.

It was a bizarre situation, caused by a number of factors combining together (worm, poor nutrition and horrendous weather over the end of May/beginning June), which meant that on some Moors less Grouse were counted in the July counts than had been counted in the Spring counts in March!

This meant that for most Moors, after experiencing over winter mortality of perhaps 25% to 33%, they went into the 2025 nesting season with very modest Grouse stocks indeed. It is the number of pairs of Grouse in the spring that plays a major part in determining how the next season fares, so this did not bode at all well.

Although we had 10 days of pretty grim weather (cold and with a good deal of rain/wind) at the end of May/early June this year, overall young Grouse seem to have generally done well. The early broods in particular do not seem to have taken any harm from this poor weather, but those hatched at just the wrong time, have seen some brood sizes reduced from seven, eights and nines to fives and sixes. In some (particularly exposed) places, we are seeing some broods of threes/fours. However, as a corollary to this, we are also seeing many sevens, eights and nines and a few tens, elevens, twelves and the odd thirteens and a very few fourteens! On most Moors, the worry is the number of broods and the distribution of those broods and not the size of them. 

Whatever happens, the 2025 season is going to be infinitely better than the 2024 one – it would be impossible not to be! There will be a smattering of Grouse even where the stock was really low (and that includes on many really good Moors in the North Pennines), but were there was a reasonable stock of Grouse at the end of the 2024 season, 2025 could be a really nice season, although no records will be broken. We are, however, in a much better place than last year and with sensible shooting this season, we should find that most Moors will be ready (weather permitting) to be fully back on track in 2026. People have asked whether the recent very hot and dry weather has been a problem? Not, we think to the Grouse themselves (and there seemed enough moisture for insects early on), but the risk of wildfire has been almost constant this summer. We have commented on the very large and recent wildfire in Morayshire elsewhere in this News Blog.

Article written by Mark Osborne