UKH

Just had a good week on the moors around Pately Bridge and was thinking of returning in August. The moors are open access land but are well kept grouse shooting moors. I know they can’t close the bridleways but a lot of the tracks up there are not designated. Are we likely to have trouble after the 12th?

All closure need to be notified and are available to see on the Natural England Access Portal

http://www.openaccess.naturalengland.org.uk/wps/portal/oasys/maps/MapSearch

Shouldn't be a problem. 

You might have to hang fire for a few minutes if the track passed the butts.

Where about in the Dale are you heading?

PM if you want

All this fuss and bother, economies and landscapes being changed, about a bird that's ostensibly being hunted for food. Has anyone here tasted grouse? I like game and I don't have a problem with it as a sustainable wild food. I enjoy rabbit, hare, pheasant, pigeon and partridge. Is grouse so good that it deserves these shenanigans? 

Disclaimer, I realise it's more to do with privilege and prestige etc. 

Yes, I’ve both had it in a pretentious restaurant and I’ve acquired and cooked some for myself.  It’s purportedly a rich gamey flavour, but compared to pigeon or duck breast it was rough verging on offensive on the palette, and too salted (I cooked mine without salt) without the nuanced flavours of other game birds.  

Edit: supposed to be going to bed and now all I can think about is pigeon breast; cut in to 1cm sized cubes, fried for 90s turning constantly in spitting butter with some crushed garlic, removed from the heat and deglazed with some redcurrant jam, served immediately on pre heated plates…
 

aln

Loving your edit!

I might have also used it to fix an errant capital “A”  as well.  I spot mistakes much better when re-reading a post than when writing it in the posting interface.

I'd have that on toast

Well done. I was thinking about game and pretentious restaurants. I am a foodie, and when I can afford it, I like to splash out. But I've been thinking about starting a thread so I can moan. Me and ms aln went to a Michelin star restaurant in Edinburgh, that's known for game. Cost a LOT. And it was the most disappointing meal in a restaurant Ive ever had!

Anyway, bedtime.

Let's be honest, Grouse shooting has nothing to do with the taste of grouse. 

We bought some from the local butcher when living near the moors.Small, nothing special and full of shot. 

Grouse, like many marginal meat sources, is a flavour for occasional eating. It acquires gaminess with hanging which, essentially, is letting it start to rot. In my pretentious foodie days (some decades ago now) I cooked 2-300 grouse. The drift was to less and less hanging and then I realised I was just eating a tough and relatively average meat. It’s often served with strong flavours for a reason.

All said, when well cooked and with a good Northern Rhone wine, it can make a good meal.

Was lead shot ever banned in the UK? Hunting (if you can call shooting birds in a barrel 'hunting') is not really my field, sorry.

I do remember that apart from the significant environmental aspects (birds guzzling stray lead pellets instead of stones), any game meat that was shot with lead bullets will have invisible amounts of lead left in it – however well dressed. Some of the micro X‑rays were pretty enlightening (pun not intended) and terrifying in how much lead particles were left in the meat. I'd assume the same is true even for lead pellets, if perhaps to a lesser extent.

Multiple studies have found increased blood levels of lead in children fed on game meat in hunting families, along with lead poisoning‑associated neurodevelopmental problems.

And since any lead exposure in childhood consistently lowers IQ later in life, I guess that could explain some of the aristocracy's "quirks"...

No. I may be mistaken but there might be a ban on fowlers shooting with lead, but that might be a self imposed on rather than legal. 

There is an attempt by BASC etc to self regulate and transition to steel but I think this is rather to extend the use of lead by being seen to do something, no matter how useless they are at it, and delay any legal challenge to it’s use.

I always assumed that grouse were more of a challenge than most other game birds for the shooter ( though they can't be in the same league as a snipe, which I'm shocked to see is still on the allowed list of birds to shoot in the UK)

My first time up Ben Chonzie was in Sept 1984, from the Lednock side, and my pal and I gave a keeper a lift up the road from Comrie on our way in. He said to drop in by his cottage on the way back, so we did this. I can't remember much about it but I do remember him having a cauldron-type thing simmering away, as a kind of slow cooker, and this contained a sort of grouse stew. He said he chucked a new one in every few days and kept it going. I don't think I tried it - I still ate meat in those days but didn't much fancy it. My pal did have some however and said afterwards that it was quite chewy.

That might have been the same trip where we encountered a drunk bloke lying asleep in the middle of the Loch Lubnaig road. Thankfully it was daylight and we saw him, so we stopped the car, got him inside and drove him to Strathyre - where he staggered off towards the nearest bar. Memorable things of that sort don't seem to happen so much these days - although I did have to rescue another fallen-over drunk bloke in Tillicoultry a couple of years ago, who similarly then headed for the nearest pub.

It is interesting how many foodstuffs are reputed to be the best in their class and also the rarest or most expensive.

With coffee, I forget the name of the rarest type of bean but you hear that coffee experts rave about it having the best flavour.

Same with chocolate, there is one variety of tree which is rarest and surprise surprise, we are told by experts that it produces the best flavour of chocolate.

Truffles are also the same.  They are the rarest and most expensive fungus which yet again, we are told have a wonderful flavour. (Actually, they are revolting, in my opinion.)

Even fillet steak or rack of lamb.  It is the smallest appreciable bit of an animal and once again, we are told it is the best.

And so we come to grouse.  I think it is genuinely rare as it only thrives in the semi-wild moorland environment and is hard to harvest (ie shoot) whereas the other things you list are either vermin (rabbits, hare or pigeon) or are basically farmed nowadays (pheasant and partridge).  

I do think there is a lot of unwitting snobbery, hype and one-upmanship going on here.  Can it really be that in all these foodstuffs, the rare and expensive version has the best flavour?  I doubt it.

Yes I think lead is banned over water, but no checks or penalties for disregarding the van.

Last week we were on Kirkby Malzeard Moor and Masham Moor above Scar House Reservoir. We were going to return in 3 weeks time but are now staying in Greenhow and doing routes just south on Pock Stones Moor. Although the ride around Scar House Res and the ridge above was really good and well worth returning. All of these are just outside of the NP. 
I don’t particularly agree with the shooting but because of the money it brings in the moors and tracks were very well maintained. 
just as an aside, we heard shooting every morning at around 6am and evening around 9pm which we suspected was keepers shooting birds of prey of which we had some lovely sightings. 

Really? Grouse just pop up out of the heather and fly horizontally for a bit. A superb target. Now, I don't shoot, but if ever a bird was just asking to be shot at it's the grouse. Also pheasants.

You'll be fine around those areas.

The shooting as most likely rabbiting. Though may be after foxes as well

Never fired a shotgun myself bur I've driven across the moors doing 60 with a grouse at the side of my car for  a quarter of a mile. I think there's a few shooters on UKC so perhaps one will weigh in with an opinion

Just not enough fat on a fillet to cook it how I like.  Sadly for me ribeye seems to have risen in popularity recently and isn't the steak it once was.

I save my low grade snobbery for

• Pre-cultivation food; alpine strawberries, bilberries, wild raspberries, venison, wood pigeon etc.  Mostly cooked only so far as necessary. 
   
• Stuff grown on small holdings without commercial pressure where the owners do it as a hobby - the Wintertree family are utterly spoilt by having scrambled goose egg for breakfast , duck egg custards etc made with eggs from a neighbour who keeps them as a hobby and sells the eggs on to recover food cost.  I’m waiting for the day one of the rare breed piggies is for the pot…