The days of caper shoots

For many of my contemporaries in the late ’60s and ’70s, an invitation to stay with Harry Calvert and his parents, Major Eddy and Mrs Calvert, at Fasnakyle, their 20,000-acre deer forest at the east end of Glen Affric, was a first introduction to the glories of a Highland estate. There were 10 pools on the River Glass, stags in the rut, walked-up grouse, ptarmigan on the high ground and, reputedly, a few capercaillie in the old Scot’s pine woodland behind the lodge. The Calverts were immensely kind and generous hosts and between them and Major Eddy’s stalker, Ian Shewan, they went to endless trouble to share their great depth of knowledge with the young.

As a Borderer, I had never seen a live caper and one afternoon, when we were down early off the hill and the rest of the party had gone to fish the Glass, Shewan offered to take Harry and I up into the pine woods and try to drive a cock caper he had been watching for some days over us. Even after the passage of 50 years, I vividly remember climbing up through the old self-seeded trees, with shafts of early October afternoon sunlight