THE 60,000-acre Raby estate in County Durham is split, from a sporting point of view, into two roughly equal blocks: the lower ground and woodland round the magnificent Raby Castle and, on the eastern edge of the North Pennines, the marginal upland and grouse moors of Upper Teesdale. In an average season the grouse moors provide around 15 to 20 days’ driven shooting, some walked-up outings and a handful of back-end mixed-species forays on the moorland fringes. The wooded ghylls, scrub, bracken, bog and rushy rough pasture on the moor edge provide an ideal habitat for wild game, which benefits from rigorous pest control on the grouse moors.
On 9 December Andrew Hyslop, the Upper Teesdale headkeeper since 2016, arrived in the car park of the High Force Hotel, beside…
