It’s Showtime

The clearcut

     The season opened on a Monday with light rain, so I spent the morning working indoors. The precipitation stopped early and by mid day things had dried out some. 

     After lunch I took Maggie and Colby up a local bumpy road to take a right next to an old log cabin. We hunted the clearcut on the low side of the road where we had found birds a week before, but found nothing. We did find a moose scrape with a huge track in it. Above the road Maggie pointed one woodcock in a tangle as thick as a steel wool. It escaped unscathed.

The fall colors.

      From there we drove over across the valley to hunt the top of another clearcut. It's an interesting one, at the edge of old farm country, so there are a few apple trees remaining. Maggie pointed a couple of grouse in a thicket that I could not get into before they flew. Colby was on the scent of another, when it burst from a tree over my right shoulder. I killed it with a long shot, using a Polywad Double-Wide load of number eights. 

     Maggie was the one to find the bird. She is very proud of herself.

The first bird of the season. Its crop was filled with apple.