Late Fall

     It has been a great bird season for you, with two limits of ruffed grouse and plenty of excellent dog work. The real world called you home the end of the second week of October, but now you are back in the woods and the leaves are long gone. Things couldn’t be better.

     You hunt this same piece of cover that you did a little over two weeks ago when you found a dozen grouse. Today, with an inch of new snow on the ground and the weeds bent over, the forest seems to be shades of gray. Where are the grouse? What happened? Where did they all go?

     The ruffed grouse have moved. It happens every year. The edges of that clearcut, up high on the hill, where you found so many birds early in October now feel empty. For three hours you have walked and not found a single ruffed grouse…not even a track in the newly fallen snow. Your dog, Banjo, is working her butt off and is as enthusiastic as when you left your truck, but you don’t feel that way.

     You encounter a stream and follow it downhill to where it slips through a culvert beneath a logging road. Still, not a single bird. Crossing the road, you continue down the hill to where the hardwood stand peters out to mix with softwood trees. Banjo’s tail is a blur until she locks up on point.

     As you approach, a grouse steps off a small knoll and disappears down the hill deep into a darkness of the softwood trees, almost like a sky diver stepping out of an airplane. The precipitous drop-off discourages any attempt to follow, but seeing a single grouse has lifted your spirits. You turn to the left to follow the edge where the softwoods and hardwoods mingle, heading back towards your truck.

     Green ferns still poke up through the new snow.  In places a ground cover with roundish palm-sized green leaves shows through the white. A bird flushes from a little over head-high from a fir tree, startling both you and Banjo.

     And it brings a smile to your face.

     In a tight little valley someone has cut a couple of acres of hardwoods trees that abut a stand of hemlock. Alders cluster in a wet area. Poplar and maple sprouts are everywhere. Raspberry vines tug at your pants.

     Banjo goes on point, but before you can walk in front of her a grouse rockets up from the ground and another blasts out of a tree. With a prayer you swing on the one coming out of the tree and see it fold, not even aware that you pulled the trigger.

     Later, back at the truck, you will clean that bird and find its crop filled with buds, catkins from alders, and a few flecks of green foliage.

     The grouse had moved. With the cold weather coming they sought out the shelter of the softwood trees. The seeds and berries that they ate earlier in the fall, up higher on the hill, are gone. Catkins and buds will be their winter diet. When green ground-covers are available they will eat those too.

     It happens every year. As the colder weather settles in, ruffed grouse seek the shelter of the softwood trees. Look along the edge of a softwood swamp. The alders and birches supply plenty to eat with safety nearby. Pockets of dense softwoods around recent cuttings can be good too.

     The birds are there, you just have to work for them. Isn’t that what grouse hunting is all about.

The Magic of Doubles

     There is something magical about double barrel shotguns, whether the barrels are stacked one over the other or they are arranged side by side.  More people seem to like them stacked up these days, and with a single trigger. Maybe it makes more sense.  I don’t think it was always that way though, because if you start looking at old guns for sale there sure are quite a few ancient side-by-sides and the over-n-unders are all newer.

Pair of Parkers

     Gun in England means a shotgun.  A rifle is called a rifle, not a gun.  Somehow, on this side of the Atlantic, we started calling everything that shoots a gun.  The English developed the shotgun to its highest form, at least in the configurations of double barrels.  Americans, with their love for firepower, developed popular pump and semi-automatic shotguns that could fire more than two shells. Most serious bird hunters have more than one type of shotgun and many have multiples of many types. 

     During the last half of the eighteen hundreds and into the early years of the twentieth century, gun makers all tried to outdo one another by improving the gun’s design. Hundreds of new patents relating to firearms were filed during that period. Everyone wanted to make the guns lighter and easier to open. Ejectors were a huge problem to solve. Several attempts at single triggers failed. Chokes appear to have been an American invention, but gunsmiths on both sides of the Atlantic experimented with them.

     The earlier guns were all sidelocks, a natural progression as the early flintlock and caplock muzzle loading guns transitioned into the first break open guns.  The hammers just stayed in the same place they always had been. About 1875, two gunsmiths named Anson and Deeley, working for a gun making company called Westley Richards, developed a simple and strong hammerless action called the boxlock.  If you want to get an argument started among fans of double barrel shotguns, ask which action is better…sidelock or box lock. And then Westley Richards came out with the droplock just to add more fuel to the argument.  

     A friend’s uncle up in Maine was my early bird hunting mentor.  His favorite upland bird gun was an old Ithaca side-by-side, a twelve gauge.  I don’t remember how it was choked, but the barrels were closer to brown than blue and the checkering was worn smooth.  He also used that gun for a deer hunting brush gun too, with buckshot in the tighter barrel and a slug in the open one.

     I saved money and wandered the gun shops, looking at double barrel shotguns and dreaming.  There weren’t many used over-n-unders in those days, and any to be found cost way too much.  The only new side-by-sides  in the shops I visited were imported Ithaca guns made by SKB.  I loved the looks, but at a price of over three hundred dollars they were way out of my reach.  Besides, I wanted a gun with double triggers, which my friend’s uncle told us was the best because you could pick your choke instantly.  I eventually bought an old Ithaca for fifty dollars.

     I never shot that gun well and eventually sold it to my brother, who still has it to this day.  Shortly afterwards, during a stop at a gun shop, I happened upon a Parker VH for three hundred dollars, a lot of money to a young guy in the mid-nineteen-seventies, but I had a full time job by then and I was hot for a Parker.  And with that gun the birds started dropping out of the sky.

A late season grouse.

     Sometime after that I read about “cast” in shotgun stocks, and sure enough that Parker’s stock was cast for a lefty, which I am.  What luck!  When I visited my brother I checked that old Ithaca and sure enough it was cast for a right handed person.  No wonder I couldn’t hit anything with it! 

     Cast is a slight bend to the side in the stock, about at its narrowest point, which is called the wrist, and it makes pointing the gun more natural and easier.  Cast for a right handed person is called cast off, and for a lefty it’s called cast on.  American guns are not usually cast one way or the other, but my first two guns were, one for me and the other for someone right handed.  Whenever I pick up a shotgun in a gun shop now I always check for cast.  The easiest way to do that is to make sure it’s unloaded, turn the gun upside down and rest the heel of the stock on something soft, like your toe, and then look down the barrels from the muzzle end.  Any cast in the stock is usually pretty easy to see.

     You probably have owned a pump shotgun or two, and maybe still do. I own two pumps, one is set up as a deer gun with a scope, and the other is my lousy weather duck gun.  Somewhere I have an old Remington 1100, which I used to be deadly with back when we could throw lead shot t waterfowl. When you look at it you know it has seen a lot of nasty weather and way too much salt water.  But none of those guns gets handled too much anymore.

     The upland woods calls to me these days and it’s always hunting over dogs. I think the quick handling and fast pointing of the doubles suits that type of hunting better.  That old Parker still sits in the safe, but it weighs over eight pounds, which is a bit much for carrying all day. For a while an over-n-under Browning Citori in 20 gauge was my go-to gun, but eventually I went to a 20 gauge side-by-side with two triggers, the Model RBL made by the Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company. I like that it can handle steel shot where it is required without a worry.  Somehow the side-by-sides just seem to nestle in the crook of my arm better when I’m walking and I never see the barrels when I shoot, so I don’t believe over-n-under or side-by-side makes much difference as far as killing game. 

      Besides, I love the old traditional things, and it is hard to beat a side-by-side for that. 

The first grouse of 2018.

Hiking or Hunting

Can the dogs tell the difference?

Colby helping Val
pick blueberries.

We love our dogs and treat them like family members. That means they go almost everywhere with us and enjoy outdoor activities that can be shared with them. A great way to keep bird dogs in shape during the summer is to take them hiking. We are fortunate to live where upland birds are abundant and hiking trails abound. Can our dogs tell the difference between a day of hunting and a day of hiking? Of course they can.

Whenever we work the dogs on birds, whether hunting or training, they wear collars with bells attached. Hearing those bells brings on a level of excitement that exceeds anything else. The dogs love to go on a hike during the off season, but it isn’t the same as putting on those belled collars.

Val and our old girl Chara
on a summer time hike.

In April and May, when ruffed grouse and woodcock are nesting and have young broods, we hike less and pick our walks carefully so not disrupt the birds. April up here can be muddy and is a great time to work on the next year’s firewood supply. May is a great time to do a little trout fishing.

During normal summer hikes, the dogs run ahead and make swings back through the woods, just hunting for fun, but generally don’t go too far. The exercise keeps them and us in shape. There are frequented trails that they remember and longer trips to explore new country, sometimes miles in the woods. It's a great way to find new bird country and sometimes a beaver pond to fish.

Slip on those collars with bells and they kick into high gear, hunt hard, and point solidly on birds. The transition is like flipping a switch.

Maggie on another summertime hike.