Mid-December

     A warmish weekend and settling snow tempt us into the woods. A snowmobile packed trail makes it possible. Off the trail the snow is up to the dogs’ shoulders. Determined, they struggle, but then lose their resolve.

Snowmobiles packed a trail.

    The trail dips into a hollow filled with catkin loaded alders. A stream meanders, leaving patches of bare ground at the turns. Thick spruces and fir trees shoulder the alders, with a few wild apple trees crowded in. Everything about the place looks like grouse country. The dogs taste the air and test the snow. It’s tough going.

     Does grouse scent waft in the air? Are the birds in the trees and watching us? Probably. The dogs venture into the woods and then return to the packed trail.

Catkins

     Up the road further, where it divides hardwoods on the low side to the right and mixed growth to the left, a grouse rockets across to safety in a thicket of young softwood trees. The dogs and I fight our way up to the tangle of fir trees. Colby, the older dog with arthritis issues, stops in chest deep snow and waits. I hesitate a step or two beyond, then the thunder of wings.

     Maggie, our youngster, flies through the snow into the firs. Her tail is a blur as she sorts out the scents and hunts hard. The snow is not so deep under the thick boughs and she is a joy to see.

     Eventually she comes back to me, admitting the bird has gone. We turn back toward the truck.

     Back in the hollow, Maggie plows through the snow beneath the alders. Grouse tracks meander and droppings color the snow. A squirrel has shucked a mountain of spruce cone scales. Deer tracks snake through the woods. No grouse are on the ground.

     The snow has tired us all. It is time to head home.

Dreams

     I wrote the following in January of 2016, on a particularly wintery day. Old dogs dream, and old hunters do too. Another bird season together was not meant to be, but more than once we dreamt of it.

Winter

     Eyes, gray as the winter sky, look up questioning. A rubbed ear brings her chin to rest against my knee. Eventually, she settles to lay on the rug by my desk. Curled up in slumber, soon her legs twitch in a dream.

     What a long life she has had, hunting fifteen seasons, and most of those in some of the finest ruffed grouse country found anywhere. Her dreams must be shaped by memories of those fifteen autumns. What stories she could tell.

     Daily walks in the woods keep our weary legs in shape, but the winter, with its deepening snow, makes the going impossible for dogs. Plowed logging roads are the only place for them to run. There she can still sniff the air along the sides, forever searching for ruffed grouse. Her loping trot rocks her along, but the occasional slippery spot causes the hind legs to fumble. Up and on again, her spirit is unfazed.

     In a little over two months the woodcock will return. Let’s hope we both see our way through Mother Nature’s next cycle. Do we dare dream of one more fall together?

My old girl Chara in her prime.

Bank Beaver

     The bird hunting certainly was not the best. For almost two hours of walking my dogs and I had only found a couple of grouse that stayed up high in the softwood trees and two woodcock.  Finally, we were back on our side of the stream and only a couple of hundred yards from our home. It was time to direct the dogs back up the hill toward the house, but the younger wirehair, Maggie, stopped to stand like a statue beside the stream.

     Now the stream isn’t too wide, maybe fifteen to twenty feet, and only three feet deep in the deepest holes. Where my youngster stood, the bank rose about two feet above the water right next to one of the stream’s deeper holes.

     I walked up to see what held her interest, but beneath her nose only a small depression marked in the ground. For a minute we stood discussing the find, or non-find. Well…I discussed and she just stood like a statue.

     Next to us the stream made a hard turn to the left. About eight feet away, in the middle of this bend, stood an island. Two springs before, the run-off had chewed land away around it. The water slipped quietly around that corner less than two feet below us.

     Suddenly the water boiled into a million bubbles and swelled up, creating a mound that bulged toward the little island. My dog jumped back and I swung my shotgun in its direction.

     Then all was quiet.

Looking upstream at the home of  the bank beaver.

     I remember talking to Maggie and wondering what we had witnessed. The bubbles fizzled and the water became clear. The stream returned to quiet. Did it really happen?

      Then a beaver popped to the surface, swam about, only to disappear heading downstream.

     The next day I asked an old-time local about it and he said, “Oh, that was a bank beaver. For a long time it was thought they were a separate breed, but it has been learned they are the same as any beaver, except they live in a stream that is too large for them to dam up. They tunnel into the bank to make a lodge.”

     Who ever heard of such a thing?

Shoot Fast, and Miss

     It’s the opening day of bird season, you have waited for months for this day. A chill still lingers in the air, yet the maples and birches blaze in their autumn their colors. As the sun climbs higher and starts to warm the air, traces of white frost still highlight the shadows. Buck, your Ryman setter, is working the cover hard. Life doesn’t get much better.

In the  early season the  leaves are still on the  trees

     Buck locks up like a statue.

     You hurry ahead of him and the bird explodes off the ground. In a blink it is gone. You fired a snap shot that you don’t even remember. Was it aimed? Who knows? Did you hit anything? Doubtful. Buck searches, but finds no bird.

     Early season is a tough time to hunt ruffed grouse. The foliage is still thick on the trees and when a bird flushes it is gone in a blink. We all do it…start the gun mount and point and shoot in a fraction of a second.

The fall colors add to the beauty of the  season.

     How many birds do we kill? Not too may. The abundance of leaves on opening day provide an easy excuse.

     Learn to shoot slower. If you have time for your eyes to lock onto the bird as the gun comes up to your shoulder, you will kill a larger number of them. It only takes a fraction of a second, but it makes a huge difference in the number of birds you will kill.

     No bird can outrace a charge of shot, remember that.

     Those hurried shots early in the season will tend to linger on, even as the leaves drop and the forest starts to open up. It became a muscle memory reflex. One way to force yourself to slow down is to mentally say something like “woodcock” or “ruffed grouse” or “bird up” when  the  bird flushes, then mount the gun. 

       A friend having a shooting slump with woodcock killed only one bird after missing with almost an entire box of shells. The one he hit was cleanly decapitated and fell six yards from his feet. That’s when he realized he was shooting way too quickly and even with open choked barrels the load hadn’t spread.

     He started hitting woodcock when he said, “there goes one”, before mounting his gun.

The reward of patient shooting.