Let’s Hope This Catches On…

Every avid grouse hunter knows that early successional forests are great for wildlife. It appears a young forest is also good at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere too. Let’s hope this is the next environmental craze…

 https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbon-than-old-ones

Young poplars in a clear cut.

Ice On The Puddles

Morning fog usually means
nice weather.

     There is ice on the puddles now, at least first thing in the morning. At sunrise fog fills the valleys and the moisture freezes on the leafless branches of the trees. Golden or brown weeds and dead grasses have started to tilt or fall down. The fluffy seeds on the goldenrod look like cotton.

     Grouse hunters wait patiently for this time of the year. Temperatures are cool enough the dogs don’t overheat. Woodcock are still around to offer bonus birds. And, best of all, the leaves are pretty much gone from the trees. Green leaves may still cling to an occasional apple tree or the crown of a poplar may glow golden, but it is much easier to see in the woods.

High bush cranberries.

Young poplars.

     Gaudy red fruit hangs from both high bush cranberry and mountain ash this year. Apple tree branches weep under the load of their fruit. Now that the frost has softened the apples the wildlife love them. Find food and maybe you’ll find grouse, but this year there is so much to choose from the grouse could be almost anywhere.

     So we try to get out often. The dogs have firmed up their muscles and shed a pound or two. The hunters have too.

Maggie with a hard earned grouse.

Early Season

 

     It always starts with much anticipation, maybe even more so than Christmas. The leaves are still on and a few trees are still quite green. Temperatures might be up into the mid-sixties or higher, much too hot for the dogs and the hunters too, but off into the woods we will go.

     With luck, family broods of ruffed grouse will be found. Some of those young birds might even be dumb enough to fly into a load of number eight shot that is tearing through the air. A naive young bird will sit in a tree, not knowing how lucky he is that we choose not to shoot birds off limbs. We often taste a wild apple and probably toss it away as too bitter.

     The foliage usually is spectacular, from reds to yellows to oranges and green. We get hot and tired too soon. Up in our country the dogs can usually find a brook to stretch out in. A woodcock might tweeter away or a grouse thunders away. We’ll seek a shady spot up on a hill where a breeze might find us.

     Sometimes a bird comes home with us and sometimes none do, but it’s always a hell of a good time.

Birds Be About

      It’s that marvelous time of the year. Grouse season opened a little over a week ago and we’ve been out almost every day. The dogs pointed like champs and a few birds have fallen to the gun. We are working on consistency.

      Apple trees, hawthorn, high bush cranberries, and mountain ash are all so loaded with fruit that their branches sag. Choke cherries are almost black by now. Birches and maples are loaded with seeds. Every creature of the forest is gorging on the smorgasbord. Any hunter trying to use bait to lure in game is suffering an uphill battle.

      We have found the ruffed grouse up high in the hills and down at the edges of the farmland in the valleys. Woodcock are wherever the ground is damp and not crowded with weeds. Our daily averages are slightly above the long term normal.

      Our old girl Colby doesn’t cover a lot of ground, but she never bumps a bird. Maggie, at three and a half years of age, still lets her enthusiasm get ahead of her wisdom and occasionally bumps a bird, but she finds a half dozen birds to her older sibling’s one. Watching them develop is at least half of the fun. 

     It is the most wonderful time of the year.