Snow Roosting

      Christmas Day was quiet at Camp Grouse. Family was far away and friends were busy. We unwrapped presents early then ate a giant breakfast. The weather looked perfect, so we opted for a day outside with the dogs. It certainly wasn’t our first Christmas spent in the woods.

      Around Camp Grouse the snow looked a bit thin, so we drove north where the land is a little higher. Sure enough, the snow depth more than doubled to maybe eight or ten inches. We stopped beside an old logging road with fat tire tracks in it. Those tracks would make walking easier.

      One of the treats that day was finding a recently abandoned ruffed grouse snow roost.

A ruffed grouse snow angel.

      When the temperatures drop ruffed grouse seek shelter in the boughs of softwood trees or down inside soft snow. The R value of snow depends on the moisture content, but usually is around 1 per inch, about the same as wood. The R value of those rigid closed-cell foam panels is somewhere around 5 per inch. A bird hiding under a foot of snow would be sheltered by an R value of 12. Add to that the protection from the wind and you can see why grouse love to bury in the snow.

      One possible catastrophe for grouse is freezing rain or sleet that traps the bird under the snow. Hawks are unlikely to find a grouse hiding in the snow, but some predators, like coyotes or foxes, may smell their presence. Of course guessing where to dive into the snow to snatch a ruffed grouse requires a bit of luck. I have also heard of birds diving into the snow and hitting an object like a stump or rock, resulting in a broken neck. The odds of finding a dead grouse before a wild scavenger does are long.

      When someone says to me “Go take a hike”, we generally do.

Mentoring

      The number of people hunting has been falling for years. Hunters spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on conservation and as their numbers slip so do the dollars. Fish and Game departments around the country have started to address the issue. The past fall my state started a mentoring program to introduce new hunters to bird hunting over dogs.

      I am not certain how I heard about it, but I signed up last spring to mentor a hunter this past fall. The mentors were required to attend a meeting to explain the goals, and the mentees were required to attend a meeting to be certain they understood safe gun handling and what they were getting into. Shortly after that I was assigned a mentee.

    I called him up and he was anxious to get the lay of the land and meet the dogs. I invited him up and a week or so later he arrived at our home. It was August by then and birds were through nesting, so I took him out with our dogs, hoping to find a grouse or two.  The cutting I hoped to walk through proved a tangled mess, so we detoured through a stand of damp hardwoods. I no sooner said it looked like woodcock country and instantly the dogs went on point. A minute or two later they pointed a second bird. 

      We agreed to hunt the middle of October when the leaves thinned a bit, but he turned up in our neck of the woods early in the month, so I invited him to accompany a friend and me on a hunt we had planned. A dozen birds were found over my two German wirehair pointers and my friend’s setter, which made for a pretty exciting day.

Maggie pointing a woodcock.

      When the time came for the actual “official” mentored hunt a death in the mentee’s family caused a delay. The day finally arrived and birds were pointed, a few shots were fired, and laughs were had, which is enough to make for a good day. Unfortunately, no birds were killed.

      I will do it again next fall if the state again runs the program. The whole process was fun and I met a new friend along the way. Hopefully he will continue to hunt birds.

      So consider mentoring next year, you won't regret it. 

Camp Grouse, Mid-December

The month is slipping away. Snow comes and snow goes. Since the first of the month it has snowed, rained, been below zero, up into the mid-forties, snowed, and then snowed again, about in that order.

Snow bent alders.

      The rain shrunk the snow down to a couple of frozen inches, and also freed up the thousands of bent trees that late November’s heavy snow forced to the ground. The dogs run easily through the woods now and, if we watch out for slippery spots, the hiking is easy.

      Almost daily we walk the dogs, often along the stream down below the house, always looking for tracks, particularly grouse tracks. The grouse tracks are a lot easier to find than the birds. If we do see a bird it is usually rocketing out of the top of a fir tree. Most often they let us pass by and remain hidden, it is when we stop and pause for a while they get nervous and fly. The dogs do manage to find bird scent and get mighty excited. It is fun to see.

Our favorite trout
stream.

      During the brief warm stretch it was tempting to take the shotgun out of the safe and put the belled collars back on the dogs. They would have loved it, but I doubt I would have loaded my gun. The birds get a reprieve when the snows start to stay and I like to think that each of the remaining grouse will have a huge brood in the spring. Anyway, my work kept me from getting around to it.

      The red squirrels have started to show up under the bird feeders. When the younger dog sees one through the sliding glass doors she runs to find me and then stands next to the gun safe. She knows I don’t like red squirrels around the house because of their tendency to chew into eves or soffits. Apparently retrieving a squirrel is as much fun as a game bird.

      Outside the snow is swirling around the house, blowing in from the west as a cold front comes through. It will assure a white Christmas, which is always fun.

Full moon, December 12, 2019.

Alders

      Any serious New England upland hunter recognizes alders from a long ways off. An alder patch with weeds and ferns between the stems is very likely to hold woodcock and grouse are often found nearby. If the ground is choked with grasses the likelihood of woodcock is low.

      Alders like wet country, but can grow almost anywhere. Around recently used logging yards you’ll often find them crowded against the woods or the new cutting. Grouse are often nearby.

      The Ruffed Grouse Society recently published an excellent article on the importance of alders. Below is a link to it. If you are not a member of the  Ruffed Grouse Society please consider joining.

https://ruffedgrousesociety.org/the-importance-of-alders-for-grouse-and-woodcock/ 

Alder catkins.

An ancient apple tree crowed by alders, it doesn't
get much better than this.

Early Wet Snow

Snow on high bush
cranberries.

      Gray skies dribbled wet snow, which mixed with the soggy ground. The weeds that still stood readily soaked clothes. The dogs didn’t mind any of it. They were happy to hunt and loved the conditions.

      It was the last stretch before we turned the woods over to the rifle hunters and their search for deer. The morning temperatures had been down around or below freezing and the days were noticeably shorter than a few weeks ago. The hills bordering our valley looked soft, almost like supple gray fur.

      The grouse had scattered, the family groups broken up by hunters, human or otherwise. Woodcock were still around and a lucky hunter could find flight birds in numbers, or none. Soon they would all be gone. Depending on the year, grouse might be around apple trees or mountain ash or high bush cranberries. This year every fruit bearing tree produced massive crops, so the birds were scattered.

      With the season winding down we decided to spend the morning in a favorite old covert. The cover has changed from alders to poplar to mature poplar, but it was still a favorite covert that always has birds. A few ancient apple trees hid in the mix, always hinting of grouse..

The ground was soggy everywhere..

      The ground was soaked and almost immediately a woodcock fled ahead of one of the dogs. Down the hill we hunted and then turned northward when the ground turned to bog. On small hummocks covered with young maples each of the dogs pointed a woodcock. When Maggie points Colby always honors, I wish the opposite were also true. Some easy shots were miffed, but during the next hour two connected.

Colby pointing a woodcock hiding in a nasty thicket.

      Working our way back by a couple of old  apple trees another woodcock was found, but no grouse. Often they are there, but not that day. Near the truck bird scent aroused Colby’s interest, but after some serious tail wagging she abandoned it. Maggie trotted over and snapped onto point. On second thought, Colby decided to honor.

      It was a thicket impossible walk into. Kicking against the side, the woodcock almost smacked me in the face on the way by, then wove its way downhill through the trees.          

      Two shots never touched a feather.

      With clothes soaked it was time to leave. The dogs slept on the drive home while I sipped coffee.

      The bird season is just too short.