Fickle December

     About every other year the snow is deep enough by December that upland bird hunting is either difficult or impossible. When the weather turns bitter I choose not to kill the grouse, instead letting them live to perpetuate the species come spring. The balance of calories expelled versus calories gained is a delicate one without unnecessary scaring of the birds.
    This year the ground was bare the first weekend in December. A shot grouse provided a crop full of fern leaves, showing a diet not all that different than early November. During a hunt early in the month the dogs pointed several birds on the ground.
    About six inches of moderately heavy snow arrived the middle of the month. Afterward, I hunted to dogs in a favorite area and they found plenty of scent, but few birds. The only bird we heard flushed from a low branch in a softwood tree. I’m sure others were hiding overhead. Their diet had shifted to catkins, for the only place birds were found was along alder patches.
    When the temperatures dipped well below zero at night I didn’t bother to bird hunt, instead letting the birds preserve precious energy. The dogs are amused by squirrels that appeared when the song bird feeders come out. Maggie actually sits next to my twenty-two inside the house, hoping I will grab it on the way out the door.
    It is hard to admit the bird season is over, but, even with almost a week of December to go, it is.

Hunts x Years = Memories

     I hunted a place today that I used to hunt every year, but it has been three or more years since my last visit.  Some of the trees are noticeably bigger and areas of underbrush have disappeared from the lack of sunlight. Someone has kept the old two-track tote road open and the streams still cross in the same locations. Every mud hole or puddle in the road looked exactly like I remember it.
    For ten years or more I hunted that covert once or twice each year. A lone post used to stand in a soggy meadow where old logging roads converged. That post disappeared a half dozen or so years ago. Red twig dogwood once grew along the side of that meadow, but recent logging erased that. It’s embarrassing to think about how often I flushed grouse from that dogwood only to see them disappear into spruce across the gully before my gun even fired.
    One year I hunted up to where the forest ended to the east at a clear cut and started walking back the road I had hunted up. After passing a maple the diameter of a basketball a grouse rocketed back away from me at an angle that kept that maple between him and me. Ten minutes before I’d walked by that same tree, where did he come from?
    I used to walk up the hill from Camp Grouse to get there. It was a long trek, but usually ruffed grouse could be found along the way, sometimes several and a woodcock or two among young hardwoods. Those hardwoods are much bigger now and the woodcock have been absent for years.
    Back when my old girl Chara was still learning her ropes, we had almost reached that meadow and she locked up on point beneath a low-limbed spruce. Scurrying up I literally could see a grouse running away from her. The young dog couldn’t take the insult and bolted after the bird, no shot was offered. In years to come she would learn about relocating and become an expert at it.
    On opening day about eleven or so years ago I hunted up the hill with Chara and a pup named Colby. Chara pointed right next to that meadow with Colby backing. I walked in, flushed the bird, shot as it disappeared into the colorful fall foliage, and had no idea if I had hit it. About two minutes later the dogs came back each carrying a wing. Walking toward where they had come from I found the breast of a ruffed grouse. Fortunately, retrieves since then have been less contentious.
    Today we didn’t find a single bird, but around every bend I recalled a memory. That little piece of the planet will always be special.

The Old Dog

     She is twelve years old this year. She walks with a hobble and her hearing is almost nonexistent. Eyesight has never her strong suit and sometimes it is just plain hard to get her attention. But Colby has heart.
    For the last week or two Colby has stayed home while the younger dogs hunted. It is easy to justify. She falls often when she’s in the woods and sometimes needs help getting over fallen trees or up steep inclines. It is not easy being an old dog. Yet the desire to hunt is as strong as ever.
    Today we took her and our two younger dogs out on the logging roads of the big woods, up near where I logged forty-five years ago. The first hunt followed a nearly level side road to an abandoned logging yard. Up beyond the weed chocked yard, Maggie, our four year old, pointed a covey of four or more grouse. On my approach they exploded in every direction. Somehow Colby found her way up on to that knoll and bounced around under those treetop grouse with the younger dogs. Walking back out the grown in road Maggie, our four year old, pointed, with our pup Mollie and the old girl Colby backing. Pretty neat. No bird was found, but a few steps further on two flew from a tree.
    Colby doesn’t get far from the roads on her own, but she hunts hard along the edges. Down the road a piece we hunted around another logging yard and then up another two-track tote road. The younger dogs worked the woods on either side, while Coby punched holes into the woods, but mostly followed the easier walking of the roads.
    On one of the day’s last little hunts, Maggie locked up about fifty feet into the woods with our pup backing her. Both were in the classic front-foot-up pose. Colby walked from the grassed over logging road about fifteen feet into the shade of the softwoods to back too. She certainly has heart.
    Now she’s sleeping on her bed with a whole new set of memories to dream about. Her muscles twitch and soft sounds come from her throat. I’ll be heading to bed soon too, hopefully with a full set of new dreams too.

 

Colby bringing back a ruffed grouse.

 

The Puppy

 Mollie runs on high octane. At six months old she’s a rocket ship in the grouse woods. Our older dogs hunt and she follows, then tears about a bit on her own, all the while trying to sort out what life is all about. Birds equal excitement, there’s no doubt about it.
    Yet she is cautiously bold. Isn’t that an oxymoron?
    Not really. When she encounters something new, she stops to watch a bit, maybe analyzing or trying to figure out what it is or what it does. Let’s hope she does that when she encounters her first porcupine.
    During her forays into the grouse woods, her range is less than Maggie’s, which is good, and she regularly checks back to see where I am. When she gets a nose full of scent she slows or stops to figure things out, then points. What more could I want?

           

 

ICE

 It was December a long time ago, just me and my wirehair, Chara, hoping to fine some late season grouse. Barely a dusting of snow covered the ground in most places, but maybe an inch hid in the shadows of the softwoods. The leaves and the woodcock were long gone, it was ruffed grouse we were after.
    Back in October, every time we hunted the high side of that logging road the dogs would find birds. For well over a mile we didn’t moved a one. A bit discouraged, we took to the low side of the road, hunting down toward the softwoods that stand along the river.
    Chara went on point and the day improved. More than a few birds hid in the edge of the softwood stand. Down a little slope I noticed an iced over beaver pond and headed that direction.
    Chara’s bell fell silent.
    She was off to the left beneath tall spruce and fir trees where the ground sloped toward the pond. Hurrying toward her, a grouse exploded upward and another burst toward the pond.
    Reflexes fired my gun. A grouse fell onto the thin ice of the beaver pond. The thought of my dog running out onto that ice scared me to death.
    Chara had once been steady to wing and shot, but those days were long gone. Hunting alone much of the time, it became impossible to enforce and I was no longer doing hunt tests. This bird hunting was supposed to be fun.
    Slipping and sliding, I hurried down toward the pond. Chara hadn’t seen the bird fall and worked the slope looking for a dead bird. What a relief.
    When she got down to the edge of the pond I hitched her to a tree. A small but long dead fir tree reached the bird and slid it to firm ground.

Chara nuzzling the bird. 

September

       September brings the turning leaves and the first frost. The dogs can sense the changes, or maybe it is our frequent treks into the woods looking for birds that tips them off.
        The streams may be high or low, depending on rain. This year they are extremely low. Trout and salmon will be stacked up in the lakes and ponds, waiting for rising water and cooler temperatures before entering the streams. Nature is calling for them to preserve the future of their species.
        The birds and animals are shifting from their summer diet of fruits and insects to seeds, catkins, and buds.

        Frozen and then thawed apples are a favorite of deer, bears, and grouse. Mushrooms, ferns, and assorted greens create an interesting salad for grouse.
        We’ve been running our girls nearly daily. Colby, our oldest, stays mostly on the old roads and almost underfoot, but still surprises us with an occasional point. Maggie, who is four right now, covers the most ground, at times almost appearing to show off. Maybe she is. Then there’s a pup in the house. She’s great, checks back often to see where we are, hunts on her own most of the time, and backs the other dogs when they point. The older dogs always hate to be shown up, particularly Maggie, so she tries to cover much more ground than the pup. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to bumped bird. But with Mollie backing the older dogs almost every time they point, it certainly makes life easier. Yesterday she backed Maggie on a skittish grouse.
                Sometimes Mollie charges through the woods on her own and we wonder if she really knows what she is after. I’m guessing that probably she does, it seems the dogs are usually one step ahead of us. Today she pointed where a ruffed grouse recently departed from and also a woodcock. Life is looking pretty good. 

The Late Sixties

   

 My family had property on Cape Cod, only about a mile from the south shore and on the coast of an inland bay. That area was one of the last to develop on Cape Cod.
    The Cape was pretty wild back then. We didn’t have electricity until the seventies and at night there were no lights from any neighbors, except for one streetlight across the bay, which was well over a half mile away. Often the whippoorwills sang us to sleep.
    The woods was thick with poison ivy and bull briars. The story I heard was the hurricane of thirty-eight killed all the trees. Maybe that was true. There were pictures of tall dead pines towering over the scrub that pushed up over the sandy soil. In the sixties very few trees were over twenty feet tall. At night it was very quiet.
    As a young guy with a shotgun it was paradise. Rabbits were abundant, but, even with a determined beagle, you rarely saw them…the cover was just too thick. Grouse and bobwhite quail hid in that thorny jungle. Both were almost impossible to shoot when they flew. At times hundreds of geese would land out on the bay. Thousands of black ducks hid in the marshes every fall. I remember seeing the bay, which measured about a half mile by half mile, covered with blue bills from one shore to the other. What a time it was.
    The first grouse shot that I can clearly remember was shot by my brother and me simultaneously. Neither of us realized that the other had even fired their gun. Cleaning the bird later we found both number six and seven and a half shot in the bird. Obviously, it was shot by two different hunters.
    My first hunting dog was a beagle named Thorin, named after the character in the Hobbit book. That dog would disappear into the underbrush and chase rabbits until late when the sun sank low in the sky. His eternal baying was the only way one could keep track of his location. At dusk he would emerge, limping home and looking for supper, usually too sore to even pat.
    I would pick thorns out of Thorin’s hide and let him sleep. There’s something about the hide on a beagle that is pleasant to touch. In the morning he would be ready to go again. What fun we had.
    By the eighties the upland hunting was pretty much done. Houses lined the shores of our bay and the woods had been divvied up into house lots. An occasional ruffed grouse could be found, but did you really want to shoot something so rare? The quail and whippoorwills had disappeared with the maturing of the forest. As the underbrush disappeared so did the rabbits.  
    Today you can still find grouse down there, but you really have to look. The bobwhite quail are nearly impossible to find. The eastern cottontail rabbits are on the endangered species list. At night the lights of houses ring the bay. Geese still pass through, but the clouds of ducks are gone.
    Do you ever wonder what your favorite coverts are going to look like in fifty or sixty years? Take a good look at what you have today so you can remember it.

 

The Trail

 

    The trail starts where a stand of softwood trees meets an old field. It’s actually maintained for the snowmobilers and if it wasn’t for them it would probably would have grown in years ago. But maybe the loggers would have saved it. The last few years they’ve been using it as a skid trail during the summer months.
    In 2006 I discovered that two track road during a break in the precipitation of a very wet August day. I needed a place to run the dogs and preferably someplace I could walk without rubbing against drenched foliage. That snowmobile trail fit the ticket. It wanders downhill for about a mile before climbing a little bit up to an abandoned Christmas tree farm.    
    Much to my delight that day, only a hundred feet down the road, ruffed grouse started boiling out of the tree tops, which of course set the dogs into a flurry of activity. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen grouse on that part of the road, but I’ll never forget it.
    Further down the road a large mountain ash used to grow next to a tiny trickle of a brook. Its bright orange fruit often attracted grouse, as did old apple trees lost among the forest growth on the low side of the road. That mountain ash eventually declined and died. Now all trace of it is now gone, but another has sprung up to take its place.

The softwoods along the old road provided shelter for grouse and deer. Pockets of young growth attracted woodcock, grouse, and other game, some to eat it and others to hide in it. Most years bear hunters set up a blind off to the side of the road. I always look for the bright blue barrel of bait, it’s almost a landmark now. The country has all become very familiar, like an old friend.

    And there are so many stories remembered.
    Like the time I couldn’t find my old girl Chara, I knew she was on point somewhere close, but the thick cover hid her. We weren’t far from that old mountain ash I just mentioned, but on the other side of the road where the scattered wild apples are getting crowded out by the softwood trees. I softly said something to let her know I searched for her. She moved just enough so the bell on her collar dinged one lone note.
    I spotted her white hair hid inside the low boughs of a limby fir tree. Stepping around the tree, a grouse rocketed away through the forest.
    Down the road further, on a soaking wet opening day, Chara pointed in a thicket of alders. Up to that point I’d managed to stay out of the really wet stuff, but, looking at her standing there so valiantly, I thought, “Oh what the hell.” 
    Not far from where the road opens up into an abandoned Christmas tree farm there used to be a stand of pasture grown spruce with ancient apple trees mixed between them. Pasture grown spruce have branches all the way down to the ground like giant Christmas trees, much different than forest trees that shed them. Chara went on point next to a tumbled-down busted-up apple tree. On my approach a grouse exploded off to the left, staying low to hide among the branches of those spruce trees. Only after I’d shot did I realize I’d dropped to my knees to shoot, hoping to see the bird among all the low branches. That grouse bounced along the ground like a stone skipped on water.
    Over the years I have shared that trail with a number of friends. In a cluster of softwoods off the west of the road, a grouse flew up into a tree to sit on a branch and mock a young friend of mine. Now this young guy had been hunting hard for three days and had yet to kill a bird, and, to make matters worse, it was the end of the last day of his stay. Having a sporting code of ethics, he refused to shoot a bird sitting on a branch, so we started throwing sticks at it. Eventually, it flew and of course he missed it. After a few minutes of ribbing we walked about a hundred feet and a second grouse repeated the first bird’s performance. Again the bird flew away unscathed. There were lots of laughs and good natured ribbing that night over cocktails.
    There was the time Chara carelessly bumped two grouse that flew away side by side, offering a perfect opportunity for a double. Her behavior so upset me I never fired a shot.
    And the lone woodcock pointed inside an impenetrable thicket of young softwood trees. Of course it flew out the backside where no one could see it.
    During one of my Chara’s last hunts, we took her down that road. With tired legs, she never ventured off the trail, letting the younger dogs hunt the woods. We didn’t hunt very far nor long. On the way back she slowed and stopped, staring at a fir tree beside the road. Stepping past her, two grouse flew out ahead of me. One folded and she carried it proudly all the way back to the truck.
    A few days ago we walked that old road, just to stretch our legs on a cool August day. The memories always come flooding back. This coming October will be the fifteenth consecutive year hunting that snowmobile trail. Even if I never see a bird there will be memories enough to fill my day.

If I’d Only Known

     Back in 1974 I went to work in the woods for the now defunct Brown Company of Berlin, New Hampshire. The outfit owned 650,000 acres of woodlands and had first rights to cut on another 200,000. It was a big time paper company.

The feller-buncher would
harvest trees as large as
18 inches and would cut
two stems a minute all day

      You worked hard in the woods. We were loggers, but never called lumberjacks. That was a Hollywood made-up name or something, too sissy-sounding. There weren’t many young men in the woods then, mostly ”old guys” in their fifties and sixties. Younger men preferred something easier and maybe not so dangerous. And everyone spoke French, except for me.

      It was the end of an era. We operated out of a camp where men stayed Monday into Friday. A cook prepared meals. Those men worked hard and could cut wood like nobody I had ever seen. Danger added a little spice to the job. Looking at your wood pile you could tell how big your paycheck might be.

      I left that job to run the first mechanical tree harvester in New Hampshire, and soon ran the entire whole-tree harvesting operation. The days of men with chainsaws and logging camps were numbered.

      If I had only known I would have taken a million pictures.

      Growing up my family owned property on Cape Cod on a bay a half mile across. You couldn’t see any other cottages, it was wilderness. Electricity was miles up the road. As my father used to say, “You could go skinny dipping at noontime”.

One of our cottages sat so close to the water
a small marine railway could haul the boats inside
the basement. This picture was taken from the dock.

      Rabbits, ruffed grouse, and bobwhite quail lived in the woods. And of course ducks showed up by the thousands every fall. We traipsed through the woods with shotguns in hand or hid in the marshes. There’s no place left like that on Cape Cod now.

      If I had only know I would have taken a million pictures.

      Sixty years ago was a time when you just did things, asking permission or filing for permits never entered one’s mind. If there was something you didn’t know how to do you either tried to find something about it in a book or you just figured it out. Those how-to YouTube clips are handy, but they do nothing to exercise your brain. Henry Ford said there is no greater joy than solving problems. He was right.

      My wife and I are fortunate to live where things aren’t all that different from the way they were fifty years ago. Nobody bothers you if you don’t bother them. There’s very few things you need to ask permission about. We still march all over the country looking for ruffed grouse and woodcock. There are streams you can fish all day without seeing another angler. Our dogs are seldom on a leash.

      You know I’m going to take a bunch of pictures.

Blueberries

Soon.

      The hot weather has settled in and blueberries are on the mind. So far they are little green berries, but soon they’ll turn blue, usually around the first week of August.

      Black flies have come and gone. Mosquitoes linger and deer flies are the big annoyance. Lately the temperatures have been a bit high for trout fishing and the dogs mostly want to lay about. Summer has settled in. We wait for cooler temperatures and search out places for the dogs to swim.

      In August we can start looking for wild birds with the dogs. Right now it is too hot to think about such things, except for the first hour or two of the day. Our young chickens in their run amuse the dogs for hours, but even that interest fades as the temperature climbs.

      Last weekend we saw grouse out on the logging roads. For the previous month they have been pretty well hidden. People talk of seeing family broods. All of it is encouraging.

      The last of last year’s blueberries are in a pie resting on the counter in the kitchen. There is only two pieces left and that’s it. There are no more blueberries until we pick again.

More on Neutering

      If you read this blog often you know early neutering is a subject I follow. Here is a link to more information. The author has a great point. What is the hurry?

      https://sportingclassicsdaily.com/whats-the-rush/

Plan B

     The day took forever to arrive. For over a month hours had been spent studying topographical maps and aerial photos. On weekends, miles were trekked looking for the perfect cover. Finally, the day arrived.

     Pulling into the old road at first light the sight of three pickup trucks and a half dozen men stopped me in my tracks. Rabbit hunters and beagles. Not wanting to crowd them nor listen to their commotion, I backed out onto the public road.

     I really didn’t have a plan B. It was all new country to me. Heading back up over a hill, I spied an old tote road marked by an iron post.

The woods went on forever.

     That old tote road led up the hill, nothing more than two worn indentations in the grass beneath the trees. A stream off to the east murmured. It looked like long abandoned pasture land and against an ancient rock maple leaned a heavy wood door with thick iron hinges. Not a trace of a building could be found anywhere. Softwoods mixed with the hardwoods. My girl Chara didn’t care if this was plan A or B or C, she charged about and her bell rang with enthusiasm.

     A long abandoned field created an opening in the trees. Chara got birdy as hell, her tail ablur. A grouse exploded from up high in a yellow birch. That bird wasn’t going to touch ground again for a long ways off, probably on the other side of the little stream.

I coaxed Chara on up the hill. Old scraggly maples gave way to younger maples. It certainly didn’t look like grouse country, but off to the east I could see softwood trees. Following an edge is better than following nothing. I walked to where the hardwoods met the wall of softwood trees. Chara dashed off to the west and then back to the east, convinced the birds were somewhere. Another grouse thundered away, this time from high on up in a fir tree.

     The softwoods petered out, but far ahead through the gray trunks of the sugar bush I could see another cluster. Up the hill to the left stood a small sugar house that probably hadn’t seen people since the previous March or April. Hundreds of sugar maples covered the hillsides. I trudged on.

Locked up.

     A small knoll broke up the gradual grade. Lanky spruce and fir stood over it, with their knee-high young blanketing the ground beneath them. Chara charged up the slope and stopped like a statue.

     On my approach a grouse exploded out the back. An easy shot and the bird tumbled. Another launched to the north and escaped. In a blur several more exited, with one coming directly at me. Reflexes made me duck as it flew a few feet over my head. Attempting to collect my composure, I swung on the bird, but it sailed safely away.

     Sometimes Plan B provides memories that last forever.

Sometimes they are laughing at us.

Ruffed Grouse or Partridge?

      It is a ruffed grouse, Bonasa umbellus, but up in the neck of the woods where we now live the old timers refer to them as partridge. So is it ruffed grouse or partridge? It depends on who you are talking to.

     A couple of years ago I called up a friend who was laid up during bird season. I asked him if he wanted a ruffed grouse. He said, “A what?” I said ruffed grouse, and he said again, “A what?” I thought there must be a lousy phone connection. I said, “I just shot a ruffed grouse and I’ll bring it over for you. It’s cleaned and everything.” Again he said, “A what?” Then I remembered this gentleman always referred to Bonasa umbellus as partridge.

      It seems everyone under fifty years old calls them ruffed grouse or just grouse, but everyone over eighty calls them partridge. It’s that age group in the middle that makes for confusion.

      Up here, if you are going bird hunting, bird means ruffed grouse. If you want to hunt woodcock or ducks or pheasants you had better be specific.

Maggie says there's a ruffed grouse there.

Sheds

      April is a long month when you live in the North Woods. Snow still blankets much of the ground and everywhere the ground is bare the soil is soggy. Fishing really doesn’t get going for another month. A cold north wind has been blowing snow squalls through almost hourly for several days now. About the only thing to do is try and stay in shape while waiting for better weather. And that means lots of walking for us and the dogs.

      For the last couple of weeks I’ve been teaching Maggie, our younger German wirehair, to hunt shed antlers. The lessons are simple. I ask her to sit outside while I walk around the other side of the house to hide an antler somewhere in the woods. When I walk back to her I say, “find the antler”. She loves it and dashes off to search.

      Today, like a lot of afternoons, we took a little walk up on a favorite hill. The dogs ran about, as they always do, and by golly Maggie came out of the woods with her first “shed”. Needless to say, she was quite proud and so were we.

April

The stream is very cold.

      A week ago south facing hillsides were almost bare ground, while north facing slopes looked like a pinto with irregular brown patches between vast areas of white. Now, more than a week into the month, Mother Nature has pulled a cruel pranks and dumped eight or ten inches of snow everywhere.

Maggie wondering where the
snow came from.

      But the woodcock are back and grouse are drumming, so it must be spring. Our dogs enjoyed the brief freedom of bare ground and hunted up birds. I am sure in a couple of days the ground will be bare again.

      The streams are swollen from the melted winter snow and soon will rise still more as the new snow melts. Water temperatures are very low and it will be a month before we see much insect activity on the streams. Thoughts of fly fishing, so far, revolve around the tying of flies.

      Spring in northern New England certainly teaches patience.

Woolly buggers galore.

Where’s the Woodcock?

The sun warmed the south facing slopes.

      It is that time of the year when bird hunters in our neighborhood start asking, “Where’s the woodcock?”

      It is nice to see the little russet birds arrive, because then you know spring has arrived. Usually the robins show up about the same time. Geese will be flying overhead or collecting in the fields. In the river, ducks will be paddling about in the backwaters. But woodcock? If you are lucky you might see one flying about dusk, but usually you have to go looking for them.

Maggie running ahead on a logger's skid trail.

      South facing slopes have bared up around here and near hillside seeps are a good place to look. I strapped on snowshoes and took Maggie, our younger German wirehair, out for a trek a couple of days ago. 

      On the flat of the valley floor a foot of hard snow made for easy snowshoeing and formed bridges over the numerous small brooks that appear every spring. The ground on the hillside that created the north side of the valley was almost completely free of snow. I hiked and Maggie hunted hard, until the valley dropped over a ledge into another valley thirty feet below. No way could a man get down that ledge except on his backside.

      We swung around to hunt the other edge of the valley, but no woodcock or grouse. I thought we might even find a shed antler, but no luck.

      It was one of those days. We will try again another day.

Water could be heard gurgling everywhere.

44 Degrees

     Two weeks ago we had four consecutive days where the temperature climbed well into the forties. That is rather unusual for February at this latitude. Of course it got everyone pumped up imagining spring right around the corner. Then we had about fourteen inches of medium density snow and temperatures below zero. So much for winter being over.

Snow fleas.

     Now we are into March and the weather is fickle as ever. Today the high was in the upper fifties and the roads looked like mud season was here. Maybe it is. Mud season is a mixed blessing and a sloppy harbinger of spring. On south facing slopes patches of bare ground indicate warmth. Looking at snow closely you might find snow fleas (yes, they really exist, google them). A robin showed up over a week ago and two mourning doves were pecking at sand in the road in town. Everything points to the arrival of spring weather, which is more than two weeks early.

     So where are the woodcock? That’s what every bird dog owner wants to know. For a week or two after their arrival it is great fun to hunt them with the dogs. Of course there is no shooting involved, but it is fun to see the dogs work after the long winter. Their excitement it infectious.

     Recent research indicates that the woodcock nest fairly soon after arriving and that a woodcock scared off her nest will re-nest, but she will have less than the usual four eggs to hatch. So this spring hunt of woodcock is a very short affair, and then the dogs must wait until both the woodcock and grouse young are hatched and grown before the dogs can hunt them again.

     Do you know if the woodcock are here?

Changes

The entire valley floor was flooded.

      For better or worse, it is early February. The winter has gone through her usual assortment of moods. There has been cold, wet, warmish, and snow, sometimes all within a day or two’s time. At one point the streams were up out of their banks after a day or two of steady light rain. Then a day or two later the temperatures dove to well below zero. The weather has been full surprises.

The stream chewed away the bank
beaver;s home.

      The weather has caused changes in the landscape that would have been difficult to imagine. Along the stream below our home a handful of trees fell, the soil around their roots eroded away when the stream swelled up out of her banks. The newly uprooted trees created great caverns, some making craters in a path along the water’s edge that we have used for years.

      During the previous two winters a dozen or more trees from our property tumbled across the stream. The recent high water stole a couple of them away and moved others into big knots. It is hard to imagine how some of the trees, which are actually quite large, can disappear downstream without a trace. Chunks of ice have beaten the bark off of others that still lay in the current.

The  fallen trees bridge the stream.

      In a couple of places jammed logs and ice have forced the stream to seek entirely new routes. Water rushes across where last summer a gravel bar forced the stream into a huge U turn. A bank beaver had his den underneath a streamside fir tree that was whisked away creating a cove. A deep hole that always held trout is filled with logs and stumps. An undercut bank, where a big trout loved to hide, has caved in. Next spring it will be an entirely different stream to fish.

      Up the hill from the house an early winter storm blew a handful of fir trees across a long abandoned logging road. Every year or two one comes down, but this time a whole cluster fell. That tote road used to make for easy walking and I would often walk it in bird hunting season. Deer, moose, and bears follow it more than humans and now their footprints detour around the fallen trees. If nobody goes up there with a chainsaw to cut those trunks out of the road the new path will be the game trail.

Woodcock cover going past its prime.

      It is not only weather that changes things. Time does too. Forty years ago a friend shared a favorite woodcock hunting spot with me. To get to it we would walk across a field then hike down railroad tracks before dropping to a flat beside a river. Twenty years ago I went looking for that spot and I could not find that field. After an hour of looking I realized a stand of softwood trees covered what I remembered as an open pasture. There had been a few scattered spruce or fir trees in that field, but now it is a forest. The railroad tracks looked the same and so did the mammoth silver maples along the river.

      About twenty miles to the east is a huge alder patch where I have bird hunted for forty-five years. It has always been thick cover and wet underfoot. Seven or ten years ago I noticed wrist sized poplars popping up in clusters, but mostly I followed my dogs and hoped for woodcock and noticed little else. Now there are poplars thirty or forty feet tall in there. I don’t know when they snuck in, but they are shading out the alders. I still refer to the place as the alder patch, but the name isn’t apt anymore.

The ancient apple tree is being
crowded out by the forest around it.

      Up the hill from our home is an old apple tree in a stand of young hardwoods. A few fir trees are nearby on a small knoll, enough to give the ruffed grouse some shelter, but mostly it is hardwoods about as big around as a bowling ball. There isn’t another apple tree within a mile in any direction, so this lone apple has become something of a landmark. Any observant hunter or hiker is likely to notice and remember it. Competition with the hardwoods trees for sunlight has caused the apple tree to grow quite tall. Its branches really reach for the sky.

      This year that apple tree had only two or three apples and the leaves on the branches were few. The taller hardwood trees now steal the sunlight and in a few years that apple tree will die and the landmark will disappear.

      The natural world keeps changing even without the hand of man. The forces of nature move streams and blow over trees. Plants and animals compete for resources to live. Nature is restless.

      Life goes on.

Planning an Adventure

     Planning an adventure can be as much fun as the adventure itself. Now by planning an adventure I don’t mean traveling to some lodge and hiring a guide to take you fishing, hunting, hiking, or whatever. Planning an adventure is when you are doing it on your own, preferably into country that you have never trekked before, using maps and maybe books to figure out where you are heading.

Logging roads show up well
in Google Earth images.

     Everybody’s definition of adventure is probably different and may be different now from what it was years ago or will be tomorrow. Today I like my adventures to end with a hot shower and ice cubes in my scotch. So starting early in the morning and returning to Camp Grouse late in the day works. Forty or fifty years ago the hard ground felt fine and cleaning up in an icy stream was regarded as refreshing.

     Right now I’m planning an adventure into a fishing spot that is more than a mile from where a vehicle can drive to and that spot is many miles into the woods on logging roads. The plan is to start early and make a day of it.

     We did the same thing last summer, in some of the hottest weather of the year, trying to find a remote stream’s headwaters where trout might seek cooler temperatures. Mostly we cooled off in the water and listened to nearby coyotes serenading us. No trout were found, but we will go back there someday.

     It used to be topographical maps were where dreams of adventures started. Now I think Google Earth is a better choice, then use a topo map to get an idea of topography. Books may help, but most are too generalized.

     If you hunt ruffed grouse in logging country Google Earth will show you where the cuts are. Grouse love a young forest and a regenerating clearcut can be a goldmine. It is possible to find some that aren’t noticeable from roads and you may find a hotspot that is virtually untouched. Deer hunting can be done the same way. A few years ago I discovered a huge hidden cutting more than a dozen miles from the asphalt and every trip into that place is an adventure.

     So be an adventurer. You will learn some things, discover places of your own, and probably end up feeling pretty good about yourself. Oh, and don’t get lost.

Looking for the MotherLode…

The end of October had arrived and the gang had left. It was prospecting time, which means searching for new grouse cover. It’s done every year, usually after all the friends have left. There’s no use dragging them around the wilds to places that may or may not hold birds. Sometimes the terrain gets mighty rough in our rugged neck of the woods and exploring what might be birdless cover isn’t always appreciated. Good grouse cover can go from prime to thin-pickens in about ten years, so it is always necessary to be prospecting for new coverts.

      The clear cut showed up on Google Earth and was back in a section of country that’s been full of grouse the last few years. The cut covered probably two hundred acres, but hid behind a stand of thick softwood trees, so it wasn’t readily visible from the logging road. All that, and fourteen miles from the nearest asphalt in some mighty rugged terrain made it seem promising and maybe even un-hunted.

      It would be one of the last hunts of the year, so I let all three dogs out for the hunt. Pandemonium can be fun. From where we parked a skid trail turned into snowmobile road, wide as a thruway, that seemed to run upward forever. It passed softwoods to the left while a stream gurgled in a gully filled with hardwoods to the right. When the softwoods gave way the cutting looked enormous. We trekked to the top and an old road continued into the shade of mature hardwoods.  The view back across the forested valley was stunning.

The nearest paved road is over those hills.

      The cutting probably was two years old with relatively easy walking between the poplar and maple sprouts. The loggers had taken away all of the tree tops, leaving the ground relatively clean. Wet spots were covered with grass and moose tracks. Sprouts crowned the hardwood stumps, but most weren’t shoulder height. Wild raspberries grew everywhere. It really wasn’t good grouse cover yet.

      The dogs and I hunted along the top of the cutting and then down the west side.  It didn’t look too encouraging, with no softwoods to offer shelter for the birds, but ahead and about halfway down the slope I could see softwoods left behind by the logging operation.

      Approaching, I noticed a small knoll covered with softwoods.

      Now I love knolls, because grouse love knolls. What better place to sit and collect morning sunshine and survey the surroundings. No matter which way danger approaches, the grouse has a downhill escape route that leaves them out of sight in the blink of an eye.

 

Chara on a bird.

    About then I wished my friends hadn’t all left for those flat lands to the south. Approaching the hump the dogs’ bells eagerly rang. And then I could hear the birds accelerating off the far side. There were at least four. If only someone could have been standing on the far side, it would have been like one of those European driven hunts.

      On the other side of that little hill the cutting opened up again with scattered softwood clumps further down the slope. Stopping for a moment, I tried to guess where I would go if I were a grouse and picked an open alley that led downhill into a softwood swamp.

      At the edge of the spruce and fir thicket my oldest German wirehair, Chara, locked up on point, almost completely hidden by young waist-high fir trees.

      A bird busted out wild.  Missed. Opening the gun to reload, a second bird rocketed after the first.

      Encouraging the dogs on, Colby, my youngest wirehair, pointed a grouse sitting about twelve feet off the ground in a yellow birch.  It flew on my approach, sailing away ahead of a swarm of shot…those birds coming out of trees are devilishly hard to hit.

      The woods got thicker, with blown down fir trees and nearly impenetrable clusters of young ones. Pushing through, it was impossible to see my feet. All three dogs became birdy, pressing under the tangles that I was forced to climb over.  Each dog wanted to find the birds first.

Colby coming out of the
thicket with the bird
Georgia pointed.

      I couldn’t locate Georgia, the young German shorthair, but then spotted her frozen about eight feet in front of Colby, who was honoring. The thick green fir boughs almost buried both of them. Before I could get within twenty yards of the dogs the grouse rumbled upward and a reflex made my gun fire. It was a prayer shot, but I saw a bird’s wing flutter…maybe. With the softwoods so thick a dead bird might get caught up in a branch and never hit the grouse. The dogs had disappeared.

      And then Colby came pushing through the brush with the bird in her mouth. What a great sight.

Georgia checking out the
grouse she pointed.

      We hunted down the hill, moving three more grouse, but killing none. Coming out of the swamp into the more open clearcut Chara pointed and a woodcock flew up on my approach. Twisting among the branches of two fir trees, it quickly escaped.

      We went back the next year and I brought my friends. I wish all my prospecting trips turned out that successful.

The gang, Georgia, Colby, and Chara, taking a break
beside a logging road.