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.

Camp Grouse

    Camp Grouse is a dream perched on a knoll. Around this knoll the land rises, creating a nearly empty valley, where a stream constantly serenades and a breeze funnels regularly between the hills. Clouds of warblers swarm the trees in June and dragon flies patrol the yard on August evenings. Grouse drum in the woods come March and the forest becomes a riot of color come September. During the winter months there is a pristine silence, as the snowy world sleeps before repeating the cycles.

Dreams of spring.

    About the time the snow disappears and the streams swell, dreams turn to trout fishing. The mighty river, a mile or so away, holds larger trout, but the small stream down the hill from Camp Grouse is full of native brook trout. Every spring the brook is different, with the snow’s runoff carving a new course and recently fallen trees always crisscrossing the stream. The new logjams and undercut stream banks will create deep dark holes where the brook trout will hide. Hopefully, a few will be coaxed out to fry in bacon fat for breakfast.

Dreams at the vice.

    Upstairs at Camp Grouse, inside the big pine desk, is everything imaginable to tie trout flies. Books on patterns and trout sit atop that desk, and the hours slide away there, tying and dreaming. It really is as much fun as fishing.

    Hiking books and maps, stored in the bookcase by the stairs, help plan our short expeditions. When the weather is nice during the summer months, our daily hikes keep both the dogs and us in shape, and so far we haven’t run out of new places to explore.

    In stormy weather, or even with the morning coffee while waiting for the sun to climb higher, there is usually a jigsaw puzzle in the works on a card table beside the sliding glass doors. Bookshelves are filled with hunting and fishing lore, along with favorite novels and books on New England history. Upstairs a guitar waits to be picked. A rainy day certainly isn’t a hardship.

Friends helping.

    As September winds down clay targets are launched from the deck to be turned to dust as they sail out over the alders at the bottom of the knoll. Come the first of October the dogs will lead us into the vibrant fall foliage, their bells ringing and enthusiasm never wavering.

    And when the leaves drop and the bird hunting is at its best, friends shuffle through Camp Grouse, and all of us hunt until our legs hurt. There are so many coverts that we never get to them all. Memories are made and stories are told while tired dogs sleep in front of the heater.

Dogs warming.

    And all too soon winter blankets the land again as the world readies itself for spring again.

A place to dream. 

Roughing It

Camp Grouse

Roughing it is hard to define precisely, and depends a bit on where you are in your life. We started out backpacking, stomping all over the mountains of New England until our legs ached and toes blistered.

Canoe camping seemed like a civilized step up. Bottles of wine and canned meats could easily be carried. No more drinking that 151 rum we used to carry because it packed “the most punch per pound”. Even with a few portages sprinkled in the trip, bringing along “luxuries” wasn’t a problem.

The tent could be bigger. A cast iron frying pan improved cooking. Even a reflector oven and Dutch oven came along. Cooking was my task and I loved it and we all gained weight on every trip. Wonders can be done over a campfire and Coleman stove.  And we could even bring along a paperback book or two!

And then I discovered sailing, and poking along the coast brought the same sense of exploring and self-reliance that trekking the big woods had. And the books could be hardbound!

Into the boat I plumbed running hot and cold water, added refrigeration that could keep things frozen, cooked on a two burner gas stove with a real oven, and, best of all, when the weather was nice the women wore bikinis. Those southern seas beckoned.

Starting the day.

Now we rough it from Camp Grouse, located in the big woods up north, where we hunt rugged country until our legs hurt, following behind faithful dogs that never give up. And at the end of the day we adjust the thermostat, take a hot steamy shower, slip into clean dry clothes, sip cocktails while cooking dinner, maybe read a bit from our sporting library, and then sleep just as soundly as our dogs.

So I’m heading north the end of the week for two weeks of hard hunting. That’s roughing it at my age.

 

My sleeping girls.

My Dogs Aren’t From New England

Every morning I put a dollop of whole milk yogurt on top of the kibble that I feed my dogs, for the probiotics involved. Or maybe it’s just because they love it. This morning, watching them gobble that up before attacking the dry food, I thought “they can’t be from New England”.

Raised in New England, where traces of the Puritan ways still linger, you are taught to save the best for last, suffer through the drudgery before savoring the sweet, get all the work done before sitting down, and use up all of the old before starting the new.

That certainly isn’t how my dogs see life.

My dogs eat desert first. Okay, I’ve said it.

The only drudgery that my dogs might allow in their lives would be suffering through a bath, otherwise all they do is play, eat, and sleep. And in that, hunting and training, which they love, are included in play.

I want to be like a dog and eat desert first.

Wouldn’t it be a shame if a gigantic meteor destroyed Earth while the strawberry shortcake waited for the main course to be finished?

Drumming Grouse

Fiddleheads

Every spring I wonder how the grouse are doing. The winter weather is seldom a worry, but this past one was tough. Long stretches went with temperatures daily below zero. Usually abundant snow keeps the ruffed grouse from freezing, when they do their snow roosting thing, but where we hunt the snow came late.

The spring is what worries me. Cold wet weather raises havoc with the young broods, so every year I keep my fingers crossed. I pay more attention to what the weather does at our Camp Grouse than I do at our home.

Where's the warblers?

A week ago we opened up Camp Grouse, turning on the water and cleaning up all the dead bugs that materialize every winter. The leaves on the trees weren’t as big as mouse ears and the notorious black flies hadn’t materialized yet. On a few shady north-facing slopes small patches of snow hid in the shadows.

Up the hill from the house I heard grouse drumming several times. Below the house our dogs bumped a woodcock along the stream. The warblers flitted about the trees, staking out their summer turf and amazing us with their colors. And several places we hiked the drummers serenaded us.

Trillium

So I’m optimistic, yet I don’t put too much stock in spring drumming counts, even though there were more grouse drumming this spring than either of the two previous ones. Two years ago I heard absolutely none, and it turned out to be the best season of my life. Last year I heard almost none, and the season was above average.

So we’ll wait and see, and hope this season is a good one. I think it has more to do with the weather the next few weeks than how many grouse I heard drumming.

Civilized

My old girl Chara

The other dogs stayed back at the house, where they could recover from a long day afield. The last hour of the afternoon I had saved for just Chara, my old German wirehair in her thirteenth bird season. It was just going to be the two of us. We parked down near the metal gate where the road has the dog-leg in it. As I opened the truck door a grouse thundered away unseen, and I took that as a good omen.

Chara slipped her head into the belled collar as I offered it, and then I dug my gun out of the back.  With her leading the way we walked down past the tilting gate.

Ahead of us the grassed in logging road sloped into an empty valley. The hills on the far side had been logged hard, and their tops appeared ragged, like a decrepit picket fence. The next paved road in that direction is over twenty miles away in the neighboring state. It’s big country, but we planned to hunt only the cream of it.

Ancient apples.

A few apple trees on the left bore an abundance of fruit, so we poked around, hoping to find a late day grouse, but found nothing. In her old age, Chara walked rather than ran, her nose sifting the air and sorting scents that I would never imagine. It was easy to keep up with her senior pace, a pleasant treat after three days of hunting behind big running youngsters.

The forest turned to poplar, maple, and birch, all the diameter of a grapefruit and as tall as a four story building. A few years earlier it was dynamite woodcock and grouse country, but those days were gone. Chara searched hard, but we found nothing.

Where an intersecting logging road cut us off, we crossed the grassy road into alders to start back up the hill. Beyond chin-high raspberries, Chara’s bell went silent.

Chara pointing the woodcock.

Carefully I waded through the thorns, and then ducked or stepped over alders until I found her statue-like and facing my direction. Approaching and wondering…. Where?

The woodcock leapt skyward, then spiraled behind a young fir. I swung and fired over the top of the tree as I expected the bird to appear, but evidently she was a local and knew her way out the backdoor. 

We tried to find that woodcock again, but never did. After walking past a recently cut area, we strolled into a long abandoned field. Almost immediately Chara pointed toward a squat apple tree growing among low bush blueberries. As I approached a grouse rocketed out of the back, flying close to the ground and not offering a shot.

Chara on point among wild apples.

As if pulled by a string attached to her nose, Chara followed that grouse’s scent to where it disappeared into a thicket of alder and wild apples. While Chara worked her way through the tangle I followed on the outside, hoping to get a shot. But the bird bolted low across the field and then rose up into the tree line far beyond.

We continued to hunt up the hill, bouncing between apple trees, alder patches, and clusters of firs. Nearing the crest, Chara locked up rigid under a particularly large apple tree that grew against three or four old fir trees. Before I got there the partridge exploded out of the back and followed his cousin into the trees beyond the field.

By that time we were almost back to the truck and the sun had slipped behind the hill. That late day chill had settled in so it was time to call it a day. I said, “Chara, come, let’s go back to the truck.”

 That’s when I realized that during the entire hunt I had never said a word to my favorite girl, only whistled softly through my teeth to turn her when needed. And I never had to walk faster than a leisurely pace.

It was the most civilized ruffed grouse hunt that I have ever had, and I didn’t even have to clean birds afterward.

Manners

Shared grouse country is a treasure.

It was something that I read in Gene Hill’s Shotgunner’s Handbook that got me to thinking about bird hunting manners. It is seldom spoken about, unless introducing a youngster to the sport, or even an oldster I guess, but manners are extremely important.

Gun safety is at the top of the list, keeping track of where that muzzle is pointed. The way grouse explode into the air and reflexes take over, it is easy to imagine horrible things happening.  Most of my hunting used to be done alone, and much still is, which eliminates that concern.

Game hogs can’t be tolerated, but with the wily grouse of today it is almost impossible to be a game hog. I guess it is more of an attitude thing. Hunting is about a lot more than the number of birds killed.

Guests hunting with me are always encouraged to take most of the shots. I’m not sure if that is me being gracious or maybe me trying to hide my so-so shooting. Enthusiastic newcomers are fun to watch, even if the ruffed grouse is usually long gone by the time the trigger is pulled. Seasoned hunters, who actually kill birds with some regularity, are like watching magicians.

Woodcock pinned

Most of us could not imagine hunting without a dog, and I’m sure our opinions of our own dogs are like those of our children, a bit tainted. Never ever should a hunter make a negative comment about someone else’s dog, and please leave the directing of the dog to its owner. If you are not sure of the proper protocol around another person’s dog, ask.

On occasion, in a large alder flat or grouse thicket and when we’ve been gunning over two dogs or more, I’ll tell the trusted friend to split off and take my older dog along. The oldest girl is what I call bullet-proof, with good habits so well ingrained that I know she’ll be fine, no matter what is said to her. Besides, she’s basically a whore and will hunt for anybody.

Training together

I love dogs and enjoy the pandemonium of hunting over multiples. I’m sure a lot of people think this is insane, and I don’t claim that it puts more birds in the bag. I guarantee it is never boring though and what person’s heart doesn’t flutter at the sight of three or more dogs pointing simultaneously.

In the field most of them seem to get along and tend to business, but it certainly is more fun if they all honor each other’s points. Occasionally, some dogs, often who’ve spent their lives hunting in preserves, are clueless out in the big northern forests. Most will put it all together in short order though, particularly if they are hunting alongside experienced dogs, but, if after a day or two they still haven’t, I don’t know if they ever will.

The right friend can add a lot of pleasure
to a day afield.

And definitely, to avoid the biggest faux pas of all, you must assume that when someone takes you to one of their favorite coverts it is not yours to share unless the privilege is specifically granted. And, quite frankly, I’ve never heard of that happening. Productive grouse cover is just too precious and hard to come by to casually spread around. Sleeping with another’s spouse will get you into no more trouble than stealing their coverts—it is that serious.

So a gun shot a little too close to me or my dogs, a frantic attitude about bagging birds, an unruly dog, or a shotgun’s muzzle that wanders casually all over the place—any one of those can take the fun out of my day and you need not be hunting with me again.

The Hill

     The hill has an odd name. It is named after the same man as the town it is in, but that is all I’m going to tell you. Years ago it was out in the middle of nowhere and I hunted deer there and birds too. A memory sticks of walking out of the woods, after shooting time had passed, and seeing a monster buck ghost across the woods road ahead of me.

     What made the hill special were the old farms. Up on the top there were two, both long abandoned, but marked with sagging homes settling into old stone foundations. In the fields game had trampled paths between the scraggly apple trees and the cedar swamp down below. Old tote roads crisscrossed the upper wooded slopes, and every single one of them seemed to lead exactly where you wanted to go. It was that kind of magical place. In a field halfway down the eastern side stood a box-like camp where an old woman lived by herself during the summers. I wish I could remember her name.

     Somehow, two decades slipped by without visiting that hill, but finally I went back with my young German wirehaired pointer named Chara and my Parker shotgun that had turned a hundred years old that year.

     Unbeknownst to me a horrific ice storm had flattened the trees a few years earlier, obliterating most of the landmarks. Up on the top of the hill two homes had been built near the ancient fallen ones and the old fields there were posted. Travel through what had once been woods was impossible, with trees broken and lying in a tangled mess. The claws of chest high raspberries flourished in the new sunlight.

     We found that little camp in the field halfway down the hill. Someone had been there recently and it looked much like I remembered it. Above the house a pool had been re-dug next to a spring and firewood was stacked on the far side of the porch.

     Where an old footpath came down the hill into the field, I tried to pick my way between the raspberries’ thorns. A fallen maple trunk blocked the way, and then another. And then Chara flushed a grouse.

     She went into overdrive, pushing under or jumping over obstacles and oblivious to the vicious briars. Several more grouse exploded into the sky. I sat on a log and watched, knowing she would be back eventually and was learning a lesson along the way---dogs can’t catch grouse.

     Her tongue looked a foot long when she came back panting. We found that spring fed pool and she stretched right out in the icy water to drink her fill. Sauntering out the old tote road toward the truck, I carried my old Parker shotgun broken open and draped over my shoulder. It had been quite a day.

     And of course a lone grouse dropped out of a busted-off old spruce and flew straight away down the road, offering one of the easiest shots a man could ever hope to see.

Snow in April

          Up north there is a winter storm warning in place, with three to six inches of wet frozen slop predicted. I worry about the woodcock. Many must have arrived up there by now and probably many are sitting on nests. Let’s hope they survive the snow.

          The ruffed grouse, being larger birds and maybe nesting a tad later, usually aren’t bothered by a late snow. But an April snow can raise havoc with the local woodcock population. The last time one blanketed the land it took two or three years for the woodcock population to recover.

          So I worry.

Grouse Country, March

     We drove up to grouse camp last week, arriving along with a foot of fluffy new snow. It didn’t look like much snow had been in the woods before that last foot fell, and the new stuff was almost a pleasure to shovel, it was so light.

    Our usual routine is to hike with the dogs, so that is what we did, finding places that were plowed or packed. In some places the snow in the woods was deep enough that the dogs only made short forays into the pucker brush, but in others they hunted as if it were for real. Twice while we were out we spied grouse sitting in poplar trees to feed.

     Back at the house the books called to me. There are still several by George Bird Evans that remain unread. Last fall I lucked into a half dozen of his books from an old friend, so I savored two of them along with a daub or two of single malt. Then I re-read Guy De LA Valdene’s Making Game: An Essay on Woodcock. What a fascinating character he is. Old Shooting Sportsman and Gray’s Sporting Journal magazines are piled all over the place, so they constantly distracted me. One afternoon Nick Karas book Brook Trout held my attention for hours, so it isn’t always about bird hunting. I even thought about tying trout flies at one point, but thinking about it was as far as I got.
     The last afternoon I snuck out with the dogs to walk down to the stream below the house. It’s decent grouse country, and deer sometimes yard in the softwoods along the stream if the snow is deep. The snow wasn’t deep though and the dogs thought it was a treat to hunt. Stream banks softened with bright-white rounded snow banks are always beautiful and the water sounded the same as in the summertime. On the way back we worked closer to the hill and the hardwoods, and the younger wirehair worked herself into a frenzy over scent. And then a grouse exploded out of the upper limbs of a craggy old white cedar. Both dogs stopped to watch her leave, and then went back to hunting with their hind ends in overdrive.

     All too soon it was time to head back home to where life’s mundane tasks waited. Driving down through the mountains and trying to do the math in my head, I came up with 191 days until grouse season.

 
 

The Country Road

     You know those places, spots that are so familiar that you hardly notice them. I had driven by that logging road a hundred times.  It goes down to somebody’s camp, maybe a mile or so down, and then dead ends against a stand of softwoods. Somewhere beyond, in the thick dark stuff, a good sized trout stream tumbles to the north. The country is pretty wild there and you’re about ten miles from the nearest asphalt.

     In a Google Earth image I had noticed that a large clearcut bordered the uphill side of the road and that softwoods remained throughout it in scattered clusters. The place had all the makings for good grouse country and easy walking to boot, if I stayed along the road. I’d been looking for some easy terrain to hunt for when a few of my older friends visited.

     So I drove down to that road to investigate, and before I’d driven a hundred yards a grouse jumped off an old bulldozed-up hump and flew across the road into the clearcut on the high side. In the first flat spot that looked hard and dry, I pulled the truck over and parked.

     All three dogs had seen the bird, so it was pointless to suggest one or two stay behind. Besides, I love the pandemonium of hunting over multiple dogs. So I let them all out and then gathered my gun and gear while the dogs searched the road’s edges with their tails all a blur.

     Less than a hundred yards from the truck, the young German shorthair, Georgia, bumped two birds that had been sitting on a mound next to the low side. They sailed down through tall hardwoods with the pup in hot pursuit, disappearing toward a distant softwood edge. We could hunt that line on the way back later and maybe find them. I waited for the young dog to return.

     Further down the road, Chara, the older German wirehair, started to get very birdy up on the banking of the road’s high side. Colby, the three-year-old wirehair disappeared up into the woods behind her. A mixture of hardwoods with young softwoods created great cover for birds, but if any flew in there just seeing them would be almost impossible.

     I pushed in, trying to follow Chara who had her nose to the ground, obviously tracking foot scent. She looked convinced that the bird had walked ahead of us along the banking as we came down the road. Shooting at anything looked to be tough though.

     Chara pointed, relocated, pointed again, then trotted ahead into a dense stand of wrist-sized fir trees. I detoured around. Her bell fell silent, so I hurried. Colby’s bell rang further ahead. George still worked the low side of the road.

      With a whir the bird came back at me.

      Reflexes caused me to duck as it passed low overhead and I shot as it went away, missing as it ducked to the right to sail out over the road and vanish on the low side.

Back out on the road, where a man could walk in a proper fashion without ducking or stepping over or around something with every third step, we continued on. Both of the wirehairs were tightly wound by then and hunted hard.

      Chara pointed from the road and Colby honored about thirty feet further away. Georgia stopped behind Colby. Boy do I love that. The three of them indicated that the bird hid somewhere among little firs on the high side of the road. Before I even stepped off the road the bird flushed out of sight. Georgia took off after it as if she’d been shot in the backside with a missile.

     I continued on down the road.

     Nobody was at the camp, but we made a wide detour around it and into the cutting behind it. Someone had tagged a path with ribbons, probably a deer hunter marking the way to a stand. Following a softwood edge, we circled uphill and around, heading back into the direction we had come. Twice grouse flushed wild ahead of the dogs, both times out of sight, but the thunder of their wings let us know they were there.

     The sound of birds really put Georgia into overdrive and she rocketed through the woods, way too excited and almost in a frenzy. I knew the chances of her stopping to point were small, but you have to give credit for enthusiasm. On a year when the grouse numbers were low it might have been extremely annoying, but with the abundant birds of the past fall I knew we would find more. Patiently, I let her blow off steam, hoping that she learned something with every bird she bumped.

     In a stand of softwoods the size of fence posts Georgia rocketed through and bumped three or more grouse, while the wirehairs methodically searched the cutting beyond.

Colby pointed a grouse and I hurried ahead, but it flushed wild before I could get close enough for a shot. Ignoring Georgia, I hunted behind the wirehairs, finding one more bird.

      By the time we reached the logging road again, my legs were protesting and all three dogs looked tired. Well, maybe not the young rocket-dog Georgia, who still wanted to hunt. The exact number of birds moved in that cutting remains something of a blur, but I was smiling.

      Down through the hardwoods on the low side of the road the softwood edge beckoned, but my legs said no, so we trekked back up to my truck, calling it a day. We would definitely be back though.