Another Season Ends

 

It was two years ago, I took our two German wirehair pointers to one of my favorite out-of-the-way town roads to hunt. The road usually is unplowed during the winter, but that year the town was keeping it plowed. We started hunting on the uphill side in familiar country, 
        The woods starts out as spruce and fir trees, but gives way to young hardwoods coming up in an old cutting. A storm earlier that fall uprooted or broke off dozens big softwood trees. Scattered clumps of standing softwoods remained, left behind by the loggers and creating what I consider excellent cover for ruffed grouse. Red twig dogwood and an occasional wild apple tree grow in many of the openings. The dogs and I worked through the cover up to my favorite little clearing, where there’s a field with several ancient apple trees and a bit of a stone wall. The previous fall my last bird of the season fell there in front of one of my Maggie's points. 
        We then dropped down into a steep gulley beneath huge softwood trees to cross a swollen brook. The plan was to hunt across the top of the field. and then down the other side of the brook. In the unusually warm weather, the woods looked much like it would in April, with eight inches of snow in places and bare ground beneath softwood trees. Melting snow had raised the brook, but not enough that it couldn't be waded in my Muck boots. Wearing long johns, I was overdressed for the forty degree temperatures. Just above where we crossed, large fir tree trunks crisscrossed the stream like giant pickup sticks.

        On the other side of the stream the cover started out much the same, but at the top of the field the woods changes to old field-grown softwoods with apple trees spread out between them. Further up the hill is a ten year old clear cut. where we had found woodcock on other hunts, but they had long gone by the end of December. Maggie, my older wirehair, had a grouse flush wild ahead of her and she went into her usual high pitched excited yip-yip voice. It looked like great cover to hunt the next fall when there still may be apples around. Rather than turn down the hill we continued to the east.
        When we intersected a logging road that runs uphill into a large piece of private property, we headed down it. Nobody had been up the road since the last snow and heavy wet snow remained unplowed.
        While the dogs worked cover ahead of me and to the left, a gray phase grouse bolted from beneath two tall poplar trees on my right, disappearing into the forest to never be seen again. The droppings on the ground indicated the grouse had been eating buds in those poplars. The dogs worked the scent and I thought they might find another bird, but no luck.
        When we reached the town road, I took the dogs across to the low side, but someone shooting a twenty-two not far away made me decide to call it a day. The heavy snow and soaked squishy  ground made difficult walking and I had enough. I’m sure the girls would have hunted longer, but they had a pretty good workout by then too.
        The day ended with no shots fired, no birds harmed and a pile of memories.

Wet

     Like it often is late in October, the weather became wet, snow covers the ground in high places, and the sun has remained hidden for days. The only sensible thing to be doing outdoors is hunting, but even that brings into question one’s sanity at a certain point.

     The grouse don’t want to move far from the shelter of softwood trees, but they have to eat. The cold weather requires more calories for them to stay warm. Following the edges of clearcuts we have found a few birds. Too often the birds are a whir of wings with a flash of feathers and gone. The shots are tough, with the softwoods swallowing up the birds in a blink. After almost a month of hunters in the woods, the grouse have seen it all and become skittish.

Maggie is learning every day.

     The dogs still manage to point a few. Maggie, our youngster, is learning stealth, something that is hard to teach and best learned on her own with exposure to wild birds. She does her best after she runs enough to burn off some energy and slow down a bit.

     Today a friend’s setter, Russ, was a delight to watch today as he winded a bird and tiptoed along with his head high. Maggie eventually caught the wafting scent too, but we never found a bird. Was it in a tree laughing at us? Probably, and maybe far ahead across the cutting.

     Up behind a cutting, Russ pointed next to a blowdown. Dave, the dog’s owner, walked in and one bird rocketed low out the far side, offering no shot. Another shot back over his shoulder, but avoided two ounces of ounces of shot he tossed its way.

     Some days are tough, but if it were easy we would soon be bored.

   

 

Cuttings and softwood.

From my log…

Maggie on point.

     October 27, Saturday.  Today was one of those days every bird dog owner waits for. I took the girls to woodcock country, hoping to get my youngster onto birds that wanted to hold for a point. Right off the bat Maggie locked up like a statue and when I walked in a woodcock flew up. I nailed it and she returned it, things couldn’t have been better.

     Of course I thought the whole morning would go like that, but we couldn’t find another woodcock anywhere.

     Hunting our way back, Maggie pointed again, I walked in, she relocated, and when I walked ahead of her a grouse flew. The shot was muffed, my fault totally, but I was very proud of her. Maybe five minutes later she points again, quite a long way ahead of me. I got to her and walked past. A grouse burst skyward and ducked behind a large cherry tree that absorbed a load of number eight shot. Two perfect points! If only I could have killed those birds.

     Entering some softwoods, another grouse flew out of a fir tree directly over my head. There was no chance for a point on that bird.

    An excellent two hour morning, with Maggie was a rock star. There weren't a lot of birds, but three solid points and no bumped birds. She is learning everyday.

Maggie with a woodcock.

Mama Grouse

It is July 10 and the weather is perfect, lots of sunshine with dry air. Last week it felt like the tropics around here, with high temperatures and high humidity. This week feels like heaven.

After dinner, we decided to take the dogs for a walk up in some high country, where a breeze might blow the mosquitos away. The old road in to where we planned to hike is rougher than a toad’s back, so we had to inch our way along.

In a stretch where the foliage on either side of the road was as thick as a wirehair’s coat, a grouse stood in the road. We stopped. Then there were three more, then two, then some disappeared and then three ran across while a straggler flew back behind us, then another dashed to the left and another one flew into a fir tree.

One was definitely larger, probably the mom, and there were probably six young ones half-again larger than a quail. Hopefully she was teaching them roads are a dangerous place.
It sure was fun to see.

The Middle of May

The grouse are pounding, literally. Some days it goes on all day long, others less so. Seldom during the day can you not hear them for long. The leaves aren’t out, but the red maples are pink on the hillsides. Distant pale green patches mark clusters of poplars. Water seems to be rushing everywhere. Only during the past week has the ice gone out on the lakes and the streams are still swollen.

Most of the logging roads are blocked off and they feel none too hard when you walk on them. It is spring in the North Country, a time of waiting. Luckily, the last week so so the weather has been spectacular, with blue skies and bright sunshine.  Woodcock are already nesting and maybe some of the young have already hatched. The woods will dry out soon and the streams will settle and warm. Warblers are already singing from the trees. Soon the trout will be feeding on hatching mayflies.

The Thunder of Wings

It's that time of the year.

     Two days ago, while walking to the compost, a young grouse exploded out of the weeds beside our field, startling me and brightening my day. On the way back to the house two more thundered to the air, catching the attention of Maggie, our youngest German wirehair. For the next twenty minutes she hunted that patch of woods hard, but found no more birds.

     It is the time of the year when the young grouse are exploring their world. The young birds are not always the brightest and either they learn quickly or end up as somebody’s dinner. Often they appear dazed at a roadside and would make easy pickings for hawk. By October they are a different bird, wary and wild.

     Fortunately, at this time of the year, there is a smorgasbord of things to eat. Blueberries are abundant and soon raspberries will follow. Insects are everywhere, to supply much needed protein. All sorts of plants are going to seed,

Her young were hiding in the weeds.

     Two weeks ago, a short distance down our gravel road, a grouse stood like a statue while her brood hunkered down in the roadside weeds. Before we could get pictures, she strutted into the brush to vanish.

     A week before that the same experience happened on a logging road miles in the woods. That one sat for a picture.

     On the way to a blueberry patch this morning we saw a woodcock standing on the asphalt of a winding back road. Before the camera could come out it leapt into the air to fly away in the classic erratic flight of a woodcock. A friend had asked only a day or so ago if I had seen any woodcock lately and I had said no.

     Is it going to be a good bird hunting year? Only a fool will make a prediction. In the meantime the brookies are biting and there are blueberries to pick. 

Headed for a pie.

Spring is Here

Maggie running back after flushing the woodcock.

    A cool wind blew from the east under a blotchy gray sky. Small mountains to the east showed the scars of logging and patches of white lingered near the tops of the highest. The two older wirehairs dashed ahead, familiar with the old logging road, having walked it dozens of times over the years, both hunting and just to be outdoors.                 

    Maggie, our twelve week old pup, stayed closer, walking in the drainage ditch and fascinated by the flowing water as only a puppy can be.

    Up from under her nose tweetered a woodcock, the first one seen this year!

A new beaver pond flooded the road.

    Maggie dashed back to sit by our feet and watch the bird fly away.

    After hoots of laughter and praise for the pup, we carried on. Further down the hill a grouse flushed wild, twisting like a calendar painting through the barren poplar and birch. Life felt pretty good.

    Further on, up in a cutting, Chara, the older wirehair soon to turn fifteen, pointed with Colby backing, but no bird was found, yet was still a delight to see.

    Later, almost back to the truck, Chara shuffled around inside a thicket of alders. Pause, snort and sniff, pause, point, shuffle and sniffle…no style, but with determination, and up went a woodcock. That made two!!!

Lounging at Camp Grouse while listening to the grouse drumming.

    On the way back to Camp Grouse, the sun poked through the clouds and the subject of a beer came up. Later, sitting on the deck, we clicked the necks of two bottles together in a toast to spring, and almost immediately the season’s first drumming from a grouse drifted down the hill.

     

Waiting For The Woodcock

    Snow lingers in the woods. Pockets of white hide in the shadows of trees and rock-like ice fills the hollows. Beneath blankets of white, north facing slopes still sleep where the air remains icebox cold.

    But the slopes facing the sun are welcoming her warmth. Swollen streams rush down the hills, creating a rumble that seems to be everywhere. Songbirds chirp and flit about, shyly hiding in the softwoods, busy with courting and spring tasks.

    The bare fields have been invaded by cackling geese, cackling about whatever geese cackle about. Soon after dawn, high in the sky, a pair honked their way up the valley, causing even the dogs to stop and listen. Blue skies and warm breezes make promises we hope are true.

    A walk down along the stream finds the ground cement hard in the shadows of the softwoods. Even amongst the sunlit alders it is the same. Undaunted, the dogs make the effort, searching the ground thoroughly. No woodcock or grouse in a covert that often has both.

    Circling back, up the bank where the sun warms the earth, the bare ground is soft. Eager noses search for the scent of returning woodcock. Optimism grows with the heat of the sun, but too soon the cabin comes into view.
    We’ll have to try again tomorrow.

Winter

    Eyes the color of winter sky look up questioningly. A rubbed ear brings her chin to rest against my knee. Eventually, she settles to lay on the rug by the desk, curled up in slumber. Soon, her legs twitch in a dream.

Chara in her fifteenth winter.

    What a long life she has had, hunting fifteen seasons, and most of those in some of the finest ruffed grouse country found anywhere. The dreams must be shaped by memories from 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, searching for 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?

Chara with Colby backing.

A Secret Place

In the shadows of the softwoods a small stream twists though the valley. On the east side of the narrow basin a four year old clearcut promises young buds, plenty of cover, and abundant seeds and fruit for grouse and song birds.  To the west a slightly older cutting provides shelter for nesting birds, with a forest so dense that marauding goshawks would have a difficult time weaving through the pole-sized young stems.

The song of the water is constant.

During a hot day, in a bird season a few years ago, that little ravine provided an abundance of partridge. The weather had been unusually warm for days and elsewhere the grouse hid in places the dogs could not find. Blown down firs and spruce slowed the hunt and clothes heavy with perspiration stuck to the skin to make walking a chore. The oldest German wirehair shared that special spot that day. Thundering wings wiped away the heat, lightened the sticky clothes, and provided a path through the fallen crisscrossed logs.

That cold tumbling brook is narrow enough to leap across in several places, yet deep enough to hide colorful brook trout that live amongst the shadows of spruce and fir roots. During hot summer weather the shade provides relief and the water cools the air. Tiny trout flies worked through the watery shadows can catch tiny wild brookies, but the canyons and caverns between the roots will break off the fine leaders required to fool them.

It’s a hidden place, visited by few. Sometimes, on a hot day summer day, I’ll let the dogs splash about to their heart’s content in the shadows of those softwoods. And if it is hot enough, one larger pool, with a bottom of fine gravel, is inviting enough to tempt me too.

But it’s October and it has been warm, so it’s time to visit that secret place again where the grouse like to stay cool.

My Old Girl

Chara sleeps at my feet, the old dog’s body twitching in a dream. The Lord knows she has plenty to dream. Her life has been a full one.

We learned to hunt grouse together, each of us in our own way. I supplied quail and pigeons and made certain to spend plenty of time in the field, but it was hours in the grouse woods that made her a great grouse dog. There is no way I could have taught her to track and point, then relocate as the grouse tried to sneak off.

She learned where the birds were, then searched the cover they preferred and the places they hid. Weather never fazed her, except when it turned hot, but I never liked hot weather either. Often I’d call it quits on a cold rainy day long before she wanted to go home.

Those snotty setter snobs might cringe watching the way Chara followed foot scent, but I learned a long time ago to be patient. Just as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used to always get their man, she always found her bird. Bumped birds were rare because somehow she sensed the bird’s temperament and skittish birds she would sometimes point from sixty or even a hundred feet away.

A friend and I were following Chara through some softwoods in a valley that shall remain anonymous. Climbing up on an almost shoulder-high boulder, she pointed upward. The conversation went something like, “Do you suppose there is a bird up there?” with both my friend and I craning our necks to see up into the limbs of a fir tree. We kicked the tree’s trunk, yelled and hollered, and sure enough a grouse flew away, unscathed of course. Chara went right back to hunting with a very smug look on her face.

Chara learned to love duck hunting.

She’s retrieved geese and more than a few ducks. Her love of water seems unfazed by temperature. Often she’s broken ice to lay in the water for no reason other than to get wet. Hunting the alder bottoms for grouse and woodcock during duck season I often loaded with steel shot, knowing Chara would readily retrieve any ducks I lucked into.

Her first real duck hunting excursion confused her. Why were we sitting and waiting with those carved wooden ducks out on the water? She fidgeted and fused, not at all happy. Shortly after first light a pair of mallards flew in like rockets and one fell to the gun. I looked down to say “Fetch”, but my girl was already in the water to retrieve that dead duck. After that one retrieve she sat still as a statue and waited patiently, her eyes ever searching the morning sky.

Dapper at five months.

My mind’s eye can still see her as a puppy pointing what turned out to be a pair of quail in a wildlife management area. It was her first hunt and at only five months of age. One of the quail fell to the gun and Chara instantly pounced on it. What a way to start. Steady to wing and shot would come later and then fade as she got older stubborn.

Last fall she hunted her fourteenth season. A week of gunning had been planned with multiple dogs, but when her turn came up it was just the two of us on a short hunt. Her hind legs are not strong anymore, but those easy hunts gave her the opportunity to point a couple of grouse.

Chara trailing a grouse.

Her last was a wanderer, which she trailed through a raspberry patch, across an alder flat, and up a slope through young maples. She locked up solid at the base of a knoll and I scurried ahead with leaves scrunching under my feet, only to have the bird thunder off as I crested the rise. I’ve replayed that hunt over and over in my head, and I think she has too.

Pointing a grouse in her 14th fall.

We are getting close to bird season again and physically she is exactly the same as last fall, so I’ll plan a few more of those short easy hunts in some of the best cover. I owe her a fifteenth season.

Chara at her finest.

The Back of the Mountain

Big country.

It is way back in the woods, almost twenty miles from the nearest pavement. About twelve miles in, all of it on logging roads, a gate blocks a side road. That gate has been left open on occasion and if you pass through it the road starts to climb.

Every serious grouse hunter is always looking for new cover, and most of us are looking for that out of the way spot that others might have overlooked. Arial images of that country showed a winding gravel road that climbed up over the shoulder of the mountain, then dropped down into a tight little valley to cross a stream, and then abruptly climbed back up another ridge. Up on the high ground, cuttings abut softwood stands, making for decent looking grouse cover, at least in the pictures shot from space. Only boots on the ground could confirm it.

My first attempt to drive in there stopped after crossing a height of land and then dropping down into the little valley, which is almost a gulley really. The wood bridge over the stream didn’t look too rugged, and, far in the woods alone, I chickened out.

Prospecting for grouse.

This past fall I drove in there with a friend. That rickety bridge had been replaced, so we traveled on. The road climbed up out of the valley, eventually leveling out next to a softwood edged cutting. Alders lined the road’s edges and young poplars sprouted everywhere. Enough grass grew in the road gravel to let us know that very few people traveled there. We found a place to pull off, let out the dogs, and dug out our guns.

The day was bitterly cold, but we found a few grouse. The shooting was tough, as it often is in cuttings. It looked like excellent woodcock country, but we found none. I’d bet a week’s wages that they nest in there though. When the sun poked out between the clouds and the gusts of wind dropped in a lull, the day actually felt nice, but most of the time I wished for one more layer of clothing.

After chasing a couple of grouse in circles and my friend killing one, we drove up the road further, crossed over another ridge, and then dropped down into another valley that seemed to stretch out forever. The road eventually deteriorated into two slippery clay-filled ruts that followed a stream on our left. When the road became just awful, we turned around. 

Don with a grouse.

About halfway back up the backside of that mountain we stopped at a four way intersection to eat lunch. A logging road to the north more or less followed a contour line along the edge of a cutting, so after eating we hunted it.

Saplings the size of my wrist filled the cutting above the road, but most were no taller than I. Moose had browsed the area heavily, stunting the young trees and holding back the regeneration. It was pretty country though, with a series of ridges to east that ran off into the neighboring state. We found no grouse, even though the hillside held promise. The rocky rough ground and left-behind slash made for touch walking, for both us and the dogs. Rugged men must have logged that country.

Exploring new country.

Back at the truck we swapped the two older wirehairs for the younger shorthair, Georgia. The road to the south passed through mature hardwoods with a stream grumbling in a valley to the left. Around a bend an old cutting held young maple, poplar, and softwoods. We hunted up through the cutting, moving one bird. Dropping back down and intersecting the road again, Georgia went on point. The grouse leapt off a precipitous drop-off, much like a paratrooper leaves an airplane, and disappeared down toward softwoods surrounding a stream below. My buddy’s pellets shredded the bark on a half dozen saplings, but not a feather drifted in the air. Georgia went down the nearly vertical embankment, like only an athletic dog can, to search the ravine but found nothing

We hunted more of that cutting and moved one more bird. It is good looking

Georgia.

country and I bet it seldom visited. It’s worth another look someday when that gate is open again. If it’s open at the end of the next summer, it will be a great place to train our pup on woodcock.

Now I have this phobia about getting stuck back in the woods somewhere. In my younger days, when I worked logging, three foresters parked their truck in the woods about thirty-five miles from the pavement, did their day’s work, and then came back to a truck that would not start because the headlights had been left on. I often think of that out in the middle of nowhere.

My truck started fine and our trip out of that wild piece of country was uneventful, which is just the way I like it.  

Even Grouseless Days….

    The drive in is about nine miles over a small mountain, across a timber bridge, and then it is then either left further into the wilderness or to the right and another nine or ten miles back out to a different paved road.  We went left.

     About another six miles up the road I parked in the same spot as a month and a half earlier.  The woods looked more open, with the weeds squashed down by snow that had come and gone.  With the naked trees not holding a leaf, the mountains across the valley looked much closer.

    Alders, half again a man’s height, covered an old logging yard there.  Behind them the land climbed gradually, covered with lofty hardwoods and dark old spruce trees.  Below the road young fir trees huddled together like cliques in a school  yard, each separated by open areas of bent and flattened weeds and grass.  Scattered maples and poplar sprouts remained upright, obviously unfazed by the earlier snow.

    Chara, my German wirehair pointer, pranced a few steps from the truck and locked up on point, her nose aimed directly into the nearby alders.  Hurrying shells into my gun, a partridge burst upward and disappeared into the boughs of spruce trees.

    We hunted behind those alders, more or less parallel with the road, and then crossed to the lower side, drifting between the clusters of fir trees.  About the sixth clump Chara’s hind end went into over-drive and then she froze, pointing into a tangle of green needles and gray trunks.   In the dark shadows a boulder poked out of the earth, nothing more. Walking around the left side of the trees, the partridge thundered out of the right, a sound unseen.

    The scenario was played out again, and then again.  Two hunters might have shot some birds.

    Chara slowed and then pointed into a cluster of limby firs. Bright green moss muffled my footsteps.  A partridge that looked the size of a turkey launched under my nose.  Reflexes brought the gun to the shoulder and a finger slapped the trigger, just as the bird ducked around a yellow birch trunk. I’m sure the tree survived. 

     I swear Chara struggled to contain a laugh.

    A bird flushed wild from a thicket of raspberries, and another was pointed on the way back to the truck, but both escaped unscathed.

Unloading the gun and putting it into the truck, I congratulated myself on the valiant conservation effort and the breeding stock that I had left behind.  Chara looked quite proud of herself, as she should with about a half dozen successful points. 

    Another spot further up the road deserved the same treatment.  There, the thick new growth of a fifteen year old clearcut covered the hillside.  Chara plunged in and I followed, as best I could, along wet and lumpy skid trails.  We didn’t find any birds and, if we had, shooting would have been impossible in that thicket.  Eventually our course brought us back out to the logging road about a half mile from the truck. 

    We dropped to the lower side of the road and worked back between the road and a roaring mountain stream.  Nearing the truck Chara’s hind end went into overdrive and, with her nose scouring the ground, she obviously followed a traveling grouse.  The trail went through thick grass, under clusters of young fir trees, beneath a blown down dead fir tree, directly over the top of an automobile-sized boulder, across a log, back into a cluster of waist-high fir trees, and then into raspberries that contained claws like a bobcat. Chara looked determined and optimistic.
    About fifty feet ahead of us, at the edge of the logging road, old Mr. Partridge decided he had enough of those two cahoots following him and took off over the road, to never be seen.

   It was a fitting time to end another memory filled day.

High Bush Cranberry

Here’s a project to create better grouse covert....

Starting high bush cranberry plants.

Daydreaming

    My mind keeps wandering to next bird season and the places that I want to hunt. There’s one spot, where the logging road has gone to hell, that I‘m betting few people will walk in to. Along the washed out road it’s pretty good bird country, and then a loop can be made up an old tote road through open hardwoods to long abandoned fields.

     A hunt through those fields and then to the east will lead into a cutting that, if hunted through, will lead back to the truck. It will make one of those all day hunts where you tuck a sandwich in your pocket, a bottle of water in the game pouch, and a snack for the dog. There’s always little trickles for the dog to drink out of up in that country.

     Right now, outside the window the snow is swirling and the forecast is bleak. Those chilly mornings of last fall, when the cold bit into our fingers, are nothing compared to what’s going on now. Up in grouse country the nights have been dropping far below zero, and even the days are far too cold for the gloves I like to shoot in. Hopefully the grouse have insulating snow to burrow into and enough food to supply the calories they need.

     From that same washed-out logging road it’s possible to hunt downhill around a big cutting, then follow a stream back up the valley. It would make another one of those all day hunts and cover a big chunk of wild wilderness.

    Some of my daydreams get stuck in the coverts that produced so well. This past fall the bird numbers had plummeted, but a couple of places shined. One that is out in the middle of nowhere keeps drawing me back. From the pavement it’s well over a half hour drive, maybe more than that next year the way the road has been deteriorating.

   It is thick cover on a steep slope, with a huge clearcut further up. I can hear the bells, even see the dogs. My pulse picks up when my mind's eye spots the dog on point. The smells, they are there too. And then the bird flushes….  

That Last Grouse

The other dogs stayed in the truck, much to their dismay. Chara, celebrating her fourteenth bird season, traipsed eagerly into the woods ahead of me.

It was her day, and her hunt. We’d been up in that country for almost two weeks and Chara had hunted several days, but usually only for an hour or less each time. Often I had one of the younger dogs with her to cover bigger country while she hunted closer to the road.

New country for us.

With her in the lead I certainly didn’t have to walk fast. It was a new piece for me, not big at all, and I’d driven by it for years, never giving it any mind. Young hardwoods mixed with scattered softwoods and small grassy openings mixed in. We followed an old grown-in logging road up a slope. The maples made it look very New Englandy.

Chara sorted out the scents, taking her time. The road wound up to the right until it reached a low ridge. Her hind end is weak, which is always a worry, and looked wobbly, so I turned us back down the hill through open hardwoods and towards the truck.

She looked determined, sniffing and snorting, not missing a thing, hunting to the left then working back to the right.

Chara started to get birdy, almost plowing the fallen leaves with her nose. As so many hundreds of times before, with her tail just a blur, she sifted through the scent, zeroing in on the bird. That grouse didn’t have a chance.

Down a slope she went, sometimes backtracking, but then always moving ahead. Her breath came in gulps and grunts, with head swinging side to side. The setter people might cringe at the way her nose inhaled foot scent from between the dropped leaves, but I was mighty proud of her.

Crawling under a fallen spruce, she froze.

As I walked around the backside, she became animated again, backtracking three or four feet, then marching ahead again. That grouse was doomed.

She zigged, then zagged, went back, then made a half circle before trotting on. Into a thicket of dogwood she trailed.

Chara pointing her last grouse of the past season.

Chara became a statue.

On the far side was a tiny knoll where a few hardwoods stood. I marched around the red-twigged brush and looked back, Chara hadn’t moved, but there were no grouse beneath those maples. It must have walked over the little hump’s crest.

And that never works out well for me.

I took pictures of Chara on point, then started around the side of the mound, hoping to ambush the grouse, but the thunder of wings told me he was gone.

Coaxing Chara on, we headed back toward the truck to rest those weary legs.

*

Chara is still with me, right now sleeping in my office with her legs twitching in a dream. Maybe she’s dreaming of that last grouse.

And, with luck, she might hunt a bit again next fall, but I’m afraid the odds are long. Yet with fourteen seasons behind her, she has had a glorious life. 

December Frosting

Colby, wondering why I can't keep up.

The six inches of snow began to look more like eight. It hadn’t slowed the dogs, but with every step down the abandoned logging road I reminded myself how much more work it would be on the way back up. The forest looked like a fairy land, with snow stuck to the trees and still coming down. A half mile down the hill lay the covert that always has birds.

Where the thick softwoods opened up, near a trickle of a stream, a grouse exploded off to the left, unseen. Juno’s bell rang nearby, and obviously the young shorthair had bumped the bird. Yet the thunder of wings was still music to this hunter’s ears. Colby hunted doggedly off to the right.

A frosted alder swamp.

The first weekend in December can bring anything to the north woods, from bare ground to abundant snow. I had driven north under the premise of checking on the contractor doing work at Camp Grouse, but of course brought a shotgun and my girls.

Where the road dipped into a hollow and crossed a stream the dogs’ bells jingled off of either side. I stopped to listen. My two girls couldn’t have been happier, dashing back to check on me and then diving off into the woods again, and neither could I.

A short way further on a grouse exploded from a thicket only ten feet away, leaving but a glimpse.

Snow silenced bell.

The snow continued to fall, drowning most sounds and muffling the dog’s bells. Down the road a piece, Colby stopped beneath a fir tree and looked up. Approaching, a grouse sailed away down a steep slope into the safety of a dense softwood swamp.

Where the road met an alder thicket the dogs both got birdy, but none were found. Colby kept glancing up into the fir trees, but the pup still hadn’t figured out that grouse sometimes sit among the branches.

Red twig dogwood among the alders.

In the alder patch a moose had been feeding on red twig dogwood and, looking at the tracks in the snow, it had been there only minutes before our arrival. The creature’s scent must have lingered, because both dogs looked about apprehensively.

By then my legs felt like lead and the falling snow had turned to sleet. The dogs hadn’t slowed, but the deep snow had to have been work for them too. We turned around and started back.

It is nice to know those birds will be there in the spring to breed.

Colby hunting the edges.

With tired legs, almost out of the woods.

Tired girls in front of the heater, back at Camp Grouse

Pandemonium

Our pup Juno.

     It was going to be the last hunt of our two week trip and, with four pairs of pleading eyes, none of the girls could be left in the truck. Bell collars were slipped over four necks and down the hill we started.

     Anyone who claims to be able to keep track of four dogs in the northern ruffed grouse country is delusional. Sometimes one would be in sight, sometimes two, maybe once in a while three, but seldom four. The last time I’d heard bells ringing like that it was the dancing Hare Krishna people in Harvard Square.

     The young shorthair, Juno, bumped a woodcock.

     Georgia, the older shorthair pointed another woodcock, but then busted it as her younger half-sister came charging up.

     The two wirehairs worked closer to the edge of the logging road, looking very businesslike.

     Juno crossed into alders on the road’s far side. A startled grouse rocketed back across the logging road.

Colby on point

     Through fence post sized poplars we worked. Down near the bottom, where an edge created by a snowmobile trail cut off our course, the younger wirehair, Colby, locked up on point. Soon Chara, my time tested wire hunting her fourteenth season, joined her, backing from fifteen feet away.

     That woodcock ended up in the bag.

     A second grouse zipped across the road.

Georgia on a woodcock

The turmoil continued, bells ringing everywhere, but it was a dry stretch with no birds. Following a grassy logging road down a slope, I spotted three people coming our direction.

     In ten years of hunting the north woods, I have never bumped into anyone actually out hunting in the woods. Never ever.

     One of the three was tightly holding the collar of his German shorthair pointer, obviously wondering “What the hell is all that racket?”

     Feeling a bit of a fool, I called the dogs in. I mean, who the heck hunts ruffed grouse with four bird dogs at once? We sounded like a bunch of dancing gypsies.

    Then I recognized the man holding the shorthair’s collar. He said, “Jerry, you need to get a sled for all these dogs.”

     It was Tom, a great guy and a guide from Tall Timber Lodge. He introduced the two sports with him and we chatted for a while. The dogs all got to know each other. I still felt a bit silly for the commotion we’d been making out there in that grouse covert. After several minutes, I wished them well and we went on our way.

     Through some great cover we found nothing, but then my girls all came barreling out to the logging road to race ahead of me, except Chara, whose racing days now happen in slow motion now. About fifteen feet in front of me, she slowed, turned her head to the left, and locked up like a statue. The other three dogs had flown right by that spot. It was a variation of the tortoise and hare story.

Chara, pointing a woodcock.

     Entering the weeds, a woodcock popped up and disappeared immediately into a cluster of softwoods. My shot was in vain.

     We continued on, which brought on more of the same…clanging bells, fleeing birds, and dashing dogs, with an occasional point, which once or twice contained multiple dogs frozen simultaneously. Several times I just stopped to laugh. It was a hunt that will be remembered for a long time.

     Pandemonium can be fun.