Soon
Bird season will open. For the upland hunter, it is the most anticipated day of
the year. Here at Camp Grouse, even the dogs know it is coming.
Maybe
it is changes in the weather, or that we’ve been going out to run with their
bells on. I guess that is a dead giveaway. Perhaps they see the hints of colors on the
hillsides too, just like we do.
Whenever
two or more bird hunters get together the conversation always comes around to
how many birds they have been seeing. Birds in the roads are mentioned and
maybe a woodcock seen flying at dusk. Of course, everybody is delightfully
vague about where they’ve been seeing birds. It is fun to see the enthusiasm of
new hunters.
The
trap is out to throw clay targets, set up on the side deck. We’ve thrown a few
to refresh muscle memory. The gun comes up like it always did. It would be fun
to shoot at a skeet or sporting clays range if one were nearby, but we’ll
settle for targets thrown out beyond the drop-off beyond the house. If a target is missed, the dogs disappear down into the tall weeds to bring it back, sort of sticking the lousy shot in my face.
New
boots are broken in. The bird hunting pants will get a new treatment of
wax. The vest will be dug out and hung
by the back door. There isn’t much more to get ready, which is one of the
beauties of upland hunting.
Tomorrow
we’ll be out scouting for birds and running the dogs. There’s a ridge we want
to explore. We have to get in shape too.
After lunch I took Maggie and Colby up a local bumpy road to take a
right next to an old log cabin. We hunted the clearcut on the low side of the
road where we had found birds a week before, but found nothing. We did find a moose scrape with a huge track in it.
Above the road Maggie pointed one woodcock in a tangle as thick as a steel wool. It escaped unscathed. 
