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.

Snow

    February usually means snow. By the time the month starts the hillsides are covered with a couple of feet beneath the hardwoods. Under the boughs of the softwoods there is always noticeably less. Temperatures are cold, often going for days without a temperature as high as freezing and many nights dipping well below zero.
    This February has been no different. There certainly is two feet of snow in the woods, but this year there is no base underneath. The snow is fluff all the way to the ground. This makes excellent roosting snow for ruffed grouse and tough snowshoeing for humans.
    On cold nights ruffed grouse will dive into the snow to take advantage of the snow’s thermal protection. Snow has an R value of about 1, which is nearly the same as wood. Twelve inches of snow has the same insulating value as a two by four wall filled with fiberglass insulation.
    I know of people who have been out snowshoeing and a grouse suddenly burst from the snow and startled everybody. There are stories of grouse diving into the snow and breaking their necks on hidden stumps or logs, but I have never seen that. I’m sure a predator or scavenger would clean up any evidence as the snow melted come spring.
    By the end of February the days are noticeably longer, which is a welcome change. March will bring on bigger changes.   

An abandoned ruffed grouse snow roost.

Figuring It Out

    Grouse hunters are always trying to figure it out. Why was last Sunday so good, with birds everywhere? The day before we saw none in similar cover. Oh the dogs seemed to get birdy a few times, but where were the grouse? Were they in the trees?
    Grouse are reluctant to spend a lot of time on the ground when there is snow cover. Is that because they know their natural camouflage is compromised by the white snow? Or is it only because the snow has buried much of their earth bound food?
    Sunday was great, moving more than a dozen birds in under two hours. Was it the weather? We had just finished a week of unusually warm weather for December. Warm weather means the birds don’t need the calories to keep up their body temperatures, so they may not feed as much. But the temperature dropped a little and an inch of fluffy snow fell. Did that cause the birds to come down to feed?
    Do the birds know when the barometer falls? Do they move about to feed in anticipation of a cold front? It certainly got colder.
    Most of the birds were on the ground on Sunday, where for the previous couple of weeks the birds had been content to sit in the safety of the softwood trees. I assumed they had been plucking catkins from alders and birch because the birds we saw or heard flush from the trees were all near alders or birch. We saw few tracks anywhere.
    What time of the day is best? Sunday it was late morning, but maybe it was better later. Or earlier. Who knows? This time of the year the shadows are long shortly after lunchtime and by three the day feels late and the temperature is plummeting.
    Two weeks ago a shot bird had a crop filled with fern leaves, even though a couple of inches of snow covered the ground. Where did he find those?
    If we ever figure out all of this I’m sure it would get boring.

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.

 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

My Boss

At first I just knew Jim as the boss, or officially as the Director of Operations, in charge of all the logging on Brown Company’s 600,000 acres. After a couple of years I’d worked my way up the ladder until he was my direct supervisor.

Don’t ask dumb questions, work hard, work long, and run the job as if it were your own, that’s how I’d been brought up. I knew little about Jim and tried to do my best, running the first mechanical tree harvesting operation in New Hampshire.

Our feller-buncher cut two stems a minute, all day long, and the whole tree chipper roared through a hundred cords of hardwoods a day, turning trees into woodchips to make paper. What grouse cover we created! Poplar would regenerate from the roots to be six feet tall or more in two seasons.

A young Brittany spaniel named Zac waited at home for me every night. That dog knew more about bird hunting than me and had little patience for my lack of experience. Feeling bad for the dog, and to stop him from eating the house, I started to take him to work with me. Eventually, I learned Jim had a German shorthair at home and liked to do a little bird hunting too.

When he would stop by the jobsite, he’d pat the dog’s head and ask how Zac was doing that day. After a year or two, the company gave me a truck to use. Anyone who’s visited a logging site can tell you what serious mud is and we’d make the kind that sucks your boots off your feet. A four-wheel-drive truck barely could waddle through.

Zac always managed to keep a healthy layer of this mud inside that truck. When Jim visited the job site he often would slide into the truck, unfazed by the mud, to ask about production. Any other boss would have told me to leave Zac at home.

I left the company after a few years, searching for whatever young men search for. A couple of decades later I found Jim’s home and went to knock on the door. He was inside on his knees with his back to the entry, fixing a screen door that lay on the floor. When I knocked, he yelled without turning, “Come in.”

I stepped in and said, “Jerry Allen here.”

He got up and said, “Jesus Christ, just last week I was trying to remember what the hell you last name was.”

We caught up on our lives, and then talked of dogs and guns. The following fall he came hunting with me, not carrying a gun, but just to see the dogs work. A year later we shot together at the Groveton Rod and Gun Club and he followed the dogs through the woods again. On almost every trip north, no matter what the season was, I’d stop in to talk dogs and guns, and every fall he’d ask about the birds. But time works against all of us.

It got harder for him to move about. During a tumble at the club, he broke the stock of a beloved old Ithaca. He got a price from a gunsmith to have it repaired, but the cost was way too steep. I took the gun back to my shop and did a less than cosmetically perfect mend, but at least the gun was useable.

His shooting ultimately stopped, as did the trips to watch the dogs work. He kept talking about going again, but the body was tired. We’d still talk dogs and guns, and I’d learn a thing or two and we’d share a laugh.

The last time I visited he said little, and sometimes forgot where a sentence was headed before he got half way through. When about to leave, I said something about us old bird hunters having to stick together, and that brought a smile to his face.

Now he gets confused and often doesn’t know where he is. Hell, that happens to me all the time bird hunting. But he may not be with us much longer, so that is sad. He’s a tough old coot though and the body doesn’t give up.

I hope that lifetime of memories he collected is still going around in his head.

*

I wrote this several years ago not long before Jim passed. I learned a lot from the man and miss his stories.

A January Thaw

January is a bit confused. The temperatures have been in the forties and low fifties the last few days and dipped to the upper thirties at night. That certainly isn’t the usual January weather, but it has happened before.

     The snow in the woods has settled and firmed up to the point where grouse won’t leave tracks. Down under the softwood trees, in the flat along the stream, we still see deer tracks and squirrel tracks. Usually there are snowshoe hare tracks, but apparently their big feet don’t leave impressions in the dense snow. Last week, when the snow wasn’t so solid, fisher tracks wound along the edge of the flat where the land starts to climb.

     Rain fell all last night and much of yesterday. During a break in the precipitation our young dog and I walked down to look at the stream, but it was out of its banks and the entire forest floor was flooded, making it impossible to walk anywhere near the stream bed.

     I am certain the grouse were safely up in the trees watching the water flow beneath them. The day before a grouse flushed from the edge of the softwoods when we walked down the hill. Our youngest wirehair, Maggie, always seems to find one somewhere, so they are around.

These green ferns were buried in the snow before the
January thaw. In winter grouse seem to love green anything.

     This afternoon the dogs and I walked up the hill and made a circle around the east end of our property where the forest crowds the driveway. Under a canopy of softwoods, Maggie locked up on point, much to my surprise. The thick boughs of the spruce and fir trees had thinned the snow enough so green ferns covered the nearly bare ground. When I took a step ahead a grouse exploded from a blown down fir tree, heading southward to cross our driveway. Great fun.

     Tomorrow will be colder and the long range forecast is for bitter weather again. Let’s hope deep roosting snow comes with the cold weather.

     New England weather is never dull.

Snow Roosting

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

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

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

A ruffed grouse snow angel.

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

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

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

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.

Two Inches of Snow

The cover looks so different with the leaves
gone and snow on the ground.

     Temperatures dip into the teens at night. Snow cloaks the ground and distant hills can be seen between the gray trunks of bare trees. Winter is sneaking into the woods and the world is changing.

    Our favorite coverts on the hillsides are empty. Woodcock are nowhere to be found. Most of the old apple trees have shed their apples, but a few trees still cling to their fruit. In the cuttings high bush cranberries glow red and can be spotted from a distance. Mountain ash that were so easy to spot a month ago seemed to have disappeared.

Sometimes the birds are hard
to find.

     Bucks have rubbed the bark off of small trees. Deer and moose tracks crisscross the snow. Turned up leaves and soil mark scrapes where testosterone charged males attempt to attract the opposite sex. It is a different world than a month ago.

     Down in the stream bottoms, where softwood trees edge the cuttings, grouse will be found. Often the dogs will point with confused looks, uncertain of where the grouse are, only to have the grouse launch from a tree, sometimes from unbelievably high. Occasionally birds will be pointed on the ground, but most of the birds have seen a hunter or two and will try to sneak away. The savvy dog will learn to deal with the runners, cautiously pinning them rather than flushing the wary birds.

Maggie pointing a ruffed grouse.

That First Kiss

     Have you ever noticed how often you are driving past a place and think “that looks like great grouse cover”, and when you hunt it there are birds galore. You come back as second and third time to that same spot and it doesn’t measure up.

     About three weeks ago I stopped on a logging road out in the middle of nowhere to look at a map and figure out where I was. The woods on the uphill side of the road looked like it had possibilities, so I wadded in. The dogs picked up scent immediately and within five minutes there were two points and a third grouse flew out of a tree.

A young alder stand.

     There’s a place I have been driving by for years, an old clear cut filled with young pin cherries. That is not my favorite grouse cover. Passing by it a couple of weeks ago I noticed the pin cherries had been crowded out by poplars and alders. I pulled over and got out my gun.

     In an area of about two acres I moved eight woodcock and one grouse. A few days later I took a friend there and we couldn’t find a bird.

A sure sign of woodcock.

     Last year I hunted the regrowth in what used to be a gravel pit. Alders and poplar held a lot of promise and we found birds. Every trip since then had been a disappointment.

     Of course there are covers we find that produce over and over again, but there seems to be a high percentage that produce only on the first visit, only to disappoint later on. Or maybe we just remember it that way, the first is always best.

     Kind of like that first kiss.

A ruffed grouse hiding in a tree. He is safe from me.

Ice On The Puddles

Morning fog usually means
nice weather.

     There is ice on the puddles now, at least first thing in the morning. At sunrise fog fills the valleys and the moisture freezes on the leafless branches of the trees. Golden or brown weeds and dead grasses have started to tilt or fall down. The fluffy seeds on the goldenrod look like cotton.

     Grouse hunters wait patiently for this time of the year. Temperatures are cool enough the dogs don’t overheat. Woodcock are still around to offer bonus birds. And, best of all, the leaves are pretty much gone from the trees. Green leaves may still cling to an occasional apple tree or the crown of a poplar may glow golden, but it is much easier to see in the woods.

High bush cranberries.

Young poplars.

     Gaudy red fruit hangs from both high bush cranberry and mountain ash this year. Apple tree branches weep under the load of their fruit. Now that the frost has softened the apples the wildlife love them. Find food and maybe you’ll find grouse, but this year there is so much to choose from the grouse could be almost anywhere.

     So we try to get out often. The dogs have firmed up their muscles and shed a pound or two. The hunters have too.

Maggie with a hard earned grouse.

Early Season

 

     It always starts with much anticipation, maybe even more so than Christmas. The leaves are still on and a few trees are still quite green. Temperatures might be up into the mid-sixties or higher, much too hot for the dogs and the hunters too, but off into the woods we will go.

     With luck, family broods of ruffed grouse will be found. Some of those young birds might even be dumb enough to fly into a load of number eight shot that is tearing through the air. A naive young bird will sit in a tree, not knowing how lucky he is that we choose not to shoot birds off limbs. We often taste a wild apple and probably toss it away as too bitter.

     The foliage usually is spectacular, from reds to yellows to oranges and green. We get hot and tired too soon. Up in our country the dogs can usually find a brook to stretch out in. A woodcock might tweeter away or a grouse thunders away. We’ll seek a shady spot up on a hill where a breeze might find us.

     Sometimes a bird comes home with us and sometimes none do, but it’s always a hell of a good time.