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.

Mentoring

     The state of New Hampshire started a mentoring program this year for people who want to learn to bird hunt. I love the sport and worry about the shrinking number of hunters all over the country. With diminishing political clout we will lose our open lands and hunting as we know it.

Choke cherries are everywhere.

     Yesterday I met my mentee for the first time. We chatted a bit and then headed into the woods. He’s about a decade younger than me and has hunted most of his life, but never over bird dogs or for ruffed grouse in New Hampshire. Trying to explain to somebody what makes good grouse or woodcock cover sounds easy, but often it is just a feeling or hunch as you drive by a certain piece of cover. Travelling on a logging road, I pointed out things grouse love to eat and tried to explain the need for shelter in the softwood trees.

     I let my dogs out in a place I had found grouse before, but we didn’t have a lot of time and this time of the year grouse are widely scattered. Berries and seeds are abundant and everywhere in the woods this year, so finding concentrated birds seemed unlikely. I tried to be optimistic.

Maggie on a woodcock.

     The weeds were impenetrable in a small clearcut I had hoped to work around. Instead, we trekked to the north and found moist young forest. I mentioned something about good cover to find woodcock and almost immediately my younger dog went on point. That certainly made me feel good.

     Stepping past the dog, the bird launched straight up over the trees and then flew away. A couple of minutes later my older girl went on point with Maggie backing her. Maggie lost control of her manners and bumped the bird, but it still was nice to find a second bird in the little bit of time we were in the woods.

     I’m looking forward to spending a day in October with my mentee. Let’s hope it’s a day filled with birds.

Do you see him?

Upside Down

Can  you see Colby pointing?

      Regenerating clearcuts make for great grouse hunting. Certain things make some better than others. I like to see young poplars coming up. Maples and birches are good too, but if there are young choke cherries I usually pass it by. Softwood trees nearby are important for shelter too, but it doesn’t take many. Grouse will walk a long way into a cut, from the shelter of softwood trees, so be sure to hunt quite a ways into the cut.

      Some clearcuts are almost impossible to walk through from the slash left behind. Others are easier if branches and tree tops were hauled away with the wood. In our area almost none of the ground is flat and the logging roads tend to be in the valleys. The best hunting if often at the tops of the cuts, because the birds see fewer hunters and frequently there are stands of softwood trees at the higher elevations. So you had better be in shape because climbing those clearcuts can mean hard walking.

      When you find a productive cutting and hunt it over the years, the trees get bigger and you probably don’t notice the changes. But one day you will realize the place isn’t what it used to be. It is because the forest became too mature and the nesting areas and food sources are gone. Grouse and woodcock are birds of the early successional forests.

There is even an old stone
foundation nearby.

      So besides hunting grouse, you continually have to hunt for new cover. If you don’t you’ll soon be finding fewer birds.

      This past fall we stumbled upon a new favorite. A logging road will take you up above the clearcut and then it is only a hundred yard walk down a gentle slope to reach it. Better still, the loggers left behind a few ancient wild apple trees that had been hidden. There is an assortment of weeds, water is nearby, and stands of softwoods break up the landscape. Clusters of young alders, the diameter of shovel handle, stand like tall skinny commuters waiting for the bus. The place is going to be a good one for several years.

     No, I won’t tell you where it is.

Maggie is pointing a woodcock.

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….  

The Openings

They are a long way in, over a rocky road that is barely possible at times, even crawling along in four wheel drive. The term “openings” was new to me, but it is what the locals call the fields left by long-gone homesteaders. Holes in the forest is what they are, openings.

A friend who had grown up in the area showed me the way in. At a certain point, you have to park and walk the rest of the way, but four wheelers make it in and out to a couple of nearby camps. The snowmobilers maintain a bridge over a large stream that flows north, which makes crossing easier.

The area before the openings is logged hard, so it is good grouse country. It’s also flat, at least for our neck of the woods, and thick, so I find it easy to get “turned around” there. We’ve taken a lot of birds out of those woods.

But the openings are special, where you step onto grass and large pines stand overlooking on a knoll, with blue sky stretched overhead. The forest tries hard to creep back in, and I am sure it will with no one mowing the fields. Beneath a mammoth white pine there’s a small cellar hole. I always wonder if the pine stood there when the house still remained.

What did the people grow? The summers are short and the winters long. Was there a barn? Maybe this coming summer I’ll walk in there with the dogs to look around again. Could there have been more than one family? It is miles to the nearest village.

I get distracted around abandoned home sites. If we locate their dump it’s like finding a gold mine. Everything must have been precious in those hard times, and I’m sure little was thrown out unless it was totally useless. But their useless might be a treasure to me. I’ve spent hours, sitting on my butt, digging out old bottles and unidentifiable pieces of rusted iron, while the guns rested against trees and our dogs waited impatiently.  

An ancient stone wall, sagging and moss covered.

Where did the people go? What drove them away? The rocky soil? Cold winters? The isolation?

Did they leave during the chilly years after the volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883? It took five years for the world’s weather to get back to normal. Mount Tambora did the same thing in 1816, but made it so cold that it was referred to as the “year without a summer”. It snowed in June and water on ponds froze an inch thick. Frosts happened in every month, disrupting agriculture in New England and Europe to the point that thousands starved. I read once that between 10 and 15 thousand left Vermont during that time and headed west, hoping for a better climate and fewer rocks. But if those openings had been abandoned that long ago, I think they would have grown in long before now. Maybe not.

So I’ll probably never know for certain. Those openings, while they still remain, are a testament to tough people that tried to carve out a dream. The stone lined cellar holes will last long after the fields have grown in, but eventually all will be forgotten.

I will visit them all again, and wonder.     

Grouse

It’s a new season, and with still so many questions to answer. The spring and summer have been wet, not with an abundance of rain but frequent. How did the broods survive?

Young of the year and still rather dumb.

We went up to grouse country the beginning of September, having missed our usual summer visits. The dogs found a grouse here and there, and then the last day before we left they hit pay dirt, busting a covey of maybe a dozen.  That wasn’t enough evidence though to form a solid opinion.

On October first, a rather warm opening day, we found a scattering of grouse, maybe eight or ten, all skittish as the devil, each of them disappearing into the bright autumn foliage in the blink of an eye. One lone woodcock offered the only shot fired, and that was a miss that I still can’t believe. Yet I still didn’t dare announce an opinion on how the season would be.

Last season seemed to be the best of my lifetime, yet come wintertime, when I tallied up all the numbers and compared them to previous years, it wasn’t all that different. If you added in woodcock the numbers were impressive, but grouse alone was only slightly better than average.

The reports from upcountry are good, not spectacular, but good. We’ll have to wait and see. By the time we get back up there the leaves will be off and the dogs are ready.

So I may be able to invite friends over for a grouse dinner, but I’m not sure yet just how many.

Grouse country

Starting Cold

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from someone wanting to know where to locate good grouse cover. They had recently acquired a German shorthair pointer and thought grouse hunting sounded like fun. That certainly sounded like a backward way to come at the sport. On the plus side, they had joined local chapters of the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association and Ruffed Grouse Society, both excellent organizations.

Typical old cutting in the Northeast.

There probably is no better way to start than joining the Ruffed Grouse Society and a hunting dog group. At least then you will meet likeminded people who are bound to share some of their bird hunting knowledge. Whether you can get them to open up and share their favorite coverts may be another matter though. Grouse coverts are hard earned and shared sparingly.

State fish and game departments usually have experts that can point you in the right direction. When you are up in bird country, if you should happen upon any fishermen, hikers, and loggers, it doesn’t hurt to ask if they’ve seen any grouse. Most aren’t bird hunters and will gladly share what they know. And it doesn’t hurt to talk to sales people in local sporting goods stores, although dyed in wood grouse hunters aren’t all that common and salespeople are…well, salespeople, and likely to tell you what they think you want to hear.

The nearby softwoods provide shelter.

Other than that, I would pick a part of the country where there is still an abundance of timber harvesting and study it on Google Earth. Logging roads and activity such as clear cuts show up readily. Soft woods are easy to see, which provide shelter. An hour spent studying the images on Google Earth and the topographical maps of the area can save you days of walking.

The next step is to go to the locations that you’ve picked and to start walking. You are looking for shelter for the birds and a food source. Remember that available food changes with the seasons and what you see in the summer may not be there in the fall. A nearby stream is a plus. Logging roads can provide grit for the birds. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find a drumming log. Maybe you’ll even bust a large covey of grouse.

And then plan to come back in the fall with your dog. If you’ve done your homework and hit pay dirt, you’ve found your first grouse covert. It is up to you whether you want to share it or not.

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.

Tween Seasons

It is between seasons, bird seasons that is. At some point, during every single day, thoughts of bird hunting slip through my head. They have to, living with bird dogs in the house and surrounded by books and photos on the subject.

Daily I walk, always with the dogs, to keep in shape. Nothing is more necessary to an upland bird hunter than a good pair of walking legs, and come October the dogs will ready to run too.

Colby and Chara, my two German wirehair pointers

In the mornings, before my workday starts, we trek through the fields and woods out behind the house. They love it almost as much as hunting and I do too. We have no upland game birds here on our island, except possibly a few woodcock that stay to nest somewhere. During the spring and fall those vagabonds migrate through and on more than one occasion my girls have pointed them, but finding a woodcock in the summer is rare. Quail, once abundant, are rare.

There are rabbits galore, and some days the dogs will point one or two and possibly give chase on my command, yet other days they show no interest in them at all. It’s the same with turkeys, who’s numbers are expanding and soon they will become a pest, just like our deer.

Morning sun on the field out back

From the grasses of the field out back we sometimes roust a deer. Two nights ago three decent-sized bucks, with their antlers in velvet, stood like statues in the tall grass at twilight, watching my dogs and I walk along the edge of the field. The dogs never pay much attention to the deer, there are so many of them that I think the dogs get bored with their scent. Oh, if they bump one out of its bed they may give chase for a hundred yards or so, but the dogs always come right back.

Under the oaks of the woods blueberries and huckleberries grow waist high, and, if they are not wet with dew, I’ll often push through them just to work my muscles harder. The dogs bound through them, leaping to see with every stride, their ears flapping like insufficient wings.

Some mornings I seek the sunny sides of the fields for warmth, others the shelter of the trees to break the winds. Lately the crickets have been murmuring in the mornings, but not as loud as later in the day. Turkeys gargle noisily. Crows seem to be everywhere and sometimes I swing my hand like a shotgun, pretending to fire when the lead feels right.

For a week or two a young skunk would turn up along our walk. The dogs would wind it and give it a wide berth, but the little bugger actually would actually charge at a human. I’m sure it made him feel powerful to watch the tall creature flee. With his absence the last couple of mornings I have been wondering if an owl might have had him for dinner.

Soon it will be July, and then comes August, when we can say “Bird season is the month after next….”

Another rabbit.

A New Pup

Our wirehairs, Chara with Colby the pup.

     We are down to two dogs in the house. After living with three for so long the place feels sort of empty. This past spring we had to put our high strung Vizsla down. The hole that she left behind is larger than her diminutive size. She may have been the runt of the litter, but she rose to be queen of the castle here.

     Sally, my virtual wife, has always had a soft spot for German shorthaired pointers, and, seeing that I picked the last dog, a German wirehair, it is her turn. She did a lot of research and has picked a kennel, one with a hunting background because that is important to us. We want a dog that will be at home in the rugged terrain of northern New England, and that is where this pup will be born.

     

Georgia, a friend's GSP at five months on point.

So now the mom has been bred and the wait begins.

  

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.

 
 

Waiting For Woodcock

      Doesn’t that sound like a movie—Waiting For Woodcock? It would probably be about an odd older guy living in a rural area, who frequented swampy areas and whose only understanding friend was a dog.

     The middle of this past week the weather felt like spring, and, on a morning walk out back with the dogs, I wondered when the first woodcock might show up. February is the only month I have never seen a woodcock in New England.

     Snow fell that night, about three inches of fluffy white stuff, and, when I walked the next morning, I decided that it would be a while before the woodcock showed up.

     The day turned out warm with the temperatures in the forties and by the middle of the afternoon most of the new snow had disappeared. A friend, Tom Flaherty, called to tell that he had run his Brittany pup in the next town over and she found three woodcock in some poplar near a gravel pit. 

Do you see him in there?

     Imagine that, woodcock in February.