The Chicks Are Out

The little chicks scattered back to the weeds.

The weather is hot and the chicks are out. I don’t mean the scantily clad ones flaunting their good looks at the beach. I mean the baby grouse have hatched. 

Almost daily someone posts pictures on social media of baby grouse, usually accompanied by their mother and crossing a street somewhere.

Fortunately, grouse chicks can feed on their own almost immediately after hatching and can wander with their mother up to quarter of a mile from where they were hatched. Less than a week after hatching they can fly, looking like giant bumble bees. They grow from less than an ounce, at hatching, to a little over a pound in about four months.

The biggest danger in the first days of their lives is cold rainy weather. A cold rainy stretch can wipe out whole broods and decimate a population.

This year northern New England has been cool but unusually dry. Come October we will see how the broods did.

Here’s Something to Worry About…

There is not a lot of difference between using rabbits for beagle field trials and quail for bird dog trials. The fight may be coming.

http://www.unionleader.com/animals/battle-brewing-over-rabbit-hounding-using-live-animals-to-train-hunting-dogs--20180614?template=mobileart

One woodcock and two wirehairs.

What’s It to You ?

Speed on the water.

     I once lived amongst the world of diehard sailors. Some raced two or more times a week and had to be the first to everywhere. Every piece of gear on their boats was of cutting edge technology. Other sailors just wanted to be out on the water, headed for a quiet cove to spend the day. Some had to cross an entire ocean to be happy. A few never went anywhere, but instead used their boat mostly for entertaining or just a platform from which to read a book. Many of my friends worked on boats, lived aboard boats, and went sailing on their days off. Every one of those sailors enjoyed their boat and who’s to say who enjoyed theirs the most.

Which fly today?

     Fly fishing is sometimes like that. One angler has to match whatever insect is hatching, while another is quite content to throw the same fly that he threw the day before and the day before that. Some fish as if their life depended on it, while another may find a sunny spot on the shore to stretch out and take a nap. Who’s having the most fun?

     Bird hunting can be the same way. Some hunt until their legs are ready to fall off, with anything less than a limit an impossible thought. Others may mosey along, content to watch the dogs work while they chat with a buddy. Many love their old shotguns and bird hunting is an excuse to get them out. Bird dogs are the passion of a huge number of bird hunters, and many wouldn’t bother to walk into the woods without one. To some, it is an excuse to be out in the woods watching song birds, looking for deer tracks, and possibly shooting a bird along the way. Who is having the most fun?

     When I was younger killing birds seemed very important, much more so than it does now. My dog was steady to wing and shot and, by the time a day was over, my legs would have felt better if they had fallen off. I have to admit, I always slept soundly after a day in the woods.

Georgia pinning a ruffed grouse.

     I sleep just as well now, but during a day afield I notice a lot more. Around here there are old stone foundations and long lost apple trees. A beaver pond might harbor a wood duck or a half dozen black ducks. A woodcock or two might hide among the alders in valley around the other side of the hill…or is it the hill beyond that? Sometimes I just follow an old logging road to see where it goes.

     Every day is an adventure. My dogs no longer are steady to wing and shot. Hunting alone that was difficult to enforce and caused a lot of frustration, both for me and my dogs. They still hunt hard and point with intensity, but more like cowboys than mechanical soldiers. If dog safety is an issue on low flying shots, I just let the bird go. One bird in the game bag feels great, and after that anything more is a bonus.

     Don’t get me wrong, I love to watch dogs preform flawlessly and to see birds drop in front of gunners that never miss. You have to admire the determination and discipline that brings such results. If it makes them happy, and I certainly hope it does, it makes me happy.   

     Instead, my dogs are my buddies, under foot both in my shop and in our home. I still try to rule the roost and make sure their manners are impeccable, and we do get out in the woods often, probably much more than most. Experience and birds in front of the dog’s nose are the best teachers, so we try to get out a lot..

     But I’m willing to cut them some slack, as long as they are willing to return the favor.

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.

Old and New

     We live about as far north as the early farmers ever tried to work the earth, at least in New England. Most left not long after they started and there never were a lot of them, but occasionally an abandoned foundation or old stone wall is stumbled upon.

     In 1815, the volcano Mount Tambora exploded in the Dutch East Indies and set off a global weather anomaly that caused the summer of 1816 to be known as The Year Without a Summer. That June it snowed six inches in many parts of northern New England and it didn’t melt for a week. The event convinced many that farming this far north was impossible.

An apple tree gone wild.

     So the abandoned farms are few and far between. We find them occasionally, usually with a few apple trees nearby and maybe a stone wall or foundation. The bears do a number on the apple trees sometimes, but those old trees are tenacious and wild ones abound. Abandoned fields in the forest are called openings by the locals, and every year the openings grow smaller and rarer. High bush cranberries, poplars, and blueberries creep in, soon followed by spruce and fir trees. Those left-behind openings can have some excellent grouse hunting around the edges.

     Up here, the more common grouse habitat is logged over country that is rebounding. Usually an area will provide good grouse hunting a few years after it is cut, until the trees are twenty years old or so and starting to mature. Throw in a few softwood trees for shelter and a stream, so the grouse can pick at washed up gravel, and that cutting is going to hold grouse.

     So up here we study Google Earth and tramp all over the place looking for grouse around these cuttings. I like to follow the edges, particularly if poplar and maple are growing and softwoods are close by. For reasons that I have never figured out, if choke cherry is the predominate specie coming up there seldom are grouse. High bush cranberry, blueberries, raspberries, and mountain ash are a bonus.

     Imagine my surprise when the edge of a clear cut led into a stand of wild apple trees, some of them thirty feet tall, with spruce and fir trees, red twig dogwood, and young maples mixed in. It certainly looked like an abandoned orchard. Some areas even had patches of grass remaining. The nearest paved road was seven or eight miles away, and the nearest gravel road half that.

My old girl Chara on a grouse.

     And there were grouse, lots of them, and even a pair of woodcock.

     A wide circle through the apples brought me back to the edge of the clear cut where stones shrouded in moss had been arranged to make a small foundation and a rock wall hid beneath leaves and lichens. Kicking fallen leaves around produced a rusty barrel hoop, but nothing more. Maybe someday I will go poke around again.

All that remains of a homestead.

     I am sure others have found that covert where new cover sits next to old, but I’m not likely to share it with many. It is a rare gem indeed.

More information on dog health....

This subject is one I have been following closely as more information becomes available. If you have a puppy or are thinking about getting one, this is a subject you may want to do some research on.

https://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2016/07/27/neutering-spaying-effects.aspx

From The Journal

    The opening weekend of the 2003 bird season I took my German wirehair pointer north for her second trip to the North Woods. Our first morning up there the woods dripped from a nighttime of steady rain and the sun hid behind a dark mottled sky.

      As Chara hunted down the slope ahead of me, I followed through alders and young poplars, trying hard not to brush against anymore wet foliage than necessary. We were searching for woodcock in those alders. Thirty years earlier I had hunted that same covert with my first bird dog, a boneheaded Brittany spaniel that taught me a lot. Unfortunately, I could teach that dog little.

       It’s funny how you don’t mind the wet woods once you find birds. At one point, before we had found any birds, I remember thinking that none of my friends would have enjoyed that morning, with soft mud sucking at boots and soaked cold clothes plastered to the skin.

      Near a brook that twisted down the hillside we chased two grouse in circles. It was like they didn’t want to leave their home territory and kept circling back. A few dozen fat fir trees along that stream broke up the yellowing poplars and still green alders, and provided excellent cover for those rotating grouse. Those stubborn leaves gave the grouse such an advantage that we finally lost track of them.

      But there were woodcock and Chara proved her worth. I shot as the first bird disappeared into the foliage and felt certain it was a clean miss, but my girl came bounding back with bird in her mouth. And the day kept getting better. When we walked out of the woods at eight-thirty a limit of woodcock rested in my game vest.

      Yet the best part of the morning was sitting on the tailgate of my truck and sharing cookies with Chara. 

      Parked on a logging road in the middle of nowhere, we watched the sun burn away the clouds to illuminate the reds of the maples and golds of the birches. As the air warmed, it smelled of sweet drying leaves and spicy grasses. The only sound came from far away in the hills, where a raven made his soulful cry.

The Hill

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

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

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

Busted up country

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

      After an hour or so of searching, we found that little camp in the field halfway down the hill. Someone had been there recently and it looked much like I remembered it. Above the house a basin had been re-dug next to a spring and firewood was stacked on the far side of the porch.

      Where an old footpath came down the hill into the field, I tried to pick my way between the raspberries’ thorns. A fallen maple trunk blocked the way, then another, then six more and the path disappeared among tangles of new raspberry vines. And then Chara flushed a grouse.

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

     Her tongue looked a foot long when she came back panting. Even that had been pricked by the thorns and wore flecks of blood. We found that spring fed puddle near the house and she stretched right out in the icy water to drink her fill. I wondered what had become of the woman that used to live there, she should have been over a hundred at that point. And who kept the place up, mowing the grass and piling the firewood? Obviously someone used the place in the summers.

      Sauntering out the old tote road toward the truck, Chara continued to hunt, but at a slower pace. It was obvious she would grow into one heck of a bird dog. I carried my old Parker shotgun broken open and draped over my shoulder. It had been quite a day. And of course a lone grouse dropped out of a busted-off old spruce and flew straight away down the road, offering one of the easiest shots a man could ever hope to see.

Chara in her younger days.

Squeaky Snow

 

Maggie

    As I write this it is late December at Camp Grouse. Among the hillside hardwoods two feet of snow covers the ground. Temperatures have been below zero for days and dipped down to thirty below a couple of nights. Cabin fever starts to set in after a while and when temperatures climb to near zero it is time to put on the snowshoes.

      Our younger German wirehair, Maggie, is game to go. She loves winter and rolls in the snow daily. Colby, our older girl, will pretend to want to go, but after I leave she’ll curl up quite content beside the wood stove to dream of summer.

      From the house, Maggie and I head down into the softwoods, snow squeaking with every step and our breath in a cloud. She bounds through the snow with enthusiasm. In the shelter of the spruce and fir trees the snow is hard, crunching beneath the snowshoes despite the dusting of fluff on the top. Maggie can easily dash about atop the snow, following the confusion of snowshoe rabbit tracks.

      Deer have passed through, punching deep imprints in the hard snow. The coyotes barely made tracks, but traveling on top with such an advantage over the deer.

      Our favorite brook trout stream is silent, capped over with ice and snow. It is hard to imagine trout fishing and I wondered where the brook trout went for the winter. Surely they are not in the same riffles as they were in July, but probably in the deep dark holes where the current is slow or nonexistent.

      We follow downstream. Maggie shows no interest on going out on the ice, which is what I had hoped. I like smart cautious dogs. They seldom get porcupined or skunked more than once.

      Snowshoes on crusty snow drown out any other sound. Mice tracks, squirrel tracks, rabbit tracks, all create a puzzle. Fat well-spaced trunks of conifers cover the plateau along the stream, making travel easy.

      We pass where the coyotes killed a deer the previous winter. Maggie sniffs about and I wonder if there could still be scent after so much time. Dogs amaze me with their noses and nothing seems impossible. She squats to urinate, to say to the coyotes “Hey, I was here”.

      Leaning alders, bent by the snow, block the path and I crouch to walk under them. A busted fir tree, broken by an early winter wind, demands a detour. Another fallen fir, this one uprooted, reaches out halfway across the stream. Eventually the stream pinches against a steep ledge to cut off our course, so we turn back and inland to follow the edge where the softwood trees of the lowlands meet the hardwoods of the hill.

      The snow is deeper, but Maggie still flies about, first up the hill then down into a thicket beneath a cluster of firs. She points, relocates, points again, and then zips off to hunt still more. 

      Grouse tracks cover the snow where she stopped. I stare up into the trees, hoping to glimpse one, but see none. I did not bring a shotgun. With the extreme weather I really don’t feel like bother them and seeing the tracks is enough for me.

      Heading uphill and back toward home, another shattered fir tree blocks the path. I trudge around it beneath three big softwoods. Ahead of me, Maggie again points for a moment before charging onward. Grouse tracks go every-which-way where she stopped. The bird never wandered far, but created a tangle of tracks beneath a cluster of young maples, all in an area the size of a large dining table.

      I search among the tree limbs, but again find only empty branches. Hopefully the bird is sitting somewhere safe with its belly full. We are close enough to the house, so, if this one is a male, we will sit on the deck and hear his drumming in the spring.

      A late day chill reminds us it is late. The low winter sun has slipped behind the hills early and the sky has dissolved from blue to the color of steel. Up the hill we find a skid road that takes us around the bottom edge of another softwood stand. Water runs beneath the snow, creating a murmur that is almost impossible to hear. In the summer mud would be everywhere, but a pristine white blankets everything. The deep snow makes breaking trail work, but Maggie still bounds about. Eventually, the road leads to the far end of the field behind our home and I can see smoke wafting up from the chimney.

      There is no place I would rather see or be.

Worm Soup

Alders

      The rain had finally stopped. It was time to get the dogs out hunting again. With the youngster in the house, Maggie, that meant looking for woodcock, because no finer bird was there ever for training a young pointing dog.

      The woods was soaked after three or four inches of rain in only a matter of hours. Winds had approached hurricane force and the power was out back at the house. Hundreds of trees were down everywhere. Logging roads would be impassible, unless one hacked their way in with a chainsaw. I opted for easier going and picked a covert next to a state road.

      Soft wet ground, like runny chocolate pudding, oozed down the hillsides. We pushed through raspberries and then blackberries into a stand of young alders. Maggie and Colby were in hyper mode, hunting hard, oblivious to the mud. Down the slope we sloshed. Then, where water puddled among alders, a bumped woodcock flew back over my head.

A rock pile left by a farmer.

      Clumps of young firs, growing on a series of hummocks the size of overturned bushel baskets, divided the alders from more poplars. We skirted an enormous pile of moss-covered rocks, left by a long gone farmer, and another thicket of blackberries. More fencepost-size poplars stood above bent and brown ferns, then into another cluster of alders we waded. Where were the woodcock?

      Far ahead, Maggie’s bell screamed silence. Colby’s still rattled off to my right. Then Colby’s fell silent too. Silence. Two dogs were pointing, what to do? How long would the young dog wait? I quickly stepped in front of closer Colby, knowing that if a bird flushed a gunshot would send Maggie into overdrive.

      No bird, I breathed relief, then hurried toward Maggie, while saying to Colby, “There’s no bird Colby. Where is Maggie? Let’s go find Maggie. This way girl, come on, this way.”

      Colby zigzagged through where she thought the bird was, but, finding nothing, she galloped ahead, disappearing into the alders. Ducking under and stepping over limbs and leaning trunks, I first saw the unmoving white of Colby’s coat and then Maggie’s brown silhouette, like a statue a dozen feet ahead of her. My heart pounded.

Soggy ground. How many dogs in the picture?

      Trying to approach through the tangle was frustratingly slow. And I needed to be able to stand to shoot, but the world was a jumble of limbs and trunks. As I stepped over a roadblock of tilting alders, the bird tweetered toward the sky. A shot is pointless, but tried anyway. The bird disappeared into the swamp.

      The dogs went into overdrive, fueled by bird scent and gunfire. We worked downhill to where thick grasses grew between the alders. Water was everywhere and the ground felt like stepping on a soggy pillows. Turning to the right, we followed where the saturated bare ground met the soaked grasses.

      In a spot wetter than most, puddles and pools dictated detours. Maggie pointed thirty yards ahead. As I tried to find a route towards her, Colby pointed to my right. White splashes covered the ground. A step toward Colby sent another woodcock aloft, but a shot was impossible. I hurried toward Maggie and a second one launched, offering an easy going away shot.

      After that the dogs were wound tight, with bird scent is in their nostrils and the taste in their mouths. Hunting hard and fast, they covered a lot of country, while I struggled to keep up. The scenario repeated three more times in the swampiest of places. Only one more bird fell to the gun.

      What were these birds eating? Drowned earth worms? Marinated in rainwater? How did the woodcock stay dry? Ducks would have swum happily between the trees.

     After we turned back toward the truck, I attempt to steer the dogs toward an old apple tree where ruffed grouse like to loiter. To my left, Maggie was up the hill further than I wanted and out of sight. Then her bell fell silent. I coaxed Colby in that direction, hoping she would find her for me.

      But Colby went on point where a small stream created an expansive quagmire in a flat spot. That woodcock flushed well ahead of me and disappeared into a cluster of firs. Colby dashed off toward the apple tree. Mumbling to myself, I headed toward Maggie and called Colby back.

      The young dog’s bell jangled again, then a woodcock weaved through the trees toward me, passed overhead, and disappeared down the hill. Impatient Maggie charged along in hot pursuit.

Wild apples and an abandoned field.

      The three of us followed the bird’s path into intertwined alders. Maggie’s bell went silent, then Colby’s too. I followed to the edge of a gully, where I could barely see both dogs locked on point not forty feet ahead of me. Stepping, twisting, crawling, and cursing, I pushed in. The woodcock tweetered upward and then down the hill, dropping like a stone beside a lone fir tree.

      We followed. The dogs hunted hard, tearing up the turf with water splashing. The bird seemed to have disappeared, but then took off next to my right foot. I never lifted my gun and neither of the dogs noticed it go.

      Hunting again toward the truck, both Maggie and Colby each found another woodcock where another tiny trickle wound down the hill, but in the tangled jungle both flew off without a shot being fired.

      Later that day we hunted across the street among ancient apple trees that the grouse love. We found no grouse, but, about to turn around and head home, I coaxed the dogs into a tiny patch of alders next to a small field. Colby instantly snapped into a point, then Maggie too. I marched into the alders and a woodcock twisted skyward through the branches. When it reached the treetops I fired.

Colby looking good.

      Colby made the retrieve and the dogs tussled harmlessly for a moment over ownership. 

      With wet feet and very happy dogs it was time to go home.

Bloat

     

      Below is a link to a quick read about bloat. We all love our bird dogs and certainly would hate to see a dog suffer.

http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/gundogs/health/ask-the-vet/bloat-in-dogs-97054

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.

Deer Season

      Sneaking out of the house was nearly impossible. Since the start of bird season the dogs never took their eyes off me, particularly Maggie our youngster. Earlier in the day, I had snuck my deer rifle out and tucked it in a corner of the entry. Leaving sad faces behind, I walked out of the house in my deer hunting garb.

      An inch of snow covered the ground and no wind moved the air. An overcast sky promised daylight fading early. The snow had fallen a couple of days before, but constant cold temperatures had kept it from melting.

      I picked a course away from the house where the dogs could not see me entering the woods with a gun. If they had my wife would have been forced to listen to a sorrowful chorus.

      Just beyond the edge of the lawn, tracks showed where a bobcat had walked up through the softwood trees and sat. Was it there in daylight? Did the cat know there were dogs around? From its perch it looked up the hill at the house and our shop.

      An old skid road lead down to the edge of the soggy marsh. The damp snow-covered ground muffled my footsteps and I took care not brush against dead twigs. The coyotes keep a worn path parallel with the wetlands, and I followed it west. Judging from the tracks, only a few had passed by since the snow fell. Snowshoe hare tracks were everywhere and I wondered how they survived. Their lives had to be constant terror with all the coyotes in the neighborhood.

      A blown-down fir tree forced a course change. Stepping from hummock to hummock, I crossed wet ground beneath firs and cedars.

      Movement…I froze. A blue jay landed on a low branch, then flashed away again.

      Where the ground grew firmer, I followed the stream beneath a canopy of tall softwood trees. The ground there is predominately flat and slow streams meander through from the north, joining the larger stream further west. Beyond where I could see, the hill goes up through birches and maples, with patches of evergreens breaking up the forest. Craggy, near vertical, ledges break up the slope, making ascent or descent impossible in places. To the south, on the other side of the stream, a smaller steep hill climbs upward through mixed woods. Some of that hill is so steep that deer detour around it.

      I hope to find tracks ahead where the deer funnel between the steep slope and an open field beyond. Two years ago there were so many tracks it looked like a highway. The previous fall our trail cam caught deer there too.

      A twig snaps off to my right and I freeze. Up in a tree a squirrel chatters. I wait and listen, watching for movement. A slow step to my right puts a fir tree in front of me, a possible shooting rest if I needed one. The squirrel was very persistent, but finally stops. I wait another fifteen minutes, then continue.

      Tracks show where a bobcat has climbed up on a stump and sat. Could it be the same one that visited the house? Tiny tracks that look like lace ribbon weave across the snow. Coyote tracks are everywhere.

      I reach the open field without seeing a single deer track. Discouraged, I turn northward to head back along the north side of the valley, following the edge where the land starts to climb. That course would make a giant circle around our home. 

      One giant white pine clings atop a craggy boulder the size of a house and I wonder how it stays. A spruce holds on similarly. Holes in the mammouth rocks formed gloomy shadows. 

      The dark craggy vertical ledges breakup the slope and I know deer cannot cross them. Just beyond a giant white cedar, a stream tumbles down from above, creating a series of roaring waterfalls. When I stop to watch a grouse explodes from the top of a fir tree. Where was he when I had my bird gun?

      Another skid road takes me up through skinny young maples. A lone coyote had taken the same path. Off to the left an enormous shattered fir tree lays on the ground, broken by a recent wind. Either side of the whippy maples the forest looks eerily dark beneath dense fir trees.

      Deer tracks.

      Big ones. They go down the slope into softwood trees not far from our home. How old are they? The edges looked sharp and no snow was in the imprints. The deer must have crossed the valley. How I could have missed them? I must have crossed them on the other side.

      Darkness and the end of shooting time was only a half hour away. I waited in the shadows of the softwoods, timing fifteen minutes on my watch, then slipped uphill to a woods road that would take me back to our field.

      Coyote tracks littered that road and yellow snow showed where they had marked. The neighborhood seemed to be overrun with those hoodlums. Next to a rotten stump, bobcat tracks went in under the low branches of a fir tree to sit in the shelter of its branches.

      It was time to call it a day.

     At three in the morning I woke, realizing that the reason I hadn’t seen the deer tracks anywhere else on my circular hunt was because the deer hadn’t crossed to the other side of my circle. Could that snapping twig and chattering squirrel been caused by that deer?

The Puppy

Maggie in her new home.

     Ripsnorter Magalloway Magic Snapshot came home with us the end of February, 2016. In our neck of the woods, February brings nights with temperatures well below zero, and even days that barely creep up to zero. Maggie slept in a kennel beside our bed to wake us when nature called, and, when it did, I would slip on the heavy flannel lined pants and chamois shirt.

Hurrying back to the house.

     In the winter darkness she would scurry off to search for the right spot beneath the low limbs of a softwood tree. That was her choice every single time. To keep track of Maggie I slipped a collar on her with a blinking red light. What looked like a tiny fire truck zigzagged about the yard.

With her great aunt Chara

     Every day she explored and learned. Her great aunt Chara kept her in line. Colby, seven years older at the time, became her playmate. Her willingness to please made her easy to train. Snow, mud, pools of water, all were great fun. The woods became a giant playground. Unfortunately, Chara passed away that summer, but Maggie had already learned much from the old wise one.

Pointing a planted quail.

     That August Maggie pointed pen raised quail like a champ, even retrieving ones shot. Her first hunt tests she received near perfect scores and that first fall we searched out woodcock.

Pointing a woodcock.

     I won’t say Maggie pointed every woodcock she found, birds were bumped and sometimes patience during a point ran short, but she did better than a passable job. Frequently she honored Colby’s points. Sometimes she pointed on her own. Her enthusiasm felt infectious.

A lunch time break.

     Now in her second fall, Maggie points woodcock regularly and even an occasional skittish ruffed grouse. Her range is perfect, she frequently checks back to see where I am. There has never been a dog more anxious to have a hunting bell hung around her neck than Maggie.

Ripsnorter Magalloway Magic Snapshot

Across The Stream

     Across the stream the cover looked perfect. Isn’t that always the way? Mixed hardwoods towered over clumps of alders and softwoods stood in clusters, all on flat and relatively dry ground. Up in our neck of the woods, if you are not going uphill you are most likely headed down. Horizontal country is rare. And everywhere your feet seem to get wet.

      Ferns and grasses covered that oasis, with patches of wild hops, seedy weeds, or raspberries breaking up the forest floor. To an old bird hunter, it looked like the Garden of Eden.

     For years I had looked at it, across a rather formidable stream. It was property open to the public to hunt, but road access was for the privileged few or on foot around locked gates. Or across that unfordable stream.

     The past summer was as wet as any other up in this neck of the woods, but the last two or three weeks had been dry. Evidently the spring runoff had moved the stream's bottom around and changed the course of the stream a bit. Passing by the other day, I was surprised to notice a place to cross.

     After parking, we started to our collect gear and ready the gun. Instantly, the two dogs locked up on point about fifteen feet from the back of the truck. Ahead of them a nearly vertical drop fell to the water a dozen or more feet below.

     Stepping toward them with gun in hand, a grouse exploded across toward the far side. I never even attempted to bring the gun up. The youngest wirehair, Maggie, launched and landed mid-stream and I don’t think she even knew she got wet.

     The climb down to the stream was a challenge, followed by a leap to a gravel bar, then steps from rock to rock to rock, then another leap to a steep slippery muddy bank, all the while holding onto a very dear shotgun.

     The country looked even better up close.

A scraggy old tree.

No chainsaw had visited that plateau in decades. Three men together would not have been able to put their arms around one particularly fat yellow birch. Ancient alders lined the streambank and scraggy old cherry trees towered overhead. Fat white birches shed sheets of bark and an occasional red maple stood nearby. Further inland, scattered clumps of softwoods offered shelter and a zigzag of alders split the property.

     followed the stream edge, ducking under or stepping over alders. At times we took the easier way, weaving inland to push through weeds or dried grasses. A finger of slack water finally cut off our course.

     The rumble of the stream competed with the rattle of the leaves. Moose and deer tracks hid between the dried leaves in the soft moist ground. Dog bells jingled and it felt like civilization had to be far far away. Overhead, ravens rasped about something.

Hunting inland we followed another line of alders that wove back along an old crooked stream that had barely any water in it. In places wet ground called for careful foot placement to avoid disaster. Twice grouse launched off of the ground, startling us. One flushed low at my feet when I stepped last a cherry tree. It offered an easy going away shot, but the dog’s bells were ringing ahead of the grouse so I held the shot.

     The dogs pointed a woodcock under big old alders, but then the youngster, Maggie, attempted to catch it. Another was bumped, which was nobody’s fault, we’ll blame the wind. We followed to where it disappeared into a cluster of red twig dogwood that stood beside a dark stand of softwood trees, but never found it again.

Colby has been around long enough to know the tricks.

     Colby, the older wirehair, locked up on third one back at the alders. Maggie honored like a champ. That bird came home with us.

     I had to wonder when that land had been logged. Everywhere up in that neck of the woods had been cut over at least once. Could they have just taken the spruce or pine? An area I had logged as a young pup had been harvested that way. The big old yellow birches we passed had to be two hundred years old.

     In a clump of fir trees, Maggie poked around the base of one maple that stood among them, repeatedly coming back to its trunk. Her tail was just a blur. Finally, she looked up, which caused me to look up too, and sure enough a grouse sat hidden among the branches. I am sure the bird wished it were somewhere else, or that we were. Several pictures were taken and then the bird bolted, escaping unscathed without a shot fired

Do you see him in there?

     The string of alders led us through more beautiful cover, but we found no other birds. Eventually we came back to the stream, far upstream from where we had started. We hunted further upstream a bit, but the country turned to mostly softwoods and didn’t look as promising. We turned back downstream to find where we had crossed earlier.

      Crossing back was just as challenging, but we made it with dry feet. And climbing up the banking to the road was the most physically demanding part of the day.

     Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side of the stream, you just have to get there.