Changes

The entire valley floor was flooded.

      For better or worse, it is early February. The winter has gone through her usual assortment of moods. There has been cold, wet, warmish, and snow, sometimes all within a day or two’s time. At one point the streams were up out of their banks after a day or two of steady light rain. Then a day or two later the temperatures dove to well below zero. The weather has been full surprises.

The stream chewed away the bank
beaver;s home.

      The weather has caused changes in the landscape that would have been difficult to imagine. Along the stream below our home a handful of trees fell, the soil around their roots eroded away when the stream swelled up out of her banks. The newly uprooted trees created great caverns, some making craters in a path along the water’s edge that we have used for years.

      During the previous two winters a dozen or more trees from our property tumbled across the stream. The recent high water stole a couple of them away and moved others into big knots. It is hard to imagine how some of the trees, which are actually quite large, can disappear downstream without a trace. Chunks of ice have beaten the bark off of others that still lay in the current.

The  fallen trees bridge the stream.

      In a couple of places jammed logs and ice have forced the stream to seek entirely new routes. Water rushes across where last summer a gravel bar forced the stream into a huge U turn. A bank beaver had his den underneath a streamside fir tree that was whisked away creating a cove. A deep hole that always held trout is filled with logs and stumps. An undercut bank, where a big trout loved to hide, has caved in. Next spring it will be an entirely different stream to fish.

      Up the hill from the house an early winter storm blew a handful of fir trees across a long abandoned logging road. Every year or two one comes down, but this time a whole cluster fell. That tote road used to make for easy walking and I would often walk it in bird hunting season. Deer, moose, and bears follow it more than humans and now their footprints detour around the fallen trees. If nobody goes up there with a chainsaw to cut those trunks out of the road the new path will be the game trail.

Woodcock cover going past its prime.

      It is not only weather that changes things. Time does too. Forty years ago a friend shared a favorite woodcock hunting spot with me. To get to it we would walk across a field then hike down railroad tracks before dropping to a flat beside a river. Twenty years ago I went looking for that spot and I could not find that field. After an hour of looking I realized a stand of softwood trees covered what I remembered as an open pasture. There had been a few scattered spruce or fir trees in that field, but now it is a forest. The railroad tracks looked the same and so did the mammoth silver maples along the river.

      About twenty miles to the east is a huge alder patch where I have bird hunted for forty-five years. It has always been thick cover and wet underfoot. Seven or ten years ago I noticed wrist sized poplars popping up in clusters, but mostly I followed my dogs and hoped for woodcock and noticed little else. Now there are poplars thirty or forty feet tall in there. I don’t know when they snuck in, but they are shading out the alders. I still refer to the place as the alder patch, but the name isn’t apt anymore.

The ancient apple tree is being
crowded out by the forest around it.

      Up the hill from our home is an old apple tree in a stand of young hardwoods. A few fir trees are nearby on a small knoll, enough to give the ruffed grouse some shelter, but mostly it is hardwoods about as big around as a bowling ball. There isn’t another apple tree within a mile in any direction, so this lone apple has become something of a landmark. Any observant hunter or hiker is likely to notice and remember it. Competition with the hardwoods trees for sunlight has caused the apple tree to grow quite tall. Its branches really reach for the sky.

      This year that apple tree had only two or three apples and the leaves on the branches were few. The taller hardwood trees now steal the sunlight and in a few years that apple tree will die and the landmark will disappear.

      The natural world keeps changing even without the hand of man. The forces of nature move streams and blow over trees. Plants and animals compete for resources to live. Nature is restless.

      Life goes on.

Planning an Adventure

     Planning an adventure can be as much fun as the adventure itself. Now by planning an adventure I don’t mean traveling to some lodge and hiring a guide to take you fishing, hunting, hiking, or whatever. Planning an adventure is when you are doing it on your own, preferably into country that you have never trekked before, using maps and maybe books to figure out where you are heading.

Logging roads show up well
in Google Earth images.

     Everybody’s definition of adventure is probably different and may be different now from what it was years ago or will be tomorrow. Today I like my adventures to end with a hot shower and ice cubes in my scotch. So starting early in the morning and returning to Camp Grouse late in the day works. Forty or fifty years ago the hard ground felt fine and cleaning up in an icy stream was regarded as refreshing.

     Right now I’m planning an adventure into a fishing spot that is more than a mile from where a vehicle can drive to and that spot is many miles into the woods on logging roads. The plan is to start early and make a day of it.

     We did the same thing last summer, in some of the hottest weather of the year, trying to find a remote stream’s headwaters where trout might seek cooler temperatures. Mostly we cooled off in the water and listened to nearby coyotes serenading us. No trout were found, but we will go back there someday.

     It used to be topographical maps were where dreams of adventures started. Now I think Google Earth is a better choice, then use a topo map to get an idea of topography. Books may help, but most are too generalized.

     If you hunt ruffed grouse in logging country Google Earth will show you where the cuts are. Grouse love a young forest and a regenerating clearcut can be a goldmine. It is possible to find some that aren’t noticeable from roads and you may find a hotspot that is virtually untouched. Deer hunting can be done the same way. A few years ago I discovered a huge hidden cutting more than a dozen miles from the asphalt and every trip into that place is an adventure.

     So be an adventurer. You will learn some things, discover places of your own, and probably end up feeling pretty good about yourself. Oh, and don’t get lost.

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.

Mentoring

      The number of people hunting has been falling for years. Hunters spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on conservation and as their numbers slip so do the dollars. Fish and Game departments around the country have started to address the issue. The past fall my state started a mentoring program to introduce new hunters to bird hunting over dogs.

      I am not certain how I heard about it, but I signed up last spring to mentor a hunter this past fall. The mentors were required to attend a meeting to explain the goals, and the mentees were required to attend a meeting to be certain they understood safe gun handling and what they were getting into. Shortly after that I was assigned a mentee.

    I called him up and he was anxious to get the lay of the land and meet the dogs. I invited him up and a week or so later he arrived at our home. It was August by then and birds were through nesting, so I took him out with our dogs, hoping to find a grouse or two.  The cutting I hoped to walk through proved a tangled mess, so we detoured through a stand of damp hardwoods. I no sooner said it looked like woodcock country and instantly the dogs went on point. A minute or two later they pointed a second bird. 

      We agreed to hunt the middle of October when the leaves thinned a bit, but he turned up in our neck of the woods early in the month, so I invited him to accompany a friend and me on a hunt we had planned. A dozen birds were found over my two German wirehair pointers and my friend’s setter, which made for a pretty exciting day.

Maggie pointing a woodcock.

      When the time came for the actual “official” mentored hunt a death in the mentee’s family caused a delay. The day finally arrived and birds were pointed, a few shots were fired, and laughs were had, which is enough to make for a good day. Unfortunately, no birds were killed.

      I will do it again next fall if the state again runs the program. The whole process was fun and I met a new friend along the way. Hopefully he will continue to hunt birds.

      So consider mentoring next year, you won't regret it. 

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.

Alders

      Any serious New England upland hunter recognizes alders from a long ways off. An alder patch with weeds and ferns between the stems is very likely to hold woodcock and grouse are often found nearby. If the ground is choked with grasses the likelihood of woodcock is low.

      Alders like wet country, but can grow almost anywhere. Around recently used logging yards you’ll often find them crowded against the woods or the new cutting. Grouse are often nearby.

      The Ruffed Grouse Society recently published an excellent article on the importance of alders. Below is a link to it. If you are not a member of the  Ruffed Grouse Society please consider joining.

https://ruffedgrousesociety.org/the-importance-of-alders-for-grouse-and-woodcock/ 

Alder catkins.

An ancient apple tree crowed by alders, it doesn't
get much better than this.

Early Wet Snow

Snow on high bush
cranberries.

      Gray skies dribbled wet snow, which mixed with the soggy ground. The weeds that still stood readily soaked clothes. The dogs didn’t mind any of it. They were happy to hunt and loved the conditions.

      It was the last stretch before we turned the woods over to the rifle hunters and their search for deer. The morning temperatures had been down around or below freezing and the days were noticeably shorter than a few weeks ago. The hills bordering our valley looked soft, almost like supple gray fur.

      The grouse had scattered, the family groups broken up by hunters, human or otherwise. Woodcock were still around and a lucky hunter could find flight birds in numbers, or none. Soon they would all be gone. Depending on the year, grouse might be around apple trees or mountain ash or high bush cranberries. This year every fruit bearing tree produced massive crops, so the birds were scattered.

      With the season winding down we decided to spend the morning in a favorite old covert. The cover has changed from alders to poplar to mature poplar, but it was still a favorite covert that always has birds. A few ancient apple trees hid in the mix, always hinting of grouse..

The ground was soggy everywhere..

      The ground was soaked and almost immediately a woodcock fled ahead of one of the dogs. Down the hill we hunted and then turned northward when the ground turned to bog. On small hummocks covered with young maples each of the dogs pointed a woodcock. When Maggie points Colby always honors, I wish the opposite were also true. Some easy shots were miffed, but during the next hour two connected.

Colby pointing a woodcock hiding in a nasty thicket.

      Working our way back by a couple of old  apple trees another woodcock was found, but no grouse. Often they are there, but not that day. Near the truck bird scent aroused Colby’s interest, but after some serious tail wagging she abandoned it. Maggie trotted over and snapped onto point. On second thought, Colby decided to honor.

      It was a thicket impossible walk into. Kicking against the side, the woodcock almost smacked me in the face on the way by, then wove its way downhill through the trees.          

      Two shots never touched a feather.

      With clothes soaked it was time to leave. The dogs slept on the drive home while I sipped coffee.

      The bird season is just too short.

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.

Let’s Hope This Catches On…

Every avid grouse hunter knows that early successional forests are great for wildlife. It appears a young forest is also good at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere too. Let’s hope this is the next environmental craze…

 https://psmag.com/environment/young-trees-suck-up-more-carbon-than-old-ones

Young poplars in a clear cut.

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.

Birds Be About

      It’s that marvelous time of the year. Grouse season opened a little over a week ago and we’ve been out almost every day. The dogs pointed like champs and a few birds have fallen to the gun. We are working on consistency.

      Apple trees, hawthorn, high bush cranberries, and mountain ash are all so loaded with fruit that their branches sag. Choke cherries are almost black by now. Birches and maples are loaded with seeds. Every creature of the forest is gorging on the smorgasbord. Any hunter trying to use bait to lure in game is suffering an uphill battle.

      We have found the ruffed grouse up high in the hills and down at the edges of the farmland in the valleys. Woodcock are wherever the ground is damp and not crowded with weeds. Our daily averages are slightly above the long term normal.

      Our old girl Colby doesn’t cover a lot of ground, but she never bumps a bird. Maggie, at three and a half years of age, still lets her enthusiasm get ahead of her wisdom and occasionally bumps a bird, but she finds a half dozen birds to her older sibling’s one. Watching them develop is at least half of the fun. 

     It is the most wonderful time of the year.

     

Late September

Fall colors are happening.

      We wait all year for October. Time slows almost to a standstill as the end of September grows closer. On cool days we run the dogs, hoping to get them and ourselves into shape. The woods is still a jungle of leaves. Birds are bumped, some are pointed, and most disappear before anyone could ever shoot them.

      This week was a good one. Grouse were found on a couple of morning walks and the leaves are starting to put on quite a colorful display. As the week ended the weather turned a bit warm, but we managed to get out while it was still cool. 

      The dog's bells and orange collars were dug out a couple of weeks ago. The waxed cotton clothes may get a re-wax, depending on their wear. Hunting knives are located and touched up on a stone. Boots will be treated with waterproofing. Clean shotguns are cleaned again and lovingly oiled. Preparation can be half the fun.

      Hunting journals jog memories of long forgotten coverts. Topographical maps and aerial images are studied. Friends call who haven’t called in a year. Nobody is more popular in October than someone who owns a home in grouse country.

      It is only eight days until the season opens.

Young of the year sitting in a tree.