The Trail

 

    The trail starts where a stand of softwood trees meets an old field. It’s actually maintained for the snowmobilers and if it wasn’t for them it would probably would have grown in years ago. But maybe the loggers would have saved it. The last few years they’ve been using it as a skid trail during the summer months.
    In 2006 I discovered that two track road during a break in the precipitation of a very wet August day. I needed a place to run the dogs and preferably someplace I could walk without rubbing against drenched foliage. That snowmobile trail fit the ticket. It wanders downhill for about a mile before climbing a little bit up to an abandoned Christmas tree farm.    
    Much to my delight that day, only a hundred feet down the road, ruffed grouse started boiling out of the tree tops, which of course set the dogs into a flurry of activity. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen grouse on that part of the road, but I’ll never forget it.
    Further down the road a large mountain ash used to grow next to a tiny trickle of a brook. Its bright orange fruit often attracted grouse, as did old apple trees lost among the forest growth on the low side of the road. That mountain ash eventually declined and died. Now all trace of it is now gone, but another has sprung up to take its place.

The softwoods along the old road provided shelter for grouse and deer. Pockets of young growth attracted woodcock, grouse, and other game, some to eat it and others to hide in it. Most years bear hunters set up a blind off to the side of the road. I always look for the bright blue barrel of bait, it’s almost a landmark now. The country has all become very familiar, like an old friend.

    And there are so many stories remembered.
    Like the time I couldn’t find my old girl Chara, I knew she was on point somewhere close, but the thick cover hid her. We weren’t far from that old mountain ash I just mentioned, but on the other side of the road where the scattered wild apples are getting crowded out by the softwood trees. I softly said something to let her know I searched for her. She moved just enough so the bell on her collar dinged one lone note.
    I spotted her white hair hid inside the low boughs of a limby fir tree. Stepping around the tree, a grouse rocketed away through the forest.
    Down the road further, on a soaking wet opening day, Chara pointed in a thicket of alders. Up to that point I’d managed to stay out of the really wet stuff, but, looking at her standing there so valiantly, I thought, “Oh what the hell.” 
    Not far from where the road opens up into an abandoned Christmas tree farm there used to be a stand of pasture grown spruce with ancient apple trees mixed between them. Pasture grown spruce have branches all the way down to the ground like giant Christmas trees, much different than forest trees that shed them. Chara went on point next to a tumbled-down busted-up apple tree. On my approach a grouse exploded off to the left, staying low to hide among the branches of those spruce trees. Only after I’d shot did I realize I’d dropped to my knees to shoot, hoping to see the bird among all the low branches. That grouse bounced along the ground like a stone skipped on water.
    Over the years I have shared that trail with a number of friends. In a cluster of softwoods off the west of the road, a grouse flew up into a tree to sit on a branch and mock a young friend of mine. Now this young guy had been hunting hard for three days and had yet to kill a bird, and, to make matters worse, it was the end of the last day of his stay. Having a sporting code of ethics, he refused to shoot a bird sitting on a branch, so we started throwing sticks at it. Eventually, it flew and of course he missed it. After a few minutes of ribbing we walked about a hundred feet and a second grouse repeated the first bird’s performance. Again the bird flew away unscathed. There were lots of laughs and good natured ribbing that night over cocktails.
    There was the time Chara carelessly bumped two grouse that flew away side by side, offering a perfect opportunity for a double. Her behavior so upset me I never fired a shot.
    And the lone woodcock pointed inside an impenetrable thicket of young softwood trees. Of course it flew out the backside where no one could see it.
    During one of my Chara’s last hunts, we took her down that road. With tired legs, she never ventured off the trail, letting the younger dogs hunt the woods. We didn’t hunt very far nor long. On the way back she slowed and stopped, staring at a fir tree beside the road. Stepping past her, two grouse flew out ahead of me. One folded and she carried it proudly all the way back to the truck.
    A few days ago we walked that old road, just to stretch our legs on a cool August day. The memories always come flooding back. This coming October will be the fifteenth consecutive year hunting that snowmobile trail. Even if I never see a bird there will be memories enough to fill my day.

If I’d Only Known

     Back in 1974 I went to work in the woods for the now defunct Brown Company of Berlin, New Hampshire. The outfit owned 650,000 acres of woodlands and had first rights to cut on another 200,000. It was a big time paper company.

The feller-buncher would
harvest trees as large as
18 inches and would cut
two stems a minute all day

      You worked hard in the woods. We were loggers, but never called lumberjacks. That was a Hollywood made-up name or something, too sissy-sounding. There weren’t many young men in the woods then, mostly ”old guys” in their fifties and sixties. Younger men preferred something easier and maybe not so dangerous. And everyone spoke French, except for me.

      It was the end of an era. We operated out of a camp where men stayed Monday into Friday. A cook prepared meals. Those men worked hard and could cut wood like nobody I had ever seen. Danger added a little spice to the job. Looking at your wood pile you could tell how big your paycheck might be.

      I left that job to run the first mechanical tree harvester in New Hampshire, and soon ran the entire whole-tree harvesting operation. The days of men with chainsaws and logging camps were numbered.

      If I had only known I would have taken a million pictures.

      Growing up my family owned property on Cape Cod on a bay a half mile across. You couldn’t see any other cottages, it was wilderness. Electricity was miles up the road. As my father used to say, “You could go skinny dipping at noontime”.

One of our cottages sat so close to the water
a small marine railway could haul the boats inside
the basement. This picture was taken from the dock.

      Rabbits, ruffed grouse, and bobwhite quail lived in the woods. And of course ducks showed up by the thousands every fall. We traipsed through the woods with shotguns in hand or hid in the marshes. There’s no place left like that on Cape Cod now.

      If I had only know I would have taken a million pictures.

      Sixty years ago was a time when you just did things, asking permission or filing for permits never entered one’s mind. If there was something you didn’t know how to do you either tried to find something about it in a book or you just figured it out. Those how-to YouTube clips are handy, but they do nothing to exercise your brain. Henry Ford said there is no greater joy than solving problems. He was right.

      My wife and I are fortunate to live where things aren’t all that different from the way they were fifty years ago. Nobody bothers you if you don’t bother them. There’s very few things you need to ask permission about. We still march all over the country looking for ruffed grouse and woodcock. There are streams you can fish all day without seeing another angler. Our dogs are seldom on a leash.

      You know I’m going to take a bunch of pictures.

Blueberries

Soon.

      The hot weather has settled in and blueberries are on the mind. So far they are little green berries, but soon they’ll turn blue, usually around the first week of August.

      Black flies have come and gone. Mosquitoes linger and deer flies are the big annoyance. Lately the temperatures have been a bit high for trout fishing and the dogs mostly want to lay about. Summer has settled in. We wait for cooler temperatures and search out places for the dogs to swim.

      In August we can start looking for wild birds with the dogs. Right now it is too hot to think about such things, except for the first hour or two of the day. Our young chickens in their run amuse the dogs for hours, but even that interest fades as the temperature climbs.

      Last weekend we saw grouse out on the logging roads. For the previous month they have been pretty well hidden. People talk of seeing family broods. All of it is encouraging.

      The last of last year’s blueberries are in a pie resting on the counter in the kitchen. There is only two pieces left and that’s it. There are no more blueberries until we pick again.

More on Neutering

      If you read this blog often you know early neutering is a subject I follow. Here is a link to more information. The author has a great point. What is the hurry?

      https://sportingclassicsdaily.com/whats-the-rush/

Plan B

     The day took forever to arrive. For over a month hours had been spent studying topographical maps and aerial photos. On weekends, miles were trekked looking for the perfect cover. Finally, the day arrived.

     Pulling into the old road at first light the sight of three pickup trucks and a half dozen men stopped me in my tracks. Rabbit hunters and beagles. Not wanting to crowd them nor listen to their commotion, I backed out onto the public road.

     I really didn’t have a plan B. It was all new country to me. Heading back up over a hill, I spied an old tote road marked by an iron post.

The woods went on forever.

     That old tote road led up the hill, nothing more than two worn indentations in the grass beneath the trees. A stream off to the east murmured. It looked like long abandoned pasture land and against an ancient rock maple leaned a heavy wood door with thick iron hinges. Not a trace of a building could be found anywhere. Softwoods mixed with the hardwoods. My girl Chara didn’t care if this was plan A or B or C, she charged about and her bell rang with enthusiasm.

     A long abandoned field created an opening in the trees. Chara got birdy as hell, her tail ablur. A grouse exploded from up high in a yellow birch. That bird wasn’t going to touch ground again for a long ways off, probably on the other side of the little stream.

I coaxed Chara on up the hill. Old scraggly maples gave way to younger maples. It certainly didn’t look like grouse country, but off to the east I could see softwood trees. Following an edge is better than following nothing. I walked to where the hardwoods met the wall of softwood trees. Chara dashed off to the west and then back to the east, convinced the birds were somewhere. Another grouse thundered away, this time from high on up in a fir tree.

     The softwoods petered out, but far ahead through the gray trunks of the sugar bush I could see another cluster. Up the hill to the left stood a small sugar house that probably hadn’t seen people since the previous March or April. Hundreds of sugar maples covered the hillsides. I trudged on.

Locked up.

     A small knoll broke up the gradual grade. Lanky spruce and fir stood over it, with their knee-high young blanketing the ground beneath them. Chara charged up the slope and stopped like a statue.

     On my approach a grouse exploded out the back. An easy shot and the bird tumbled. Another launched to the north and escaped. In a blur several more exited, with one coming directly at me. Reflexes made me duck as it flew a few feet over my head. Attempting to collect my composure, I swung on the bird, but it sailed safely away.

     Sometimes Plan B provides memories that last forever.

Sometimes they are laughing at us.

Ruffed Grouse or Partridge?

      It is a ruffed grouse, Bonasa umbellus, but up in the neck of the woods where we now live the old timers refer to them as partridge. So is it ruffed grouse or partridge? It depends on who you are talking to.

     A couple of years ago I called up a friend who was laid up during bird season. I asked him if he wanted a ruffed grouse. He said, “A what?” I said ruffed grouse, and he said again, “A what?” I thought there must be a lousy phone connection. I said, “I just shot a ruffed grouse and I’ll bring it over for you. It’s cleaned and everything.” Again he said, “A what?” Then I remembered this gentleman always referred to Bonasa umbellus as partridge.

      It seems everyone under fifty years old calls them ruffed grouse or just grouse, but everyone over eighty calls them partridge. It’s that age group in the middle that makes for confusion.

      Up here, if you are going bird hunting, bird means ruffed grouse. If you want to hunt woodcock or ducks or pheasants you had better be specific.

Maggie says there's a ruffed grouse there.

Sheds

      April is a long month when you live in the North Woods. Snow still blankets much of the ground and everywhere the ground is bare the soil is soggy. Fishing really doesn’t get going for another month. A cold north wind has been blowing snow squalls through almost hourly for several days now. About the only thing to do is try and stay in shape while waiting for better weather. And that means lots of walking for us and the dogs.

      For the last couple of weeks I’ve been teaching Maggie, our younger German wirehair, to hunt shed antlers. The lessons are simple. I ask her to sit outside while I walk around the other side of the house to hide an antler somewhere in the woods. When I walk back to her I say, “find the antler”. She loves it and dashes off to search.

      Today, like a lot of afternoons, we took a little walk up on a favorite hill. The dogs ran about, as they always do, and by golly Maggie came out of the woods with her first “shed”. Needless to say, she was quite proud and so were we.

April

The stream is very cold.

      A week ago south facing hillsides were almost bare ground, while north facing slopes looked like a pinto with irregular brown patches between vast areas of white. Now, more than a week into the month, Mother Nature has pulled a cruel pranks and dumped eight or ten inches of snow everywhere.

Maggie wondering where the
snow came from.

      But the woodcock are back and grouse are drumming, so it must be spring. Our dogs enjoyed the brief freedom of bare ground and hunted up birds. I am sure in a couple of days the ground will be bare again.

      The streams are swollen from the melted winter snow and soon will rise still more as the new snow melts. Water temperatures are very low and it will be a month before we see much insect activity on the streams. Thoughts of fly fishing, so far, revolve around the tying of flies.

      Spring in northern New England certainly teaches patience.

Woolly buggers galore.

Where’s the Woodcock?

The sun warmed the south facing slopes.

      It is that time of the year when bird hunters in our neighborhood start asking, “Where’s the woodcock?”

      It is nice to see the little russet birds arrive, because then you know spring has arrived. Usually the robins show up about the same time. Geese will be flying overhead or collecting in the fields. In the river, ducks will be paddling about in the backwaters. But woodcock? If you are lucky you might see one flying about dusk, but usually you have to go looking for them.

Maggie running ahead on a logger's skid trail.

      South facing slopes have bared up around here and near hillside seeps are a good place to look. I strapped on snowshoes and took Maggie, our younger German wirehair, out for a trek a couple of days ago. 

      On the flat of the valley floor a foot of hard snow made for easy snowshoeing and formed bridges over the numerous small brooks that appear every spring. The ground on the hillside that created the north side of the valley was almost completely free of snow. I hiked and Maggie hunted hard, until the valley dropped over a ledge into another valley thirty feet below. No way could a man get down that ledge except on his backside.

      We swung around to hunt the other edge of the valley, but no woodcock or grouse. I thought we might even find a shed antler, but no luck.

      It was one of those days. We will try again another day.

Water could be heard gurgling everywhere.

44 Degrees

     Two weeks ago we had four consecutive days where the temperature climbed well into the forties. That is rather unusual for February at this latitude. Of course it got everyone pumped up imagining spring right around the corner. Then we had about fourteen inches of medium density snow and temperatures below zero. So much for winter being over.

Snow fleas.

     Now we are into March and the weather is fickle as ever. Today the high was in the upper fifties and the roads looked like mud season was here. Maybe it is. Mud season is a mixed blessing and a sloppy harbinger of spring. On south facing slopes patches of bare ground indicate warmth. Looking at snow closely you might find snow fleas (yes, they really exist, google them). A robin showed up over a week ago and two mourning doves were pecking at sand in the road in town. Everything points to the arrival of spring weather, which is more than two weeks early.

     So where are the woodcock? That’s what every bird dog owner wants to know. For a week or two after their arrival it is great fun to hunt them with the dogs. Of course there is no shooting involved, but it is fun to see the dogs work after the long winter. Their excitement it infectious.

     Recent research indicates that the woodcock nest fairly soon after arriving and that a woodcock scared off her nest will re-nest, but she will have less than the usual four eggs to hatch. So this spring hunt of woodcock is a very short affair, and then the dogs must wait until both the woodcock and grouse young are hatched and grown before the dogs can hunt them again.

     Do you know if the woodcock are here?

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.