July

     Hot weather, isn’t that July? We had some up here at Camp Grouse, but most of the weather has been cool. Many mornings there has been a fire lit in the woodstove to take the chill out of the house. Today it is near seventy and much needed rain is falling.
    Early in the month ruffed grouse were often seen along the sides of the road, usually hens with their broods. Sometimes the young were as small as sparrows and the next day a brood might be seen as big as quail.
    We keep the dogs out of the woods to prevent chance encounters with young grouse or woodcock. Soon the birds will all be big enough to start running the dogs on them.
    October still seems a long ways off.

The Young Ones

 

 

    It is June, the time for young grouse to climb out of their eggshells. It actually started at the beginning of the month and maybe even in late May in some places. 
    We spotted our first brood the second week of the month. Momma grouse slinked across the road, so we stopped to watch. When she safely crossed, she called the young one. Not much bigger than bumble bees they crossed the road as singles or in pairs, eleven all total.
    A few days later I spotted another brood crossing on our own road. On the approach of my truck they all stopped in the street. The hen had two near her and three more stood frozen near the tall grass along the side of the road. I waited and waited and finally crept closer with the truck. Mom herded the crew back where they came from.
    A day or two later we spotted a hen beside the road. On our approach she flew into the woods accompanied by four or five young the size of quail.
    Not long after that I spotted another cluster with their mother, all much smaller, about the size of sparrows.
    So it is obvious they don’t all hatch at the same time, but they do grow so fast that they reach near adult size in little time. According to the Ruffed Grouse Society, baby grouse are able to walk as soon as they hatch and take off following their mother. About a week after they are born they can fly like little bumble bees.

Take the Time…

 

      There’s getting to be less and less of the old timers around, at least from my prospective. When you find one and he is willing to talk, take the time to listen. They have lived in a world that is very different than the one we live in now, and one you will never experience.
      I’ve only known one old-time hardcore bird hunter really well. I never used to miss a chance to stop by his home and listen to his stories about birds. There were tales of where to find them or when to find them. And of course dogs, there were always a stories about a dogs. And guns. He was an avid Ithaca fan, owned a 20, 16, and 12 all with the same stock dimensions.
      He always asked my opinion about the upcoming season and the weather. New Englanders always ask about the weather. Dogs were always welcome and he would take the time it rub an ear or pat a head. He worked in the woods for a logging company, which added another dimension to his tales. Eventually all of the country he worked in and hunted was laid out in my head.
      There’s been other old timers, too. A character from Fort Kent, Maine who worked in the woods since his thirteenth birthday. He was still working and sixty-five when I met him. He told how there were 18 siblings in his family and when the oldest got married there were twenty-one at the dinner table. He started young picking potatoes and seemed to always have a bag of them in his truck.
      And the sea captain that ran a boat yard down on Cape Cod, who sailed his own yawl down to Miami in 1950, jumped aboard a schooner heading to Cuba, then sailed back to Pocasset, Massachusetts to start a boat yard he would run nearly the rest of his life. I remember him standing like a sea captain, with hands clasped behind his back, looking at the Pocasset River flow by. He lived to be one hundred years old.
      Their stories were fascinating. When you find and old timer who will talk about times long gone by, listen to the details and ask yourself if you could do the things that they did. It’s a world we will never see.

Snow

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

An abandoned ruffed grouse snow roost.

January

 

Catkins will feed the winter
grouse.

    Winter really gets a grip on the land come January. Temperatures drop often to zero or below and snow accumulates in the woods. We still run the dogs down under the softwood trees. It breaks up their monotony and keeps all of us in shape. Often we hear grouse thunder out of the trees and on rare occasions one of the dogs will point one on the ground.    
    By the end of the month our brook is pretty well frozen over. Snow has forced another batch of trees to the ground, with many falling across the stream. Song birds entertain us at our feeders near the house. This year evening grosbeaks, common and hoary red poles, and nuthatches galore are all a treat to watch. Of course there are the usual clouds of chickadees, blue jays, and woodpeckers.
    The month is a good one for hunkering down and tying flies. Spring will be here soon enough and the fly boxes are best full.

Figuring It Out

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

Fickle December

     About every other year the snow is deep enough by December that upland bird hunting is either difficult or impossible. When the weather turns bitter I choose not to kill the grouse, instead letting them live to perpetuate the species come spring. The balance of calories expelled versus calories gained is a delicate one without unnecessary scaring of the birds.
    This year the ground was bare the first weekend in December. A shot grouse provided a crop full of fern leaves, showing a diet not all that different than early November. During a hunt early in the month the dogs pointed several birds on the ground.
    About six inches of moderately heavy snow arrived the middle of the month. Afterward, I hunted to dogs in a favorite area and they found plenty of scent, but few birds. The only bird we heard flushed from a low branch in a softwood tree. I’m sure others were hiding overhead. Their diet had shifted to catkins, for the only place birds were found was along alder patches.
    When the temperatures dipped well below zero at night I didn’t bother to bird hunt, instead letting the birds preserve precious energy. The dogs are amused by squirrels that appeared when the song bird feeders come out. Maggie actually sits next to my twenty-two inside the house, hoping I will grab it on the way out the door.
    It is hard to admit the bird season is over, but, even with almost a week of December to go, it is.

Hunts x Years = Memories

     I hunted a place today that I used to hunt every year, but it has been three or more years since my last visit.  Some of the trees are noticeably bigger and areas of underbrush have disappeared from the lack of sunlight. Someone has kept the old two-track tote road open and the streams still cross in the same locations. Every mud hole or puddle in the road looked exactly like I remember it.
    For ten years or more I hunted that covert once or twice each year. A lone post used to stand in a soggy meadow where old logging roads converged. That post disappeared a half dozen or so years ago. Red twig dogwood once grew along the side of that meadow, but recent logging erased that. It’s embarrassing to think about how often I flushed grouse from that dogwood only to see them disappear into spruce across the gully before my gun even fired.
    One year I hunted up to where the forest ended to the east at a clear cut and started walking back the road I had hunted up. After passing a maple the diameter of a basketball a grouse rocketed back away from me at an angle that kept that maple between him and me. Ten minutes before I’d walked by that same tree, where did he come from?
    I used to walk up the hill from Camp Grouse to get there. It was a long trek, but usually ruffed grouse could be found along the way, sometimes several and a woodcock or two among young hardwoods. Those hardwoods are much bigger now and the woodcock have been absent for years.
    Back when my old girl Chara was still learning her ropes, we had almost reached that meadow and she locked up on point beneath a low-limbed spruce. Scurrying up I literally could see a grouse running away from her. The young dog couldn’t take the insult and bolted after the bird, no shot was offered. In years to come she would learn about relocating and become an expert at it.
    On opening day about eleven or so years ago I hunted up the hill with Chara and a pup named Colby. Chara pointed right next to that meadow with Colby backing. I walked in, flushed the bird, shot as it disappeared into the colorful fall foliage, and had no idea if I had hit it. About two minutes later the dogs came back each carrying a wing. Walking toward where they had come from I found the breast of a ruffed grouse. Fortunately, retrieves since then have been less contentious.
    Today we didn’t find a single bird, but around every bend I recalled a memory. That little piece of the planet will always be special.

The Old Dog

     She is twelve years old this year. She walks with a hobble and her hearing is almost nonexistent. Eyesight has never her strong suit and sometimes it is just plain hard to get her attention. But Colby has heart.
    For the last week or two Colby has stayed home while the younger dogs hunted. It is easy to justify. She falls often when she’s in the woods and sometimes needs help getting over fallen trees or up steep inclines. It is not easy being an old dog. Yet the desire to hunt is as strong as ever.
    Today we took her and our two younger dogs out on the logging roads of the big woods, up near where I logged forty-five years ago. The first hunt followed a nearly level side road to an abandoned logging yard. Up beyond the weed chocked yard, Maggie, our four year old, pointed a covey of four or more grouse. On my approach they exploded in every direction. Somehow Colby found her way up on to that knoll and bounced around under those treetop grouse with the younger dogs. Walking back out the grown in road Maggie, our four year old, pointed, with our pup Mollie and the old girl Colby backing. Pretty neat. No bird was found, but a few steps further on two flew from a tree.
    Colby doesn’t get far from the roads on her own, but she hunts hard along the edges. Down the road a piece we hunted around another logging yard and then up another two-track tote road. The younger dogs worked the woods on either side, while Coby punched holes into the woods, but mostly followed the easier walking of the roads.
    On one of the day’s last little hunts, Maggie locked up about fifty feet into the woods with our pup backing her. Both were in the classic front-foot-up pose. Colby walked from the grassed over logging road about fifteen feet into the shade of the softwoods to back too. She certainly has heart.
    Now she’s sleeping on her bed with a whole new set of memories to dream about. Her muscles twitch and soft sounds come from her throat. I’ll be heading to bed soon too, hopefully with a full set of new dreams too.

 

Colby bringing back a ruffed grouse.

 

The Puppy

 Mollie runs on high octane. At six months old she’s a rocket ship in the grouse woods. Our older dogs hunt and she follows, then tears about a bit on her own, all the while trying to sort out what life is all about. Birds equal excitement, there’s no doubt about it.
    Yet she is cautiously bold. Isn’t that an oxymoron?
    Not really. When she encounters something new, she stops to watch a bit, maybe analyzing or trying to figure out what it is or what it does. Let’s hope she does that when she encounters her first porcupine.
    During her forays into the grouse woods, her range is less than Maggie’s, which is good, and she regularly checks back to see where I am. When she gets a nose full of scent she slows or stops to figure things out, then points. What more could I want?

           

 

ICE

 It was December a long time ago, just me and my wirehair, Chara, hoping to fine some late season grouse. Barely a dusting of snow covered the ground in most places, but maybe an inch hid in the shadows of the softwoods. The leaves and the woodcock were long gone, it was ruffed grouse we were after.
    Back in October, every time we hunted the high side of that logging road the dogs would find birds. For well over a mile we didn’t moved a one. A bit discouraged, we took to the low side of the road, hunting down toward the softwoods that stand along the river.
    Chara went on point and the day improved. More than a few birds hid in the edge of the softwood stand. Down a little slope I noticed an iced over beaver pond and headed that direction.
    Chara’s bell fell silent.
    She was off to the left beneath tall spruce and fir trees where the ground sloped toward the pond. Hurrying toward her, a grouse exploded upward and another burst toward the pond.
    Reflexes fired my gun. A grouse fell onto the thin ice of the beaver pond. The thought of my dog running out onto that ice scared me to death.
    Chara had once been steady to wing and shot, but those days were long gone. Hunting alone much of the time, it became impossible to enforce and I was no longer doing hunt tests. This bird hunting was supposed to be fun.
    Slipping and sliding, I hurried down toward the pond. Chara hadn’t seen the bird fall and worked the slope looking for a dead bird. What a relief.
    When she got down to the edge of the pond I hitched her to a tree. A small but long dead fir tree reached the bird and slid it to firm ground.

Chara nuzzling the bird. 

September

       September brings the turning leaves and the first frost. The dogs can sense the changes, or maybe it is our frequent treks into the woods looking for birds that tips them off.
        The streams may be high or low, depending on rain. This year they are extremely low. Trout and salmon will be stacked up in the lakes and ponds, waiting for rising water and cooler temperatures before entering the streams. Nature is calling for them to preserve the future of their species.
        The birds and animals are shifting from their summer diet of fruits and insects to seeds, catkins, and buds.

        Frozen and then thawed apples are a favorite of deer, bears, and grouse. Mushrooms, ferns, and assorted greens create an interesting salad for grouse.
        We’ve been running our girls nearly daily. Colby, our oldest, stays mostly on the old roads and almost underfoot, but still surprises us with an occasional point. Maggie, who is four right now, covers the most ground, at times almost appearing to show off. Maybe she is. Then there’s a pup in the house. She’s great, checks back often to see where we are, hunts on her own most of the time, and backs the other dogs when they point. The older dogs always hate to be shown up, particularly Maggie, so she tries to cover much more ground than the pup. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to bumped bird. But with Mollie backing the older dogs almost every time they point, it certainly makes life easier. Yesterday she backed Maggie on a skittish grouse.
                Sometimes Mollie charges through the woods on her own and we wonder if she really knows what she is after. I’m guessing that probably she does, it seems the dogs are usually one step ahead of us. Today she pointed where a ruffed grouse recently departed from and also a woodcock. Life is looking pretty good. 

The Late Sixties

   

 My family had property on Cape Cod, only about a mile from the south shore and on the coast of an inland bay. That area was one of the last to develop on Cape Cod.
    The Cape was pretty wild back then. We didn’t have electricity until the seventies and at night there were no lights from any neighbors, except for one streetlight across the bay, which was well over a half mile away. Often the whippoorwills sang us to sleep.
    The woods was thick with poison ivy and bull briars. The story I heard was the hurricane of thirty-eight killed all the trees. Maybe that was true. There were pictures of tall dead pines towering over the scrub that pushed up over the sandy soil. In the sixties very few trees were over twenty feet tall. At night it was very quiet.
    As a young guy with a shotgun it was paradise. Rabbits were abundant, but, even with a determined beagle, you rarely saw them…the cover was just too thick. Grouse and bobwhite quail hid in that thorny jungle. Both were almost impossible to shoot when they flew. At times hundreds of geese would land out on the bay. Thousands of black ducks hid in the marshes every fall. I remember seeing the bay, which measured about a half mile by half mile, covered with blue bills from one shore to the other. What a time it was.
    The first grouse shot that I can clearly remember was shot by my brother and me simultaneously. Neither of us realized that the other had even fired their gun. Cleaning the bird later we found both number six and seven and a half shot in the bird. Obviously, it was shot by two different hunters.
    My first hunting dog was a beagle named Thorin, named after the character in the Hobbit book. That dog would disappear into the underbrush and chase rabbits until late when the sun sank low in the sky. His eternal baying was the only way one could keep track of his location. At dusk he would emerge, limping home and looking for supper, usually too sore to even pat.
    I would pick thorns out of Thorin’s hide and let him sleep. There’s something about the hide on a beagle that is pleasant to touch. In the morning he would be ready to go again. What fun we had.
    By the eighties the upland hunting was pretty much done. Houses lined the shores of our bay and the woods had been divvied up into house lots. An occasional ruffed grouse could be found, but did you really want to shoot something so rare? The quail and whippoorwills had disappeared with the maturing of the forest. As the underbrush disappeared so did the rabbits.  
    Today you can still find grouse down there, but you really have to look. The bobwhite quail are nearly impossible to find. The eastern cottontail rabbits are on the endangered species list. At night the lights of houses ring the bay. Geese still pass through, but the clouds of ducks are gone.
    Do you ever wonder what your favorite coverts are going to look like in fifty or sixty years? Take a good look at what you have today so you can remember it.

 

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.