Coyotes

        The coyotes are howling again tonight. It always sounds like they are trying to outdo one another in rather unorganized turmoil...yips and barks between the sorrowful howls. Some nights multiple groups compete with each other across the valley and it is fun to listen to them. The calls make the night darker and the forest forbidding.
        Well over a dozen wild turkeys wandered through the yard this afternoon and I wondered how many turkeys become meals for coyotes. An adult turkey would make a feast for a coyote, but the big birds easily take to flight ahead of our dogs. Would they be so lucky with a hungry coyote?
        Surely some grouse end up on the coyote’s menu, but I think it is few. Probably more baby grouse are eaten by turkeys. Turkeys will eat nearly anything and eggs of ground nesting birds must be a treat for them. A few-day-old grouse is just like a big insect to a turkey. Adult grouse have few enemies other than the northern goshawk.
        It is easier to imagine a young adult grouse flying fatally into a tree as it flees some peril, whether four footed or airborne.

Trail cam picture of a coyote below Camp Grouse.

 

Fishing Small Streams

                In the North Country, small streams mean wild trout. Few things are more fun than poking around the back country looking for small streams to fish. In the hottest weather of the summer those back country streams may be the only places cold enough to keep trout active and healthy.
                But those small streams can be a challenge.

                Below our home is a stream filled with brook trout. Spring freshets sometimes move the stream, not just the bottom but the whole stream may find a new course. Storms any time of the year can raise havoc with the banks.
                Where the stream twists through a softwood forest, fallen trees crisscross over the water. Some of those trees, after the stream has chewed at the bank where it grew, left huge cavities when they no longer had earth enough to hold onto. The water then carves away at the newly exposed soil and before long is nibbling away at the roots of a neighboring tree. The process is endless.
                Parts of the stream weave through meadows and alders. The fishing may be easier there, but the trout have less protection from avian predators. And the biggest trout get the pick of the cover.
                Sit on the bank and spend some time trying to figure out how to drop a fly among the tangle of logs and you may fool an outsize trout from that small stream. Hooking him is one thing, landing him is another.

 

Beaver Dams

      One of our property bounds is a trout stream. The state Fish and Game Department dump some trout in that stream every year, but there are more wild trout swimming about than stockers. Every summer I fish it and occasionally bring home a few trout to eat.
      Fishing it upstream last summer, I came upon a large beaver dam, nearly waist high on the downstream side. Upstream, water was backed up as far as the eye could see. My dogs were with me, as they usually are when I’m fishing that stream, and, rather than stay on the banks as they usually do, one decided to swim across the beaver pond. I called them both in and skedaddled. Beavers around dogs make me nervous ever since I read of a German shepherd killed by a beaver while swimming.

The dam in December

      I had planned to trek back there to fish the pond without the dogs for company, but never got there. It looked like a difficult place to fish, with alders leaning on from the banks on both sides. From our home, whenever the stream is up, we can hear the water tumbling through and over that dam, a frequent reminder that the pond is there.

The new dam is flooding the field. 

            Now the beaver has another dam upstream that is flooding an old pasture. It is easily visible from the road into our place.  It will be interesting fishing next spring. 
      In the slow moving water of old beaver ponds, silt settles out of the water and eventually fills in the pond. Sometimes these filled in ponds create meadows and these openings in the forest are always fun to find. The flat bottoms of valleys were created over the ages by beavers and the filled in ponds they left behind. 

A Change in the Weather

      The weather during October and early November had been particularly warm and windless, possibly a record setting warmth. Warm weather makes for uncomfortably hot hunting and overheated dogs. Gamebirds don’t burn as many calories during warm weather, so they don’t move about feeding. And the windless October, with almost no air movement, created tough scenting conditions that were not ideal for the dogs. A change was finally forecast.
      The abrupt drop in temperature would startle the young-of-the-year grouse. It would be something they had never experienced, which would be to our advantage. And a promised breeze would move bird scent around, helping the dogs find the birds.
       We hunted a cutting that loggers had been picking away at for several years. The land sloped gently to the south with small hills and gullies breaking up the terrain. In some of the hollows the ground was damp and filled with weeds. Unmerchantable slender softwood trees remained in clusters while scattered small hardwoods stood widely spaced everywhere. Skid trails made for fairly easy walking.
      As we started down the slope, the thought was the birds would seek the warmth of sunshine on the south facing slopes. Shortly, Mollie found the first bird on a southwest side of a knoll and locked up on point. Upslope a short ways stood a cluster of softwoods for shelter. A hundred feet downhill a small stream trickled, providing water and a gravel source. What more could a grouse want?
      In an area of not more than four or five acres the two dogs moved eleven ruffed grouse. What a morning. 

Stock Fit

Volumes have been written about shotgun stock fit. Most of us bumble along with factory fit stocks. Certain guns, like the Remington models 870 and 1100 series seem to fit a wide verity of shooters. Others not so much. In our land of mass production, the manufacturers try to produce guns to fit “the average American”. But every manufacturer has a different idea of what size and shape the “average American” is.
     My first gun, back when the only thing I knew about shotguns was that I wanted one, was an old Ithaca side by side. I couldn’t hit a barn with it, so I sold it to my brother. My second gun was an old Parker 12 gauge. Birds just seem to fall out of the sky wherever I pointed it. After reading a bit, I figured out the Ithaca was cast for a right-handed shooter and the Parker for a lefty. I am a lefty.
     Cast is when the stock is bent at the wrist to accommodate the shooter. A left-handed shooter wants the stock bent out to the left of the centerline and a righty wants it the other way. The amount the stock is bent depends on the shooter’s physique and a person trained in stock fitting can tell you how much it needs to be.  Some who measurer gunstock fit have fancy try-stocks that are adjustable in every imaginable direction. Cast for a right-handed shooter is called cast off, for a left-handed shooter cast on. Almost no American single barrel shotguns are cast and very few over-and-unders or side-by-sides are cast. In Europe things are entirely different.
     An early Browning Citori I owned wanted to shoot to the right. Bending the stock only a small amount corrected that. My go to shotgun for the last few years has been a Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company RBL. It has a straight stock and it too wanted to shoot to the right. I first noticed this with birds crossing to the right almost always fell, but to the left was a different story. My tendency is to shoot behind fast flying birds but with the gun shooting to the right if gave me an automatic lead on birds crossing in that direction.
     Repeatedly I tried to teach myself to mount the gun with my left eye centered between the barrels. I thought I was getting better at it. But it is tough to teach and old dog new tricks.

     But then this past winter I dusted off an old Parker 20 gauge with no cast and stock dimensions that are identical to the stock of that RBL. The one difference was the thickness of the stock. Birds dropped this past fall as if by magic. When I bring the gun to my cheek my left eye is dead center looking down the barrels. The RBL came up to my cheek with the barrel centerline just a smidge off to the left. It was obvious that I needed to take a rasp to my RBL’s stock.
     Before starting, I made a template of the stock’s shape where the stock came to rest against my cheek. Using a rasp, I started to take away wood, checking with the template to see how much was gone. With an eighth of an inch taken away, the gun came up to my cheek exactly the same as the old Parker, my left eye looking straight down the rib between the barrels. The stock was then sanded smooth before refinishing it. Even when I explain what I have done to the stock, people cannot notice the missing wood.
     And what a difference it made to my shooting.

  

The RBL next to a dead grouse.

Where are the Woodcock?

      Every spring we wonder where the woodcock are.  Are they headed north yet? 

Woodcock splash, 
A sure sign they are 
around.

Then come bird hunting season we wonder if “the flight birds” are in? 
      In the spring the old timers will tell you the woodcock arrive about the same time as the robins. “They eat the same thing” is what I have always heard. That means earthworms. And usually that is about right. The woodcock arrive early, while there is still snow on north facing slopes and in the shadows. So do the robins.
      About a week ago our yard was inundated with robins. A dozen cluttered the lawn over by the woodshed. Twice that number were in the field toward the vegetable garden. Leaves still cling to one tree in our yard, a weeping crabapple, and constantly the robins were flying in and out of its thick foliage. It seemed they were everywhere,
      The next hunt, in the old cuttings up high on a hill, I found an abundance of woodcock.

Blueberries

      There is an abandoned field a few miles from our home that has sat for twenty years or more without attention. It is up high with views that go for miles. Friends of ours live across the valley and we can see there home. The place is spectacular.
      Blueberries grow wild in this field, the lowbush variety. Weeds compete for space and trees are slowly creeping in from the forest edges. The blueberries established patches in the grass, but trees are trying to poke up through. Someday the trees will win and the land will return to forest.
      For years we have picked blueberries in this field. Blueberries grow on our own property, but somehow it is more fun to pick were the view goes on forever and bears and birds compete for the fruit. On one side a manmade pond is tucked against the woods. It has a footprint about the size of a small home and the dogs love to swim in it when the weather is warm.
      Today they barely swam at all. The temperature struggled to hit seventy and clouds hid what would have been a hot sun. A gusty west wind kept the deer flies and mosquitoes at bay. It turned out to be a perfect day for picking blueberries.
      Two grouse flew into the woods while we picked. Obviously, their nerves couldn’t take the dogs and humans in their blueberry patch. Mollie, our younger dog, stopped to point in one of the patches, but no bird was found. It had to be residual bird scent from before the bird walked off.
     

The blueberries are pretty popular. 

Rain

 Few things are as soothing as the sound of rain. Without rain the world would be nothing but a ball of dust. And why is it that the dogs sleep so soundly every night when rain falls on the roof, even when they’ve been wound up all day?  And so do I.
     The rain has been falling for hours now. It is time to tie flies and dream of streams filled with trout.
     Woolybuggers. Maybe it’s because I’m not much of a nymph fisherman that I use woolybuggers so much. They don’t look like any particular life form, so there is no wrong way to fish them. A fish might mistake one for a leech or a small fish or a stonefly or a dragonfly. A few weeks ago a trout came to hand with a hellgrammite in its mouth almost the same size as the number twelve woolybugger beside it.
     My woolybuggers don’t have much flash, not like the ones I see in fly shops. Drab green body of shaggy wool is my favorite, with black marabou tail and wrapped with black hackle. Fine black wire keeps everything tidy. Wet the fly is a very dark fly. I tie other colors too, some with bead heads and some without, but green catches the most fish for me.
     If it doesn't stop raining soon the pile of woolybuggers will be a foot high.

The Hole

      The water shoots from a tangle of fallen softwood trees that fell into the stream, rattling down a riffle into a sharp left-hand bend, where the water has carved a hollow out against the streambank. From there the water eases through a long deep pool guarded by fallen tree trunks. It possibly is the longest pool on the entire stream. Tall spruce and fir trees shade the riffle and pool.
      There had to be a big trout in there. Only a few pools in the stream are deep enough to hide the bottom and this was one. But fallen trees and sagging limbs shielded the fish.
      Stealth! It cannot be overstressed when fishing small streams. A stony outwash created space to work from, but the stones underfoot were noisy. Crouched low, to remain unseen, line was stripped from the reel.
      The flow of the riffle carried the leader and fly into the shadows. Overhanging softwood trees blotted out the sunlight. Patience. The bead-head woolybugger danced unseen in the current. Mending the line would let the fly sink, tightening would raise it up. Moving the rod tip out over the stream swam the left and right.
      It felt like an automobile snagged my fly.

The Stream

 

 

   

  

     During the summer months a fly rod always leans the corner of our screened porch, rigged and ready to go. It is a three-weight rod and the fly on the end of the four X tipper is usually a green woolybugger, if not a woolybugger then a red tag coachman.
     A week ago I caught a seven inch trout with an inch long hellgrammite in its mouth beside my #12 woolybugger. That is described as gluttony, I think. Dry flies are always fun, but the fish are usually smaller.
     Now there is a beaver pond just upstream from our property. What fun. It must have been built this past winter. The dam is nearly four feet tall and thirty feet wide. I will be back.
     Today the wind funneled right up the valley, making accurate casting impossible, but fish were still caught. Walking back towards the trail that leads to home, the wind rocked the trees on the hellishly steep hill to the south.
     The path along the stream has grown in and needs some trimming. During the past winter dozens of softwood trees blew down, some across the stream and others landed in the old path. That kind of work, cutting up trees and moving logs, is fun when accompanied with our dogs, almost as much fun as fishing.
     A woodcock flew across in front of me as I walked the trail to home.

 

Red Tag Coachman

Hook: Dry fly, #16 to 10

Tag: Red wool

Body: Peacock Herl

Wing: White calf tail, tied down-wing caddis style

Hackle: Brown

Thread: Black

 

Think of it as a down-wing attractor pattern. It can also be tied and fished as a wet fly

An Adventure

 

     It doesn’t take a lot to make an adventure. How about a spot on a map and time to go find it? That’s what we had. 
     The spot was a stream that drains a mammoth softwood bog before joining another

stream to flow together into a lake. In satellite images of the upper reaches there appeared to be white water or rapids where the stream tumbled from the large swamp. And a complete lack of easy access made the goal so much sweeter. The quarry was wild brook trout.
     Early morning rising means wet foliage, so with pants soon-to-be soaked we headed off, trekking generally northeast. After only a short distance we heard the stream off to our left.
     It wasn’t easy following the stream. Over the eons it had carved what was more or less a canyon or gulley. Approaching the banks, it was often ten or fifteen feet below us, so following the stream bank closely was

Maggie was guiding the way.

impossible. The land parallel with the stream contained small plateaus divided up by rocky ridges and narrow valleys created by feeder streams, all in the shade of softwood trees. For a while an ancient logging road made easier walking, but then it disappeared in a ravine. Occasionally there were small openings in the forest, where tall green grass covered the ground. Walking through those really soaked one’s pants. We preferred the silence of soft ground under the spruce and fir trees.
     Eventually the land started to flatten so we followed along the stream’s edge, trying to find a place that looked “fishable”. The water was almost as dark as coffee, stained with tannin leached from the softwood bog upstream. In places the water squeezed between rocks or rattled down riffles. As the land leveled out it started to slow and meander. Soon after a hard zigzag in its course we found a pool half the size of a tennis court. Along the right-hand side three rocks protruded from shore, creating an easy place to cast a fly from. Beneath the glassy center of the pool the water looked dark and deep.
     A bulging dimple in the surface grew into an expanding ring…trout were there. 

Living the New England Upland Life

 

     Before we can talk about a New England Upland Life, we had better decide what an Upland Life is. I supposed to different people it can mean different things. Among those who hunt birds, it means a life based around hunting upland birds, preferably with dogs. Of course, other activities are allowed, but bird hunting and bird dogs come before anything else.
     In New England, bird hunting means ruffed grouse and woodcock. Pheasants are an invasive specie and a poor substitute. Boy, that last sentence will bring some hate mail.
     An upland shooting life in other parts of the country might be very different. The charm of riding horseback through a quail plantation is appealing. The wide-open grasslands of the West look intimidating to someone used to the thick cover of New England. Desert quail sounds like fun, but it is rattlesnake country.
     I’ll stick to the shallow mountains of New England.

Running Water

 

     Step outside the door of Camp Grouse. The sound of running water is everywhere. Snow is melting. Spring rains made certain the remaining snow contains an abundance of moisture. Streams are swollen.     
       Almost every night the temperatures have dipped below freezing, but the sun, with its higher declination, rapidly warms the air each day into the upper thirties or even forties. And even more water is added to the spring freshet.
       Woodcock are about. The dogs accidentally found one and pointed it. That certainly made their day. I’m not sure about the woodcock’s. Grouse are probably drumming, but it’s been too cold to sit out in the evenings to listen. The first evening that the temperatures are a bit warmer we’ll sit on the deck and sip our evening cocktail to listen. It’s a sound that reminds us that all is well in the woods.

Can you see him?

High Bush

Cranberries earlier in the fall.

 A friend mentioned that a few years ago visiting bird hunters had found a parcel of grouse in windrows that divided several large rectangular fields beyond his home. His story went on to mention that the birds had been feeding on high bush cranberries. 
      Driving the rough town road that bisected some of those fields I noticed the bright red of high bush cranberries and made a mental note to give those windrows a try.
     My opportunity came along on a windy cold day when frozen snow covered the ground. My two wirehairs were wound up and oblivious to the wind chill. Big fields meant run big. A hundred yards from the first windrow I could see the red of the cranberries and headed toward it. The younger of the two dogs was two hundred yards away scouting a different line of trees.
     The windrows were made up of all sorts of weeds and trees. Some softwoods stood thirty feet tall along with maples and birch and alders and poplar. In the spaces between the larger stems grew raspberries, blackberries, and all sorts of tangles.     
     A ruffed grouse hopped up onto a branch while I was still forty or fifty yards away. My older wirehair had worked around the other side of the bushes and obviously the bird was aware of her. Then the dog froze. I hurried.

Maggie inhaling grouse scent.

     A grouse exploded out of the weeds over the dog and the one on the branch shot out right over my head. I twisted like a corkscrew, trying to mount the gun and see the bird. A late shot saluted the grouse as it disappeared into the trees.
     Breaking open the gun to replace the spent cartridge was timed, of course, with another grouse leaving out the back of the line of trees. It would have been an almost impossible shot anyway.
     By then the two dogs were working the windrow a bit downwind and I was about to move on. It was much too cold to stand still. Thinking there might be another bird hiding among the shrubbery, I took a couple of steps toward where the grouse had launched.
     A third grouse burst out the back of the trees and another twisted out over my head. Again, I gyrated and missed!
     I can shut my eyes and still see those birds flying over the wide open field, just like a painting.

 

Weather

      Bird season stayed hot for far too long. Usually there are frosts and cold mornings, often an inch or two of snow that never sticks around. Not that there aren’t ever warm days, but just not so many of them as this year.
     The past summer was dry, actually the drought started almost two years ago. As happens every year, people started talking in August about what the fall foliage season would look like. Some said the leaves would just turn brown and drop, others said the colors would be brighter than ever. Every year it is the same arguments and, honestly, nobody ever seems to know.
     What happened was the leaves turned late and then refused to drop. And the WIND NEVER BLEW to help loosen them. Two weeks into the month of October the leaves still clung to the branches, but then reluctantly started to fall.
     During the summer an unusually high number of grouse broods were seen along the roads. This excited the bird hunters and made us all optimistic. The dry spring may have wreaked havoc with the gardeners, but it certainly helped the hen grouse raise those broods. We could not wait to get the dogs in the woods.
     And in October, those birds that seemed to be everywhere in September, just disappeared. The warm weather made the dogs miserable. It made us miserable too.
     Fortunately, in the middle of the month the weather changed and the grouse came out of their hiding. About that same time the migrating woodcock showed up. Hunting became fun again. The birds were in their usual fall places.
     Where had they been the first two weeks of August? Sitting in trees watching the hunters and their dogs? It certainly was easy to imagine that. I wish I knew.

 

 

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.