If Francis Marion was the Swamp Fox, I must be the Swamp Rat. Marion was a revolutionary war general who ghosted through the bogs of South Carolina to plague the British. I'll bet he also flushed a bunch of grouse and woodcock. And the chances are he and his troops had many a bird dinner, revolutionary rations being what they were.
Maybe Marion's experiences at finding game birds in the suckholes were what led the first grouse hunters into the alder hells. No one in his right mind would go there on speculation.
Bogs, as devilish as they are, can be prime country for grouse and woodcock. You'd swear some of the birds have web feet. I once shot a grouse that fell with a splash, like a mallard.
I experienced an immediate sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the squishy ground. My Brittany, who had an aversion to total baptism, looked at me with the defiant expression of a Missouri mule and I knew if I wanted the bird, it wouldn't be because of his flawless retrieve. So I sighed and began to strip.
Fortunately, it was a balmy day for northern Minnesota (about 40 degrees, with a gusting wind and scudding, low clouds) and I was able to wade to the floating bird.
Had Laurel and Hardy wanted to make "really" memorable comedies, they would have filmed each other stripped naked, wading through an icy alder swamp after a dead grouse. It is the stuff of great amusement...for everyone else.
THERE ARE EASIER PLACES TO GROUSE HUNT than in a swamp, of course. Sometimes the birds are on hillsides. Occasionally, you'll find both grouse and woodcock in pastures dotted with sprout thickets where you can wander easy trails. But for every easy covert, there are several that demand energy and the swamps are the worst of all.
Once, I hunted around a small, shallow lake in northern Minnesota. I moved grouse, woodcock, snipe, and one porcupine that my dog pointed but fortunately did not flush. The snipe flew back and forth across the lake and my hunting buddy and I finally wised up and posted ourselves on either side of the lake. Snipe are serendipity.
Generally, grouse will be on the upslopes from the alder bog, where the doghair popple begins. Often there is a thicket of gray dogwood and when there is a good berry crop, the dogwood jungle is as close to a sure thing as there is in grouse hunting. Bog grouse, unlike their more upland brethren, don't always flush into thick brush. Instead, they frequently flush over the marsh, giving you an open shot, but an icy retrieve. It's good to have a Lab as an animal companion.
Boggy areas get cold at night (cold settles into low spots), so grouse tend to move uphill toward evening, to feed and roost in a less clammy spot. But during the sunny part of the day and especially early in the season when food is plentiful, you'll find grouse mincing around on wet feet, acting for all the world like snipe.
Woodcock will be on the hummocks, often nearly surrounded by water. I hunt one covert which has fingers of high ground (about three inches higher than the water level) which extend into an alder swamp. In a dry year, you can squish from one finger to another, but in a wet year, some of the best spots are isolated by water. You wade or you don't shoot.
A pair of hunters is ideal for hunting alder sprawls--one clambers through the hell of sprouts; the other patrols the edge. But you always trade the brushbusting duty else the swamp rat will begin to develop a festering resentment. There's nothing worse in bird hunting than someone who always walks easy while his hunting pards bust brush (unless it's someone who bad mouths everyone else's dogs, meanwhile bragging up his own eggsuckers).
COME WITH ME ON A MINNESOTA HUNT. It was the first week of October. The aspen leaves were down; the weather balmy. The hemlocks glowed in the swamp as if lit by incandescent lights. It was cold the night before--down in the 20s. There was a tight rime of frost on the pickup windshield and breath hung thick in the sharp morning air. Hen mallards squawked loudly on the river.
The cold might have brought a fall of woodcock into the hundred-plus acre marsh where we annually collect our woodcock dinner. The birds had been few; residents fled early and migrants had not arrived. There were 10 woodcock in the refrigerator--half what we needed to feed a dozen or more visitors.
Spence Turner's annual woodcock feed is much anticipated for two reasons: first, it is a gourmet meal and second it is an excuse to quit early to cook. After three long hunting days, a half-day hunt is welcome. I clean the birds; Spence cooks 'em. It is an equable division of talent. I'm good with guts and Spence is better at cookery.
It was early morning in the little town that straddles the highway that runs north to the stars. The school bus was stopped, red lights blinking alternately. A log truck was parked across from the Pinewoods Cafe. The bleary-eyed driver was inside inhaling black coffee and looking bleakly at the cheery waitress.
Two pickup trucks had dog kennels and Ruffed Grouse Society stickers. The hunters wore beat-up brush pants and faded orange caps variously advertising the Grouse Society, shotgun shells, and dog food.
There aren't many grouse hunters in this part of Minnesota. Most who say they hunt grouse actually drive log roads in four-wheel drive pickups, looking for a pot shot. They are grouse hunters in the same way that someone who runs over a box turtle on the highway is a big-game hunter. It was the third day of a grouse hunt and my body was sending me ever more urgent messages that it was stretching its tether. There was a line of abrasions on each inner forearm, legacy of a thousand raspy sprouts. I could have kept my sleeves rolled down, but the 70-degree temperature had made that too uncomfortable. Of course, sore arms also were uncomfortable. There is nothing easy about being a swamp rat.
My legs hurt where I had rammed into stobs. Ninety percent of the stobs in an alder bog are brittle and crumble to the touch. The other 10 percent, the ones you expect to crumble and which don't, will thump you like a cop wielding a truncheon.
A SWAMP HUNTER is in for a physical ordeal. Every step is an adventure. In a wet year grass is waist high, concealing pitfalls. Ferns lace together, so that pulling your legs through them is like slogging through deep mud.
Beneath the vegetation there is a diabolical fretwork of roots and fallen sprouts, pocked by bogholes that will suck you in to the knee.
The unbruised parts of my legs just ached. There were joint and tendon aches, ligament aches, and muscle aches. Spence Turner had pulled a groin muscle and walked like Grandpa McCoy. Spence has battled arthritis for years and his morning taping ritual would shame an NFL linebacker.
My eyeballs were old poached eggs, embedded in a pool of Louisiana hot sauce. My face felt as if it had been clawed by bobcats. Many years ago I was a baseball catcher. Our pitcher had a wicked curve that often broke into the dirt as I stabbed for it with a clunky catcher's mitt. It would skip under the glove and either thwock me in the crotch or jam my right-hand thumb. Forty- some years later, my thumb sticks out as if the joint is hitching a ride when the rest of the thumb isn't. It also hurts with arthritic twinges that get steadily worse as the week of grouse hunting progresses.
Spence and I parked at the southwest corner of the Wagonwheel. The plan is to work north toward the highway on the high ground, hoping for a grouse flush, then ease along the finger of high ground parallel to the highway where woodcock rest.
Once, I flushed a huge doe that bounded out to the highway in front of an oncoming truck. I heard the squall of brakes, then a thump, opening of door, and profanity like that uttered during dire moments at the Marine's Parris Island boot camp.
I hissed, "Come!" to the dog and we slipped back in the swamp. What the truckers didn't know wouldn't hurt me.
We must backtrack off the road finger, then ease along the fringe of the swamp toward the south, occasionally venturing east along the almost indefinable ridges that probe into the swamp.
THEN THERE IS A LONG TREK along the south edge of the swamp to the Pine Ridge where there always is at least one grouse and a couple of woodcock. In a wet year, it takes a short wade to reach it, but cold water over your boot tops is cheap price for a shot at a grouse that thought it was safe.
That is our invariable battle plan, but it never works. The dogs diverge, Spence's setters and my Brittanies, and the cover is so thick that we are out of touch almost instantly and instead of following our plan, we follow our dogs.
I heard Spence shoot and he already was a hundred yards away. I shrugged and stumbled after the dogs. I use locator collars--the dog could be on point 10 yards away, but invisible.
I heard the steady signal that indicated a point and followed it to the immobile dog. I think beeper collars train a dog to be staunch because they are as mesmerized by the insistent signal as the birds are.
Chubby was hunched into a point, his stocky body crouched as if ready to flee if the bird attacks. His eyes rolled like those of a vaudeville comic. He was trembling with the intensity of the power that grips him.
I studied the scene: there was no reason to hurry because Chubby would stay there until he turned to stone. It's a mistake to march in on the dog only to have a bird flush behind a tree and be out of range before you can track it or be crouched under a tangle of brush when the bird flushes. So I took a moment to study the possible fields of fire.
I moved between a couple of saplings and a woodcock twittered to the sky, into the open as I'd hoped. Woodcock are among the slowest flying birds, but among the quickest off the mark. If we can train ourselves to wait, woodcock almost always give us a simple shot. This one was at treetop height almost instantly, then hovered and I was waiting.
The bird tumbled into the swamp grass. It would be a wet wade for a retriever (Chubby or me) in a wet season, but it had been dry. Chubby plunged into the grass and rooted around and presently appeared with the bird in his mouth.
HE IS A RARE DOG, one who does not mind retrieving woodcock. Many dogs pick up woodcock the way you would pick up a dead Norway rat.
We were one bird closer to a woodcock feed. I heard Spence shoot again and hoped we were closer yet. Spence has a rhythm: "Bang!" is a dead bird. "Bang-bang!" is a missed bird.
I was skirting the marsh, venturing onto the ridges, and Chubby bumped a woodcock which twittered away. He looked appropriately ashamed. We would meet it later; the birds eddy around in the covert, seldom leaving.
The Pine Island is a distant landmark, like Dorothy's Emerald City. It is my favorite corner because it so often has produced a grouse to go with the woodcock.
Chubby slid to a point. He was wet to the shoulders from a jaunt into the bog and a tatter of dead fern lay across his head, like a gladiator's wreath.
The woodcock appeared at shoulder height. I've never seen a woodcock flush; they are so quick off the mark that the average eye can't follow their initial spring. I use No. 7-1/2 shot for everything, but when my shooting is lousy (or, to be more accurate, lousier than usual), I go to No. 9 to put more shot in the air. The nines tumbled this bird and Chubby brought it in. One more for the pot.
I was at the Pine Ridge where conifers pinch into the swamp. There is a dry area about the size of a tennis court, a mix of sprouts and old logs. Grouse flush into the pines and are gone. Woodcock hover at the edge of the swamp and will flush across it to where we started.
THERE IS MAGIC IN THIS SPOT. I've theorized ley lines, those invisible boundaries of natural power, cross here, making it a place of great import, like Stonehenge. It's possible witches dance here in the full of the moon.
And grouse flush in the mid of the day. One did, a red phase bird with a tail of fire that flared in the morning sun. The grouse was immobile for an eternity at the apex of its upward thrust. And I was a lifetime too slow. My gun was nowhere near seated when the bird changed direction and flitted between two pines.
I shot a salute to a lost cause and saw pine boughs lurch. There was no muffled thump of a killed bird drumming its life out on a carpet of brown needles. Nothing but the sough of the breeze in the pines.
I called the dog in and we rested for a moment on a fallen log and then started back. I had a mile of woodcock guts to excise before we could eat.
Spence's Woodcock Feed
Figure one woodcock for light eaters, a couple for the gourmands. Start with good (i.e. "real") wild rice. Place 1/2- to 3/4-cup uncooked wild rice in two-quart ovenproof pan, add water to fill 3/4 full and add one teaspoon chicken bouillon granules. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for one hour or until rice has puffed triple size and is tender (don't overcook). Drain and set aside.
Saute coarsely chopped onion in 1/2-cup butter (not margarine) in large cast iron skillet until translucent, add two to three chopped garlic cloves, filleted woodcock breasts, plus legs, salt and pepper to taste. Saute over medium heat for 10 minutes, turning breasts and legs until lightly cooked. Add two cups cream sherry (not cooking sherry), as many fresh, sliced mushroom as you want, simmer covered for 10 minutes. Add one 10-ounce can of cream of mushroom soup (undiluted) and mix well. Combine woodcock and sauce with wild rice in rice pan, cook covered at 325 degrees for 20-30 minutes.
Spence's usual side dishes are tossed salad, gingered baby peas, hot garlic bread, and a bottle of Riesling wine. He has put baby shrimp in the mix, too--up to you.
Ted's Sour Cream Grouse
Bone several grouse breasts. Put sliced "chipped-style" beef in bottom of casserole dish. Wrap each grouse breast with a slice of bacon, lay on top of the beef. Mix eight ounces of sour cream with one can cream of mushroom soup, pour over grouse, refrigerate for three to four hours. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes.
Copyright (c) 1996 Joel M. Vance. All rights reserved.
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