The first woodcock I ever shot twittered upwards in front of me, dappled by October sunlight beaming through the leaves. The muzzle followed the sound almost of its own accord, and it was impossible not to comprehend the lure of woodcock hunting in that first instant.
So it also was with the first rooster pheasant, iridescent in the golden light of a late afternoon in November, tumbling down into the cut corn at the shot. Then there was the mourning dove, plucked from a clear blue September sky under a blazing sun, and the pair of mallard drakes jumped from the foggy creek, the covey of quail rising in waves in front of a liver-and-white dog, or the first turkey, strutting in the delicate light of an early spring morning, each experience an almost textbook example of the essence of the sport.
Not so with my first ruffed grouse. He had the misfortune to be perched unseen in the wrong place at the wrong time: directly in my line of fire as I shot at a flushing woodcock. I sent the dog after the woodcock only to have him come back holding a reddish bird with a crest on its head. It was the first ruffed grouse I'd ever seen, dead or alive.
Now, I had read my Foster, my Spiller, my Woolner, so I knew that here was "that fan-tailed strategist, the Lordly Pa'tridge," "Thunder King" himself. Really? The bird I turned over and over in my hands curiously was no more than an innocent bystander who hadn't the good sense to step behind a tree when the lead began to fly, what the Pentagon might term "collateral damage", and what drive-by shooters, I'm told, call a "mushroom."
Hardly a textbook beginning to a grouse hunting career, but intriguing nevertheless. After dinner that night, I was positively fascinated; the ruffed grouse more than lived up to its billing as second to none on the table.
So back I went to the hills of northeast Iowa. In time, I came to appreciate grouse for what they are--unpredictable bundles of pure condensed woodland energy, elusive red-and-gray streaks tearing through the aspens out of range, skulking away on the ground, or flushing noisily at your feet, always it seems, just as you're pulling a twig out of one eye.
The second growth that reclaims old clearings is rich in buds, leaves, and berries, and the grouse, like the deer that also thrive in such places, are browsers. Learning to identify favored grouse foods will help you pinpoint the location of grouse in the woods. Where I hunt, more often than not, I look for blackberry bushes, overgrown apple orchards, or the edges of clover fields. Grouse eat acorns, mountain laurel, dogwoods, sumac, grapes, aspen, willows, hawthorns, literally hundreds of wild foods. Wise hunters open the crop of the first bird they kill on an outing to see what the grouse are eating that day.
The successful hunters who flush grouse without dogs possess a keen knowledge of their quarry. They know where to look, and they can often spot the grouse's crested head as the bird crouches hidden on the forest floor. These experienced hunters follow up birds that flush wild and keep after them. Grouse rarely fly more than 150 yards or so in the woods. As with almost all game birds, the more often you flush them, the better the chance that they will tire or blunder into unfamiliar territory. In either case, the grouse becomes more likely to sit still after each successive flush.
Hunters who are particularly familiar with a certain covert can drive and block for grouse in much the same way they would post standers on a deer hunt. Grouse, no matter how wary, are basically creatures of habit and will often exit from the same place and head for the same escape cover every time.
In my dogless days I worked a variation of the drive and block with my various unsuspecting hunting partners, easing over to the open edge of a covert while they walked the thick brush. The theory was, I would get an easy shot as the grouse cut across the open. The tactic worked to perfection whenever I tried it, but out of pure guilt I missed every shot that came my way.
More pragmatically, a pointing dog will give you time to untangle yourself from the greenery, find secure footing, and generally make yourself as ready to shoot as is possible in grouse cover. To be effective, a grouse dog must learn to creep. Grouse seem to be aware that they are visible on the forest floor and will often run rather than hide. Like a good pheasant dog, a grouse dog has to be able to trail a bird without crowding too closely and bumping it.
Purists debate the relative merits of pointers and setters to the exclusion of all other dogs, but the slow-going continental breeds can do good work on grouse, and flushing dogs will enthusiastically dive into the thickest of thickets for you from dawn to dusk.
As a last word on dogs for grouse hunting, I'll say that any kind of dog is much, much better at running down cripples than we are.
While pheasants and quail can generally be relied upon to feed you a steady diet of going-away shots, grouse come and go at all angles. Those angles inspired New England Grouse Shooting author William Harnden Foster and his friends to invent "shooting around the clock," a game we know today as skeet. Foster and company settled on the 21-yard crossing point because it was the average distance at which they shot their birds. Grouse guns and loads, therefore, should be tailored to short range, fast shooting. It's no coincidence at all that Skeet 1/Skeet 2 chokes prove just about ideal for most grouse hunting conditions.
The golden age of grouse hunting coincided with the golden age of American gunmaking, and to this day it's hard for many to imagine gunning pa'tridges with anything other than a Parker, an Ithaca, or a Winchester Model 21--guns made a short train ride from the heart of New England grouse country. My grouse gun was made an ocean (the Pacific) away from the nearest ruffed grouse, and therefore totally lacks romance or cachet.
But my gun handles well and fits me. The chokes are open and the barrels measure 26 inches. The stock is a little shorter than I am used to, so the gun mounts quickly without catching on my vest. My gun happens to be a 12-gauge, making it the ballistic superior of the 16 or the 20, although in the close cover of the grouse woods that difference amounts to virtually nothing. Loaded with 7 1/2s, 8s, or, when I'm expecting woodcock too, 9s, it will do anything the great old grouse guns could do except look good.
Purists might insist that at seven pounds, four ounces my gun is overweight by at least a pound. I find it light enough to carry with one hand while fending off brush with the other, yet still heavy enough to shoot. Unlike woodcock, who often hang for a moment in the air and may be poked at successfully with featherlight guns, grouse drive hard through the brush, and some extra weight helps with a decisive follow through. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway, when my arms turn rubbery at the end of a long day.
If my description of appropriate grouse clothing is too cursory to give you a clear idea, picture this: coveralls under a canvas hunting coat, heavy work boots, full-choked 12-gauge pump with a 30-inch barrel, and a good 15 feet of stout chain wrapped around your waist, to be used if your young dog needs some extra ballast.
That is precisely how not to dress for the woods, and the exact outfit my friend Tim wore last fall when I took him on his first grouse hunt. Cast in the unaccustomed role of guide and expert, I took Tim back to the same covert where I had accidentally shot the grouse out of the tree some years before.
Since his young shorthair Rory was behaving beautifully, Tim wore the chain himself all day, clanking like the ghost of Christmas Past as he struggled through the thick cover. As we neared a bunch of blackberries I said, "There's usually a grouse down here. They feed on the leaves." My dog, Sam, suddenly broke his pattern, made a beeline for the center of the berry patch, and stiffened onto a solid point.
As we advanced, the grouse flushed from beneath the bright leaves in front of Sam, quickly clearing the top of the bushes and disappearing into the tangled tree branches overhead. I shot in front of the blur, the charge of 8s cutting a wide swath through the bright leaves, halting the grouse in midair as if the bird had suddenly reached the end of an invisible leash. The two shorthairs, nearly identical kennel mates, broke together to make the retrieve. Tim saw none of it; standing to the wrong side of me, he couldn't shoot safely nor had he even seen the bird flush.
Rory beat Sam to the grouse, bearing it proudly back to his master, who, like me before him, suddenly found himself holding a dead grouse without ever having seen one alive.
The look of befuddlement on Tim's face no doubt mirrored my own when I'd stood near that same spot so many seasons before. "So," he asked, puzzled, "This is grouse hunting?"
I took the grouse from Tim's hand and fanned open the tail, admiring it in the long shadows of an October afternoon.
"Textbook grouse hunting, as a matter of fact," I said, sliding the bird into my vest.
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