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Grouse camp 2 is now in the books. Much tougher than I thought. The weather was fine, and birds were abundant. About 60% of the leaves were down and more falling every minute as hard frosts were occuring nightly. Nonetheless, i've never been so frustrated over getting a shot. For example, two of us got there in mid afternoon. We threw up tents and then went off for a brief hunt - maybe 1.5 hrs. We flushed about 12 birds, but never fired a shot. I might have seen feathers on one of them. They were uncanny about keeping out of sight. And every day there after, they only got better at it. Where they had to be visible, they ducked behind dogs more often than has ever happened before. So, very few shots were taken, few of those (2) were actually reasonably good opportunities and only one was converted. Crazy times. But we had plenty of birds to keep us happy.

We had some interesting interactions with landowners. Some were really great, one or two not so much - one was claiming hundreds of acres of national forest as his own private land. Met a really great CO (unrelated to the landowner issue), and some other great folks. There wa a woman who I'd seen before out there hunting with her fluffy white foo-foo dog of some sort and an old lab. She was darn passionate about grouse and she certainly took her share. Another guy with a pick up truck full of kids. Some had guns, some did not. My favorite had a nice alder stick gun with which he showed a ton of enthusiasm and good "muzzle" control. Tons of road hunters. More than I have ever seen.

But we got some grouse - even me. Only one was a spruce grouse - the most handsome of all the gallinaceous birds that I've ever seen.

I'll just post a bunch of photos and minimal commentary. Grouse camp 3 is set for the first week of November. That will be the end of it for me, with only 3 weeks left of pheasant hunting before shutting down for the season.

You would think, on this ridge of rock and scattered trees, grouse would be easy to shoot. Not so. No shots fired for about 8 flushes or more.




Snowed the first night


Did not deter Gus


Hard to really show the size of this tree, but it is among the biggest Norway Pines I've ever seen