I live in what is typically called Northern Michigan although my location is far from rural. I'm just outside of what passes for a big city here a couple blocks from the municipal golf course.

Today I was standing in my garage with a neighbor cycling empty cartridges through a Winchester Model 100 that belongs to a hunting partner of his. I had cleaned and sighted said rifle and wanted to show him a few things I'd learned about it while shooting it.

We hear a VERY loud bang and my neighbor jumped a foot. I'm pretty sure he thought one of those cases wasn't empty!

It sounded like my neighbor at the house behind me had lit off an M-80.

We wandered out back and found a dead grouse still very warm. It had flown into a 3x4 foot window on the garage. No damage except to the bird.

That's how you hunt grouse with an automatic rifle folks.

Grouse dinner is pending!

I just returned from Northern Michigan only an hour ago. We flushed many grouse, but only connected on a few, very few...

Years ago I was pass shooting doves at the edge of a pasture in which an old bus (not a school bus) had been parked and abandoned. I was positioned 50-60 yards from the bus when I heard what sounded like a flush followed 2 seconds later by a very loud thud. Upon investigation I found a bobwhite quail with a broken neck; the bird had somehow managed to fly full throttle into the large windshield of the bus. I placed the unfortunate bird in the bag with my doves.

My son and I were headed out for a pheasant hunt when we came up behind a semi. Just as we were about to pass a rooster flushed from the ditch, started across the raod, and flew directly ibto the side of the trailer. Needless to sat we stopped and popped him in the bag.

Many years ago I was riding around a friend's, named Richard, hunting club in Tensas parish next to the Mississippi river in N.E. Louisiana. I was sitting shotgun while two friends were in the back seat of Richard's Blazer. One friend was not a hunter and quite inexperienced. We were stopped while Richard was pointing out things to us. Suddenly a dove jumped up next to the driver's window and flew. Richard made a finger gun and said "bang." The dove promptly fell out of the sky.

Richard had a Doberman female that was a fantastic retriever so he told Bam, Richard was a Marine, to fetch. Bam immediately jumped out and fetched the bird. Richard, the other long time hunter and I never said a word.

No doubt the bird was wounded and made its last effort but the newbie is probably still wondering about the finger kill to this day.

If I'm lying, I'm dying.

Amazing timing for this story. Was prepping a bacon-wrapped grouse dinner for the next to last night on my recent Minnesota trip. We were down one bird for the number of diners and while out on his boat walleye fishing, I'd arm-twisted my brother into donating one of his birds to the pot (he was, after all, attending the dinner as well). Upon returning to the dock, I immediately marched over to the house and found a very-mature (i.e. big!) male grey-phase laying on the ground next to the deck. The bird was still quite warm and had his crop opened up, spilling out the contents. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, I immediately carried it over to the cleaning house and prepped it for the later dinner. I had thought a raptor had possibly killed it and dropped it until I went into the house and found the broken double-pane window with the smudges and faint-feather halo. We all attributed it to the ghost of my late father-in-law supplying one last grouse for the camp dinner. Brought my mother-in-law (who'd been fishing with us) to tears.



That red leaved-tree you see out the broken window is what my late father-in-law called a "nanny-berry" bush. The contents of this bird's crop were nanny berries.

Assuming your garage floor is poured concrete, how many SOS pads and bottles of ammonia do you think it will take to get those brown greasy stains off the floor- and out of the BVD's as well, after that 7.62X51mm NATO round discharged. Wonder what that partridge might have thought in that second when his beak and brains zipped out of his bunghole?? Wowie.. RWTF

Down at the southern sxs a few years ago I left the hotel the on Sunday morning early planning a final tour around the grounds and heading back up north to Virginia. traveling through a wooded area I spotted a turkey flying toward the road. it flew into the side of my suv and then back into the woods. I stopped about a quarter mile down the road and inspected the truck which was OK and thought to myself that bird probably won't make it. so I went back to about where the bird hit me and let my dog out. she found the bird about 100 yards away and it looked Un damaged. I called the dept of wildlife and they told me to just through it by the roadside. I had a big cooler full of ice and some trash bags so into the cooler it went. it was the only turkey I killed that year.

gro tesk tread...

the horror, the absolute horror...

Ha.

Funny you should mention that. The rifle in the story was inherited by the young fellow who now owns it and apparently he has about zero mechanical aptitude. He put a different scope on it. My assigned task was to make it shoot. I had some success. Neighbor commented.. "Uncle Larry sent you a bird for your efforts". Of course I don't believe in such stuff... do I?

This sounds a bit like an "I'll go you one better" thread?

Years ago I was hunting with a friend whose name was David but most people called him Davey.
We were hunting some heavily wooded, hilly land in Tennessee.

I was off to his side, checking his location often when I spotted a pretty sizeable bear. I walked toward him to inform him and just as he came into my view I saw a Mountain Lion approaching him to his left. The bear was coming toward him from his right.
He raised his rifle, aimed square at a Large Boulder located smack dab between the two approaching animals, and fired a shot.
When the smoke from his musket cleared there lay both animals, stone dead.
In case you haven't guessed His last name was Crockett ~

Lots of ways to a bird dinner if you are "lucky". My folks kept my golden for a year why I was overseas on a postdoc. They regularly would hear a thump on the kitchen window and go out to investigate. It was always a grouse which Jess found in the junipers. It got to be a bit of a routine for them, and they ended up with several grouse dinners that year. Never happened before or after.

Dad also ate a well tenderized rooster that took out the grill in his Buick Elektra, but that was just plain spite. Wasn't a lot of bird to cook but he was determined to eat that one as he had to pay for it.

I was posted along a forest trail 1 time running rabbits with my friends, and a sizable cottontail came running down the trail fleeing the hound. As it ran past me I stuck my foot out, It hit my foot, and And died right there.

A friend of mine for 50 years, Vietnam veteran and published writer on Vietnam, has claimed to this day that he killed 7 quail with one .308 round. He's from Arizona. He saw a bunch of quail run into a draw and fired at them. The bed of the arroyo was filled with gravel. He got them all with "secondaries" from the flying gravel. He swears by this story to this day and is not prone to lying (even though he was Special Forces in Vietnam).

About ten years ago, a friend was driving us back from a morning duck hunt. Seven or eight Huns popped up on the side of the road and they did a half scurry, half flight across the road. When one of those brown puff balls went through his pickup grill, it probably sounded about like a muffled .410. The hissing from his radiator got much more attention, never did bother figuring out where the Hun ended up.

Some of my greatest memories and fun afield occurred while chasing bunnies with a pack of beagles, and one of the most unusual memories took place on a hunt near Sandersville, GA. It was February and very late in the season; and it was hot weather, too hot actually with temps in low 80's. It was also rutting season, a fact no more clearly illustrated than when the dogs opened up in a thicket and ran out a bunny with another holding onto its back. Only time I've ever witnessed two running cottontails bagged with one shot.