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Wisconsin?

Shooting grouse wouldn't be that hard. It's shooting through all that brush and trees that would make it tough for me. I hope I can take my dog out next year to hunt. Thanks for sharing.

Shooting grouse through the brush and trees is only half the battle. And naturally, it does get a bit easier in late Fall after the leaves drop and visibility improves. What makes hitting Ruffed Grouse especially challenging is the way they twist and turn while flying quickly through the trees, grapevines, and brush. They also seem to have a knack for making their noisy flush at the least opportune time, such as while you are climbing over a felled tree branch in a logged out area, or trying to extricate yourself from briars and multiflora rose, etc.

They might be extinct if they flew in a nearly perfectly predictable trajectory like clay targets. But they don't.

I enjoyed all of those, but the last one, with the side-by-side-toting guide who explains where the grouse lurk and what they eat and how they prefer their strawberry daiquiris, was especially interesting. Thank you for posting them, Mister Good.

I always read that they were tough to hit. I have read questionnaires asking which birds were the hardest to hit and it usually ends as a toss-up between doves and grouse. I have a hard enough time wading through brush to get a pheasant. Unfortunately, I will probably never experience grouse hunting because of the lack of them in my area. So I have to admire the guys who bring them down.

I've found that the easiest way to bring them down is to build a lakefront camp with a terrific view and wait until they fly into the picture window.



This poor rascal made a thump like a thrown boiled ham, trying to fly into my cousin's camp late one May afternoon through a vast, invisible wall of congealed boiled silica. It was stunned for a few minutes, long enough for me to run for my iPad. When I came back with it, it was still lying on its side, and I thought it was a goner. No such luck. It quickly got up, shook itself, and flew away when I started tauntingly reciting traditional French recipes in a singsong manner. (I'm actually a fair singer; pretty sure it simply objected to the notion of being marinated in dry vermouth and herbes de Provence.)

I love it that my spring-summer-autumn vacation haunt is in moderately-decent grouse habitat. Ruffed grouse and spruce grouse, both. See some every year, some years few, other years in hordes. They are wonderful entertainment and better than television, as birds one encounters on the trails go. I've yet to shoot and eat one, but I'm arguably equipped for that now. On verra.

Sidebar: Will you just look at that camouflage compared to the ground cover? I admire these birds.

Having just experienced my first-ever "population high" of these birds, I find that I have a newfound appreciation for them. Their camouflage is quite exceptional. Even when you're almost on top of them they can seemingly disappear with just a few steps into cover.

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We've had them break several windows up at the camp, on the main house and in the out-buildings. There's a Nannyberry bush (or two) near the edge of the bay that they seem to be drawn to and somehow, after ingesting a belly-full of those fruits (perhaps intoxicating?), they manage to fly into things. My father-in-law made some jam once from those bushes...but it wasn't very interesting (it reminded me of dates, except with even less flavor). The birds are far-more fun.



This particular bird would run out of the woods when you drove in and actually chase you around the yard (you can see he's pretty aggravated here). You were clearly "trespassing" in his eyes
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Here I am sitting here on the porch, having an adult beverage after a long day afield. I actually caught and picked this bird up (she didn't like that much). She was one of the several pets (or pests) that haunted the camp two Falls ago now. Her offspring were likely in residence this past year as well, but they were far-more circumspect.

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This fall, if you walked outside they would run for cover. I would think that is preferable.

I do hope a few of them survive this winter to entertain my guests & my family next year. We do not shoot these "pet" birds near the house, however (& since the passing of my father-in-law) we're only there for a few short months every year now. Several years ago, I had a chance meeting with a "native" year-round resident (when I ran into him twice, over two consecutive years, on the very same game trail) and we struck-up a conversation. He's evidently a local handyman/carpenter type and in that brief conversation with me, he admitted that our road was one of his favorite places to "hunt birds" out of his old Chevy truck in December, when most everybody was gone. Oh well...

If you feed them when you are there, that might help them to come around when you go there. Nice place, though.

Lloyd3: Thank you for the wonderful pictures and accounts, sir. I've got nannyberry, hobblebush, catberry, and (at least) three types of blueberry in lavish profusion where I summer and where I can hunt. Mountain ash, too. Wintergreen, a bit of blackberry... No wonder I often see grouse near the shack.

I love those silly chickums.

Thanks Fudd!

Yeah, they're really something else up there. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania they were scarce and accordingly treasured. I'd walk all day there as a young man and maybe see one. Over a season I might actually get 2 or 3 for a game meal. The more I learn about them the more I seem to be able to do to find them. Having so-many of them hanging around the house has clearly helped to demystify them for me, and for that I'm grateful. Hopefully next year I'll get to chase a few more.