Grouse Opener Report

Mr. Mike (the REAL Mr. Mike) and I took our chances chasing grouse yesterday up at Tug Hill. We left my wispy white haired pokey dotte dogge home and hunted over Gordie, Mr. Mike's three year old cocker spaniel. Gordie is by now a seasoned veteran of the woodcock and POAS wars, but has not yet tasted the feathers of Bonasa umbellis.

Alas, today he is still waiting for that first taste.

But it was not due to lack of chances. Mr. Mike and I saw/heard a total of eight birds, with a couple of additional reflushes. The result of our opening day marksmanship was that Mike was 0 for 1, while I was 0 for 3, or as some statistically challenged Minnestoans and erstwhile Penn State urban sociologists sometimes calculate it, "0 for 2."

Here's how the action broke down: after meeting at 0900 for a breakfast that couldn't be beat at the Adams Mickey D's, we hastened to a spot that shall remain unnamed but that you've all hunted at. That's right, Pete's original Grunley Creek covert. Forgive me Pete.

In a little over an hour's hunting, Gordie managed to dislodge two grouse and three woodcock from their aldery lairs. Fresh from the hunt test circuit, Gordie at first displayed some uncertainty about the nature of the Tug Hill upland cover, and the 75 deg. F temp and stiff winds made for difficult scenting. Also the ground everywhere we went yesterday was bone dry--Tug Hill has apparently been in the throes of the same drought the rest of NY state has been experiencing.

Anyways, not a shot was fired. I was hefting my 12 ga. Parker, while Mr. Mike was sporting yet another new shotgun acquisition, this time a 12 gauge Benelli "Superlight," a flat-out-wrong autoloader that needs no plug and can only shoot three shells. Plus it comes with an easily detachable recoil pad.

More on that easily detachable recoil pad later.

After resting at the truck for twenty or so minutes to cool down, we decided at 12 noon to make our way to covert #2, so we drove over to Rectors and hunted "Jim's secret honey hole Covert" just south of the Montague Inn (which is still for sale by the way). One or two of you have seen this covert in previous years, its location still hopefully yet a secret to popple-pounding Penn Staters such as Pete.

heh heh

Anyway, we made our way into the hemlocks and balsams of covert #2 right at the height of the midday siesta at approx 1300 hours. We hunted hard over Gordie criscrossing our way around the increasingly overgrown skid trails that meander throughout the parcel. Nary a flush for the first hour or so. Damn. Where are they?

Until we heard a flush. BIRD!!! Mike and I motion to each other to circle the patch of grass and ferns the bird flushed from, I to the left and Mike to the right--while Gordie took the center.

No sooner had I walked around a tall arrowy white pine, Gordie loosened two more birds loose. WHRRRRRRR. WHRRRRRRR. At the apex of their flight, I managed to fire twice at the rapidly disappearing birds who were busy making a hard right into some spruces. I was pretty sure I didn't get them, but at the sound of the shots a fourth bird went up.

Now you gotta understand some things about this fourth bird.

Things like, (a) it was surrounded by an angel's glow of brilliant yellow light from the sun. When Mr. Mike EVENTUALLY took a shot at the bird, he had had time enough to do a rough Eldridge Hardie sketch of the damn thing.

Second, (b) at this point of the hunt, Mr. Mike had jettisoned his easily detachable Benelli superlight recoil pad. Or should I say, the recoil pad jettisoned him. Either way, Mr. Mike had by this point of the hunt lost his buttplate, leaving two nasty-looking lug nuts exposed and nakedly protruding from the hollowed buttstock of his newly beloved Benelli. The things looked ominously like what you'd see on a Tritronics shock collar.

Needless to say, (c) there was some trepidation and timidity aforehand on Mr. Mike's part about shooting the gun without said buttplate.

So there was Mr. Mike, gazing wonderously over this beautiful grey phase Tug Hill monster that Gordie had just flushed. I myself had the best look of the day at this bird--I saw it all--but alas . . . in the immortal words of Elmer Fudd (note to self: add label "Elmer Fudd" to this post), I had "no more buhwets."

Finally Mr. Mike decides to shoulder his firearm, risk the pain, take one for team, and fire the gun in the hopes of getting young Gordo some grouse gristle in his gullet. BANG! a single shot rang out.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, you already know the outcome. NADA. nothing. zilch.

We searched the area for a while looking for all three grouse we had shot at. We got one reflush from a tree a bit later, and then Gordie (who had been working the entire area insanely ever since the shooting began) finally came of age in the grouse woods by ground trailing one of the birds and eventually forcing a flush while Mr. Mike and I were (ahem) somewhat far away from the dogge while Monday-morning quarterbacking what had just transpired. Meaning: Mr. Mike was telling me the sun was in his eyes.

Sigh. "And that's why they call it hunting."

We hunted for another half hour or so under skies filled with gathering stormclouds, and then eventually headed back towards the trucks. On the way out Gordie managed to smoke out a woodcock, and then another; and a third flushed wild as we broke out onto the road. All in all a fantastic hunt, and it never did rain.

After a break to cool off, consume soft drinks, and converse with some wandering motorists who were exploring the region (the female of the motorists was particularly attractive, Mr. Mike averred), we decided to forego lunch and to squeeze in one last hunt prior to calling it a day. So we decided upon a "happy pin" spot on the map some thirty miles south near Littlejohn WMA, in Boyleston.

The third hunt is a technical operation well suited to Navy Seals and tired grousers. You walk in on a wide open Tug Hill ski trail through a biological desert of hardwoods, you reach the happy covert that is all of about twenty acres, you execute a quick search and destroy mission in this tiny little marshy hollow, and then you exit with prey in hand. Hopefully.

Well, we found a couple of grouse, right on schedule and right where I said they'd be. Mike and Gordie were in the thick stuff, I was out on the main trail doing the path-walking thing, and Gordie put a grouse up that flushed to our rear over the trail we had just walked in on. I wheeled and managed a snap shot at the bird who was gloriously open over the trail about 35 yards away. BANG! and at the report of the gun I saw a distinct shudder in the bird's flight, so I am pretty sure I hit the thing.

But alas. Once again we were unable to reduce the bird to possession. We looked and looked in the area where I'd marked the bird's flight, but nothing.

CRESTFALLEN, I returned with Mike and Gordie to resume the hunt. We had one other bird flush wild a bit later, and that was it. We were in the vehicles by 5:30, sans Bonasa, and the hunt was over.

But the day was judged a fantastic success due to the number of birds seen, but more importantly, by the number of birds Gordie connected with. The young cocker is well on his way to becoming a grouse-getting machine.

And p.s., Mr. Mike is planning on hanging up his POAS pea-shooter and getting a real grouse gun like the rest of us. Good luck with that Mr. Mike.

Happy Times, Tug Hill, 1997

"The hunt which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?"
--Thoreau (loosely paraphrased)