Grousing!

 

    Fall is a damned busy time, though sometimes parts of it still feel like summer, which is also damned busy. 

Summer is full of fishing.  

And berry picking.

 

 

 

 

 

And berry picking can trail into fall time if you're careful about it.  Berry picking saved our caribou trip this year.

But I reckon the clarion call of fall time for us grouse season!  In our area the opener coincides with caribou.  Don't get me wrong, caribou hunting excites me, but grousing really turns my gears.  

 Upland bird hunting has rung my bell since I could work the pump on my first 22, a Rossi with an exposed hammer my dad bought me when I was too young but caught him in a moment of weakness.  That gun accounted for an untold number of ptarmigan, no grouse where I grew up.  It was also responsible for many ground squirrels, thousands of soda cans and distant rocks exposed in the mud at low tide, and I even missed a few seals with it.  

 My preferred tool for ptarmigan when I was a kid was a 20 gauge Remington 870 I bought with my first year's commercial fishing money.  The first year I got paid anyway, I think I was nine.  

But today, my preference for upland bird hunting is with a traditional bow and arrows tipped with Judos or other blunts.  For years I used 3/8 oak dowels with 38/357 brass with nails epoxied though the blunt as cross arms, using enough nail, or even coat hanger, so that the case and arms would weigh the same as some stone points I was gifted, with the intent of putting them through a bear.  That still hasn't happened yet, but I kilt many a grouse and rabbit with those improvised Judo heads.  Today I use carbon arrows, and I cannot argue with their consistency one bit, and am considerably less frustrated in their construction.  But, the satisfaction was greater when my dowels hit their target.

Here's a double on rabbits (yes, I know they're snowshoe hares, but most of know what we're colloquially calling them.) 

 This was my first grouse with the bow and arrow.  We regularly walked the neighborhood, and this bird might have still been warm when dropped into bacon grease on cast iron back at the house.  I'm pretty sure that my kid pegged this one, maybe one of it's brood mates, with the BB gun.

Oldest is here chasing more birds from that covey with his trusty BB gun.  He never did actually take one with it, never could hit them in the head, but he did ruffle some feathers. 
 

 

 

   

I remember clearly both my sons' first grouse, taken with a break open single shot 410.  Oldest's was a short evening drive from the house after dinner, moose season around the corner but still t shirt weather.  He had blown several stalks already that season, not shooting when told and trying to get even closer.  We were trying to line up a shot on a bird on the ground near the gravel road, but it and several other spooked to the trees, making for a better situation given the topography.  It stood on a branch clearly silhouetted by blue sky, he could see it, so I sent him walking by himself, and when I deemed him close enough I started to whisper yell "shoot it!"  He kept walking, and kept walking, and miraculously the bird stayed until the kid decided it was time to shoot, and he leveled it out of the tree.

 Here is Oldest with his first grouse.  We stretched and dried the tail fan to commemorate it. 

Second's was in the same area, we came across a covey on the road and had to encourage them off so as not to be shooting on/at/from/across the driveable surface of the roadway.  It spooked up into a big spruce, we stepped off and at first Second couldn't see it.  I was pointing my finger at it, pointing his face at it, and eventually it moved just so, and he was able to put the bead of that same break open 410 on it.  I think he jerked the trigger, a habit I'm continually working on with them as I am myself, the shot rattling the spruce bough in the vicinity of the treed bird, but failing to knock it out of the tree, and it didn't flush either.  Second had almost finished reloading from the leather cartridge sleeve I made for the stock of that gun, when the bird fell dead from the tree, evidently from a severed femoral artery we found later when preparing it for the skillet.

That was actually a productive day for birds.  I may have even taken one with the recurve, I kept them on a strict rotation of who's turn it was to shoot, and on occasion flung an arrow myself, but it was much more about them at the time.  Now the boys are old enough that I take my turn more regularly, and as Daughter gets more into it she'll probably take Daddy's turn.

They each got a handfull, I think I only got feathers and some stumps with the bow that day.

I've taken them all since I had to tote them in a pack, and have been known to push a stroller along the two track as well.

I'm not sure they remember a time when they didn't get to go.  Diaper changes in the woods are thankfully a thing of the past. 

That pack carried them for miles, near the house and off in the woods, even when trying to fill my archery moose tag in the neighborhood.  There's no telling how many critters they spooked off with their babbling in the pack.  Though I may have been slightly annoyed at the time, I knew what I was getting into when taking them and regret nothing about bringing them, I don't even regret their many misses.  Thankfully, we weren't hungry, if we were I'd have been hunting by myself, and with a shotgun. 

When they're blessed with their own brats, they better remember how I took them when they were young, even though it was difficult and I might have gotten more critters by myself.  But if I didn't take them, I wouldn't have these memories to look back on, and neither would they.   They better put me in the good home.