Blooded my CHE Bernard 16 over a point by Alder from which 5 grouse erupted. I've had this gun for several years and waited until this trip to bring it out of the safe. It just seemed the proper time to use it. Call me crazy, but things have to be just right for a special gun. Not by chance, it was built the same year as the DH 16 I've been using on this trip. There's a story there...

Dang Garry you keep pulling those nice graded Parkers out your safe! Now I know why there aren't any nice ones to be found, you have them all!

McQuarrie is my favorite outdoor writer by far!

some days I call the grouse and woodcock around here "houdini" birds. Today I was so excited to get to run cash around 2 p.m. that I forgot my hand held g.p.s. I didn't realize it until I started to let cash out of car. I put him back in, drove to a long straight 2 track area and just let him quarter back and forth across the 2 track. 5 minutes in his bell quit, luckily I remembered the general area the bell quit. 3 minutes later I found him and a woodcock flushed, another houdini flush into the thickest stuff you can imagine. Cash had 4 points, one he stayed on point for 15 minutes until I found him, another houdini woodcock. I won't do that again, I will go back and get my handheld. I tried to keep him within 20 yards, every time he ranged out a little further, he seemed to go on point. Now I know what it must of been like many years ago before all the beepers and hand helds. My buddies are not finding many woodcock, so both guys I talked to today both were quite happy about cash finding woodcock.

All I use on Grace is a bell. Sure, she goes out a bit too far into the thick stuff from time to time but the bell tells me where she is or was when the bell went silent.





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I have posted numerous times in the past (when I had a good English setter) about the use of bells vs. electronic "beeper" collars. I hate the damned things! They remind me of a trash truck backing up in the woods! The bell is sweet music by comparison and if nothing else it teaches you to really pay attention and listen in the woods.

Great pics, Garry. Thanks.

Is that sentinel pine really virgin growth? If it is it must be existing in some really poor soil.

Best, Stan

Stan, these scattered giants are indeed considered virgin growth, and are probably in the 300-400 year old range. The native forests of Northern Minnesota were comprised of White and Red Pine, part of the successional growth over the area after its most recent glacier receded. Over a long period of time the glacial till and moraines eventually produced these pine forests. The area is comprised of sand hills and bogs/swamps, and it supports a wide variety of plant life. I'm sure that the soil is very acidic, so no matter how rich, it probably does not allow good uptake of minerals by plants, but it obviously suits the pines well enough.

Coincidently, there is a spot not too far from where we stay, call the Lost Forty, where there is a small contiguous stand of virgin pine. It seems that through some error by surveyors, the land was never plotted for harvest, and so was never logged. It's a really unique area (https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/chip...a/?recid=26672), a kind of time capsule for what the forest looked like before the loggers took all the pine back in the 19th Century.

If you're thinking that pine does not look very large, the picture does not do it justice. These are massive trees. As a tree farmer, I'm always drawn to trees wherever we hunt, and we always photograph them when we come across them. If we make it to the Lost Forty area again this year, we'll snap a few photos and post them.

Here's a virgin pine that has died not too long ago. Again, I'm not sure the photo captures its size well, but you get some idea of what these behemoths looked like when the loggers arrived.

We got a late start yesterday, and found a new-to-us spot that looks to have potential. The wind blew a gale, making it hard to track the dogs, and making the birds hunker down. Aspen had several grouse points, but we had no chances from those. He did find one, lone woodcock, and the CHE did its job. I forgot to mention that this gun is an 0 frame 16, and it weighs right at 6 lbs. (in perfect agreement with the research letter). It's about a pound lighter than the DH (and has two inches more on the barrels). At this stage of our trip, it's nice to carry a bit less weight. We are all dragging at this point, and will take a "rain day" off today.

If I were a woodcock... or even a grouse for that matter, That is the gun I would love to fold to and pose with!!





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