Dan, your member info in the little box on the left side of this screen, says your from nw ohio. That's why I responded to your post. Anyway, if you plan to hunt new Hampshire this fall, I'd be happy to join you and would bring my English setter along to locate and point all the grouse and woodcock we come across.

Yes Allen, I live in Oregon just east of Toledo and near the south shore of Lake Erie. I'm a guest in New Hampshire or I'd be happy to have you along. I've got a lovely little English Setter bitch as well along with a beautiful English Pointer bitch. Both are young dogs but moving along the grouse learning curve. I'm a recent convert to grouse hunting having been a pheasant and waterfowl hunter most of my life. I've been running Springer Spaniels and Labs for the last 20 years.

In the 70's Grouse and Quail were in abundance in southern Ohio. Virtually every farm had at least one covey of Quail and if you had some woods with alittle bit of honeysuckle for cover you had Grouse as well. We lived in town but had a 640 acre farm that had five coveys of wild Quail in the bottoms and plenty of grouse in the overgrown hills(that had been timbered). In the late 70's we had a ice storm that starved and killed most of the Quail and they never recovered. I'm not sure what killed off the grouse but their numbers went way down in the 80's and are few and far between now. The quail have come back enough were there is a limited season in some southern Ohio counties but nothing like the heyday of the 60's and 70's. I was lucky to have lived and hunted in the primetime of this era and had some of the best Brittany spaniels to hunt with.

I shot my first grouse in Ohio when I was 15, and was at that moment transformed into a passionate grouse hunter. I was born and raised and still work in SE Ohio, hunting Belmont, Jefferson ,Monroe and Harrison counties mostly. 25-30 flush days were common/expected. Half day hunts were in the upper teens. Best day was 62 flushes around 1990, and we tried not to count obvious reflushes. With a season that was almost 5 months, it was easy to shoot 40-50 (well, maybe not easy) grouse/season. When the grouse pop. started to plummet , the cover was stiil here. I told all who would listen, that it was due to a virus, probably West Nile, but was poo-pooed. I had a Masters in microbiology and was working on a PhD in Microbiology and epidemiology before I went to optometry school. Now look what they are saying.
Now the Appalachian wild turkey population is plummeting, hmm, wonder why.

Anyway, back to the original thread, quite a nice Parker 28, I too, am uncomfortable without a safety, and would add one. Be sure and post pictures afterwards.

Harold could you elaborate on the decline of turkeys. I have been a bit of an amateur pathologist since college and my interest has always been plants in that is how i made my living but have seen a lot of new diseases and insects over the last 10- 20 years. Our crow population succumed to west nile in 2 years time 20 years ago and has not come back.

Read of a disease(virus) in the Hudson valley in New York that halved the deer herd last year. Spread by no-seeums and high fatality rates. Very interested to know what is affecting turkeys in that the area i hunt in Maine they dissapeared in a years time.

Dan, they say when all life, as we know it, will be gone, the cockroach will still be here. I'm beginning to believe the dam ticks will too.

Naah... ticks need blood.





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Dan, they all relocated to Lawrence Ma. where as many as 25,000 are reported to roost on the roofs of the old mill buildings every night.





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I have seen the films of that. That is all there is though, we used to have winter roosts of a few thousand in many locations in south east Ma. and i hunted the areas but they are gone now and the numbers are so small i have a hard time shooting a few.

The ticks will get blood from the rats that survive on cockroaches and ticks.



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