Grouse at the truck when leaving..... I can't remember how many times that has happened to me. I think I have had the same experience at least 1 or 2 times EVERY season.

Funny how that happens... Dave and Danny and I hunted a sidehill and walked closely on either side of a lone apple at the edge of a grove of twenty-five year old pines. Really expected a grouse to be on the ground there, but there were none to be found so we moved on to sweep the rest of the hillside. Returning an hour and a half later with guns over our shoulders grasping the barrels we walked within twenty feet of that apple and this big brown grouse busts into the wide open leaving us standing there slack-jawed . . . well, maybe Dave uttered a nasty word or two :nono:

Yup..Thats exactly how it happened. I can still see that beautiful bird in my mind and I have relived the shot that never happened a thousand times..:banghead:

Our Grouse and woodcock season came in this past Sat., with the weather being so crappy didn't go for birds but took the 28 out Monday evening for a stroll after work,with My Brit. Chip, found a brace .

Good work Russ...God I love Britts. :bowdown:

Thanks Dave ;I really like my Britts also ,I have the mother of this dog ,she is 14 yrs.old and retired from the field about two seasons ago .She is a wonderful friend and one of the best bird finders I have ever hunted with , this Male is pretty good but not like mom ,He is well mannered and find birds but our Grouse have been down since I Whelped him and he just hasn't had the experience with them and when we do get into Grouse he has a tendency to move in too close and will bump the majority of them ,He is fantastic on Woodcock and very good on Pheasant ,I am confident he just hasn't had the opportunity to handle enough Grouse ,if he had I believe he would be good on them ,he has a super nose ,we just don't have enough Grouse !!

Russ,From talking to quite a few guys the grouse populations have been down everywhere.That makes it real hard to train a young dog as you know the only way to make em better is to show them more birds. I haven,t flushed or even seen a wookcock in two seasons. No splash no nothin. Well maybe this weekend...

Dave; I wish you luck on the Woodcock sightings ,I have hunted them since I was 12 years old , Other than Grouse ,my favorite but the last few years the Grouse are really hard to come by ! My buddies always thought I was nuts ,they wouldn't waste there time ,Maybe thats why I enjoy the company of my Britts , they seem to enjoy hunting the same things I do !!

Some would think this meager returns for many hours of slogging and bulldozing through the blackberry tangles, thornapple thickets, hillside scrub apples that tear at your clothing and any exposed flesh and they would be correct if we didn't have the memories that go along with a day like the one Jamie and I just spent in the Northeast Kingdom of Vt. The grouse were sparse this time. Last weekend was better but since then a team of ground-swatting meat hunters spent the week terrorizing the wild critters.
But Jamie and I had a great time. We blew some holes in the sky and chopped up some vegetation in a poor effort to bring down a few grouse but it was all to no avail - but what fun we had! A pa'tridge launched into a thunderous flush mere feet from my position in a grown up orchard and I let fly with my right barrel then, noticing the nonchalance with which he dodged my perfectly directed shot charge, I sent another load in his direction just to speed him up in order to present a challenging target for Jamie. Well, Jamie took the bait and sent two "hail Marys" of his own at that speedster. We laughed and laughed at ourselves over that despicable display of shooting prowess. Hey, if you can't laugh at yourself you don't have any right to laugh at anybody else's mistakes, right?

What I'm saying is that one little woodcock doesn't represent a poor day's hunt - in this case it represents the culmination of hours of good times, great memories and a sore and stiff body (which is my measure of a good time in the grouse woods).

This woodcock flushed in the last twenty feet of the last covert of the last hunt of the last day of a wonderfully successful weekend at grouse camp! :bigbye:

As an afterthought, this must have been a flight bird - easily identified by the protruding breastbone and rather scrawny amount of breast meat. A native bird, prior to migration, has much plumper breasts with the point of the breastbone deep between them . . . kinda reminds me of a girl I used to date :rolleyes: