Mr. Ruff....
I'll make a long interesting story short; my wife and I were adopted by a wild grouse, these days referred to as Mr. Ruff. This all happened in Sept. of 2013. I was putting in a new line fence on the south forty; the heat whipped me and I sat down in the 4 wheeler to rest. Temp was 91 degrees. Heard a noise off to my left, looked over and about thirty feet away was a beautiful ruffed grouse. Actually there were two, maybe three of them. I pointed them out to my helper; we sat there about 15 minutes and one worked his way over to us and just sat there. The others disappeared. He was making a noise and I chirped back at him, he cocked his head and moved even closer. Now he was perhaps 3 feet from me. Just unreal and it gets even more unreal. Decided I'd done enough work for the day, cranked up the four wheeler and headed to the bunkhouse. The grouse started running right along beside us all the way to the edge of the timber. Then he stopped knowing he was not secure out in the hay field.
Told my wife about him at supper that evening and she couldn't believe it. Took her to the woods the next day and within 10 minutes he showed up. He was with us all fall, through deer season and into the winter of 2013 which was one of our worst; terrible cold and record snow. We figured we'd never see Mr. Ruff again. We looked for him several times during the winter thinking we saw him once up in the pine grove but figured he was lost with the severe weather and all. Guess what? Late March of 2014 we went to the timber and within a few minutes he showed up. I failed to mention earlier that he became so comfortable with us he'd sit on our arm, shoulder, on the four wheeler and actually sat in a deer stand during hunting for over three hours.
Going into winter of '14 we lost him again; presumably to the pine grove which is high, dense and secure in many ways. Well, 2014 was another tough winter here; not a great deal of snow but record sub zero cold and wind; we knew for sure we'd probably never see him again.
Last week my wife and I went to the timber in the old four wheeler. Took the chain saw to remove downed trees from fences, etc. and after about thirty minutes in the woods guess who showed up?....Yes, Mr. Ruff. That was March 15, 2015. He made it through another tough winter and looked to be in really good condition. Within a few minutes he was sitting on my wife's arm and renewing and reviewing old times. We've been back to the woods a couple times since then and he flies right to the four wheeler. We have well over a hundred pictures of him with us, with friends who doubted our story and even on the arm of Dr. Zimmer the wildlife biologist from the Ruffed Grouse Society. I could go on and on but don't want to bore you. Am in the process of writing a story about our Mr. Ruff for the Ruff Grouse Society magazine. Will tell in there about many of his adventures and how he survived an attack from a hawk. (he almost didn't-we thought for sure he was going to die) We also have many videos of him. We've never fed him as we didn't want him to become dependent upon us. We also know this won't last forever as Grouse have a life expectancy of 3-5 years with an average life of two years. What a blessing he has been to us, our family and many friends. Sorry I don't know how to load pictures which would really enable you to enjoy and get to know Mr. Ruff as we have.
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