A few Maine Birds

[Zacharysmith]

My buddies and I changed up bird camps a bit this year. Instead of 2 trips to the north country we took one long 12 day trip to two separate camps. I hunt my two girls separately to keep their legs as fresh as I can and try not to overwork my old pro Bella. Very dry conditions didn't help my return to my regular covers as I found them lacking of normal numbers of birds. We did find decent grouse numbers but the Woodcock numbers were way down as they were not heading south yet. They were flying great last week when we intercepted a bunch though. My 2 year old, Cleo did well being exposed to a 100 birds or so and I was finally able to connect on a pointed grouse by her. Actually there were 3 together in a beech tree grove and only could get a look at one. The photo of us and the couple regrowth feathers is her first. Luckily, the retrieve to hand did not damage any tail feathers and the fan is currently drying for the wall. I was happy to finally have my 26" DHE 16 0 frame cleaned up and it got some good use. When I needed a bit more choke the 26" Trojan 20 and the IM choke helped out for that extra 10 yards or so.