reporting on a week in Western Maine

[stumpstalker]

I just finished a week-long hunt out of Bosebuck Camps, in the Western Mountains of Maine. It was the tenth traditional Maine sporting camp I have sampled in ten successive years, hunting by now five different watersheds in the State. Some of those camps I have returned to for hunting and/or fishing more than once. None were duds; some remain favorites.

All ten have been “American plan” camps, that is, the management provides three meals daily for the guests, in contrast with “housekeeping” camps.

Last year reportedly was an exceptional one for Grouse numbers in that section. Other Maine areas are doing better this year, I am told, which may account for my having seen only three trucks in the covers containing hunters, save those five used by the 14 guests in our camp. But, that’s not a bad trade-off.

Hunting alone, and with no dog, in an area I have never been to, but with directions to covers provided by the camp owner, in six days I moved [correction: 39; not 44] Ruffed Grouse; took shots at six, missed five, and bagged one. As with fishing, there is a huge difference between one and none.

We were really lucky with the weather. Three days of the six hunting days were overcast and damp, but perfectly hunt-able, except for about 5 hours total of actual rain.


And, three days of the six were pristine – cloudless blue sky; frosty mornings, a high of 50 degree temps – just right for dogs and people on foot on undulating if not rough terrain.


Each day of the six hunted we had barely the occasional perceptible breeze. Hard to believe that in such wild, mountainous country there could be such stillness for the entire week during which hunting was legal (no Sunday hunting allowed in Maine; and yesterday was indeed windy and wet.)

I carried the 16-gauge, 0-frame, 26-inch barreled, cylinder/mod-choked VH, shipped in 1907 from the Meriden to Iver Johnson Sporting Goods, Boston, doing in 2021 what it was intended to do.