PA:Sportsmen: Grouse hunt great way to end year

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Sportsmen: Grouse hunt great way to end year Sunday, January 13, 2002By Ben Moyer http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/outdoors/20010113moyer6.asp If you follow the outdoors scene in our state you know that the next few weeks hold conflict and confrontation.The Game Commission today begins what might be its most discordant meeting ever. Some speakers will complain about the past deer seasons and others will commend them. Biologists will reveal their antlerless license quotas, and try to sell commissioners and sportsmen alike on antler restrictions for next year's hunts. There's a fight brewing with the Legislature over the control of state game lands, and everyone is holding his breath about the prospect that at least one commissioner will push for crossbows in archery season.At Fish and Boat Commission, commissioners have pitted angler against angler with their proposal to do away with Fly-Fishing-Only areas and staff are facing their first spring under the trout-stocking cutbacks.Sometimes the best things about the outdoors are those that drew you there in the first place.New Year's Eve I invited old friend Rick, Molly (Rick's Gordon setter) and new friend Jack to a favorite grouse cover. After all, they had asked me to Montana to chase prairie ringnecks.The saw timber in this cover was cut in 1991 and Jack, who knows his timber and his grouse, agreed that the jumble of downed tops, wrist-size saplings, multiflora rose hells and grapevine tangles was textbook habitat for ruffs. We walked into the woods feeling fortunate. The air was cold but clear in the winter sun, Molly's coat stood out starkly against the snow, and the stream in the hollow below, where wild brown trout fin, chuckled under its ice.We saw tracks but no birds until Molly locked up along the creek. She held with class as we moved into position. Two grouse went out high and Jack and Rick both missed. Those were the last birds we moved for an hour.Nothing imprints a day outdoors like learning something new about the quarry, which is just what we did when Molly ranged a bit too far ahead where the thickets gave way to open oak woods.Several grouse flushed far ahead, from the big timber, and we wondered why the birds had been there instead of in the classic cover we'd already traversed. When we got to the spot we saw that deer and turkeys had pawed and scratched open big patches of brown leaves in the snow looking for acorns. Some of the patches were as broad as a basketball court. Tracks showed that the grouse had come to the bare patches seeking acorns the bigger game had missed, and they flushed when Molly got too close. I have killed many grouse whose crops were crammed with acorns, and I would have liked for anyone who does not appreciate the importance of mature mast-producing oaks to wildlife to have viewed the scene there in the snow. It was the first evidence I had seen of grouse seeking out and feeding on acorns in places already cleared of snow by turkeys and deer.On the return trip Molly hit more scent. She was excited when we got into the best swath of cover I'd saved for last. Before she locked, a grouse thundered up from under my feet. Rick heard it flush and yelled, "There goes ..." but his warning was cut off by the bark of my double. The grouse fell in sight and was easy to find. It was a male and an unusual russet color. Even the band across the tail and the ruff were chestnut red. About the time I'd gotten the bird in my vest, Molly anchored herself under some grapevines. Jack, Rick and I moved in, speaking softly to let one another know where we were. A grouse boiled out low and straight. Still glowing from my last good shot, I missed it clean, twice. But Jack dropped the grouse going away and made it look easy.That's when things got crazy. Two grouse went straight up and over Rick's head. He emptied his double without cutting a feather and Jack missed one on the way by. Jack shot a pump and he was the only one with a loaded gun at that point. Another bird erupted, but Jack missed and the birds keep flushing. Rick said six tore out of the thick stuff after his gun was empty.Later, we sat in my woodshed, talked, scratched Molly's ears and toasted the New Year. Later still, Kathy and I put some Cornish hens from the grocery store in the oven for company that evening. Since the hens are bigger than grouse, I waited until they'd begun to brown, then placed my plucked russet ruffed grouse in beside them, stuffed with a quartered Cortland apple. It wasn't fair to do that to the hens, or to the guests who had to settle for them.