Grouse Mythology

I grew up learning from my old man; there’s a story – seasoned with a lesson – behind everything. I’ve heard them ad nauseam. However, when one of hunting would be brought up, he’d get a pass. In them I could go back and hear about the good old days where it was common to drive just twenty five minutes west of the Cities and limit out on roosters or imagine him gunning down a dozen dabblers and divers in just his long johns – because he went over his waders on a late November morning when setting out his decoys (if you didn’t catch it, there’s that seasoned lesson he sneaks in).

“But there is one thing that I’d rather do than anything else; nothing compares to a woods full of grouse.”

I hadn’t the faintest idea what “a woods full of grouse” even looked like. The only fullness I knew was a face full of aspen saplings and water bogged feet in tag alders. This would go for miles on end, for “the only sport of grouse hunting is getting into the thick of it with them”, he’d always say. Where’s the dignity in driving a four wheeler up on one pecking away at the gravel on the trail only to ground pound it?

There is none.

For twelve years straight, I busted and scrapped my way through their country and I had nothing to show for it. I grew frustrated. The “sport” was then lost to the wind; I unfortunately became a meat head. I’d shoot them on a logging trail. I’d shoot them in the yard of my friend’s cabin. I’d shoot from a duck blind. When, in those instances that I did get one, guilt set in, but “meat was back on the menu.” No doubt, they’re the pinnacle of table fare, but, going about it by such means, left a bitter taste of remorse – each serving was like biting down on lead shot.

Therein was the lesson.

Aldo Leopold once said in an essay, Smoky Gold, “There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting, and ruffed-grouse hunting… (the beauty of grouse hunting is that) Between each hanging garden and the creekside is a moss-paved deer trail, handy for the hunter to follow, and for the flushed grouse to cross – in a split second. The question is whether the bird and the gun agree on how a second should be split.”

He went on to mention in a different essay, Red Lanterns, “Whether one passes within gunshot is of course a matter of chance, and you can compute the chance if you have time: 360 degrees divided by 30, or whatever segment of the circle your gun covers. Divide again by 3 or 4, which is your chance of missing, and you have the probability of actual feathers in the hunting coat.”

It’s cynical, really.

The odds are significantly stacked against the sportsman who ventures into grouse cover – damn near laughable. It’s even more so with me. Time and time again I hear that grouse are the weakest of game; most jest, “One pellet is all; break off a nail on their foot and they’ll fall dead as a doornail.” I find these to be blatant lies. In that “split second” where my “chance of missing” is so significant, I typically am left with a poof of feathers that drift down to earth. Time and time again, I’d go to where the bird fell only to be left with nothing but said feathers delicately resting on a quilt of recently fallen aspen leaves. It’s in that modified smoke screen that they go Houdini and disappear altogether.

I know for a fact I’ve dropped more than I’ve killed. So I must be a horrible shot. I must be terrible at marking where they go down. I must have the most worthless accompanying dogs too. All of these are rational.

A couple years ago I was out hunting and cracked off a shot at one that looked like I just blew up a feather pillow. Surely I killed that right? Wrong. It kept flying through a thicket I couldn’t shoot through, nor could my buddy – who later declared he’d, “Never seen a featherless bird fly!”

Who has?

Last year I was out with my old man and three of our dogs (two of which are no strangers to grouse while the other was still learning to earn her nose to their wings). This time, a fully-feathered grouse took air. We both shouldered out shotguns at the sound and, in a flash, synchronized a shot at it. It folded and fell like a sack of potatoes fifteen yards from us. Surely at that distance and with three dogs surrounding where it fell, that bird is in the bag, right? Wrong. We conducted a fifty-yard sweep of the area and were left with us scratching our heads.

Just the other day I was walking through a covert and had one erupt in front of my youngest pup’s nose. I had a tiny window at twenty yards that I was able to put a bead on it. It folded and fell hard in a gnarly thicket. Even if I had just winged it, there’s no way they’re “delicate frames” could handle crashing hard into all those limbs, right? Wrong. The youngest sniffed us to the spot that had feathers scattered in an eight-yard radius, but no dead bird. My old man and I made a perimeter sweep with our dogs – still nothing. We proceeded on while shrugging off yet another one to add a chapter to the Book of Follies. Sixty yards later, his golden retriever was getting hot on a bird. It was mine, dead with its backside blown up and also a broken leg – needless to say I have choice words for those that still claim the one pellet theory.

What more can I do now but smirk when these standard moments occur; I play by the sportsman’s rules. All that’s left are whimsical grey and brown patterned traces floating down from where a creature thundered to flight and disappears like lightning’s flash into a fog of aspen.

I have witnessed greatness. I have beheld ascension. I have perceived mythology.