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Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1308 Location: Western WA

Took a midday break from deer hunting yesterday to stroll down an old logging railroad bed for grouse. Flushed half a dozen with only result being several cleanly bored 16 ga holes in the sky.

Easiest bird was a close flush with a slow graceful flight through the open timber. How did it know at that moment I was looking down at the cellphone in my hand?

Cheers
B

Joined: 17 Oct 2019 Posts: 455 Location: New Jersey

Most grouse, depending where you are in the country have evolved to elude humans with guns due to 100 or so years of “market hunters”. They were very heavily hunted by very efficient shooters for a long time and through evolution have learned to avoid us. It’s just in their breeding. Big cities like NY, Boston, Philly were big markets at one time for fresh grouse. Number 10 shot was widely used so people wouldn’t break their teeth. It was big business at one time. I read somewhere that a grouse dinner at the turn of the century could cost as much as &2. That’s spendy when most people made that in an entire week. That’s my 2 cents.

Joined: 01 Oct 2007 Posts: 962 Location: Minnesota

I suspect in this case, you stopped to look at your phone. The bird got nervous and flushed.

How do chukars know when I'm deer hunting and the firearm in my hands is a rifle not a shotgun.

Many times I have walked in my same footsteps with either a shotgun or a rifle. Always with a rifle, I scare up a bunch of chukars, but never with a shotgun. Chukar hunting for me is just a long walk on steep hillsides.

Brewster11,

Most times God only lets you take so many wild birds, especially his favorite Grouse.
Thru the years some people swear that Grouse pass down their survival genetics to their young. I do swear Pa Grouse pass down their knowledge of what a dog bell means. We kill a lot more Grouse when the dog does not wear a bell.

God only gives a Grouse hunter so many chances to shoot his king of birds, he grants a Grouse hunter just one or maybe two great Grouse dogs in his life time. Owning such animals is definitely a gift from God.

The more time you spend in the Grouse woods gathering the knowledge needed to become a serious Grouse hunter, the more True doubles and Scotch doubles God presents to you.
It seems you & your dog must pay your dues to become a serious Grouse hunter.

Pine Creek/Dave
Pine Creek Grouse Dog Trainers

Joined: 21 May 2010 Posts: 603 Location: Victoria BC Canada

I have learned to have the gun ready when I stop for a leak. I think they do look for inattention before they break cover

Ruffed grouse have pretty much disappeared in the area of Massachusetts that I hunt, but many years ago I grew up 'cutting my teeth' on them - they seemed to be just about everywhere.

Looking back I now know what the folks a century or so ago felt about the extirpation of buffalo. Most game biologists credit the radical reduction in partridge numbers to poor forest management - but that's another story.

What I recall is partridge seem to have perceptibility, mixed in with a generous portion of unbelievable good luck and innate survival skills.

I recall two kinds of flushes - either they'd bust out just far enough ahead of you in the thickest of thicket, or the 'explode' from 2 to 3 feet of you startling the hell out of you - we nicknamed them "heart attack birds", as an explosive flush would dam near give you a heart attack.

We eventually figured out that a large contributor to success with grouse (as well as with woodcock) were specialized guns and loads.

As a matter of note I did most of my grouse hunting in Andover Massachusetts, no more than a handful of miles away from where the shooting sport of skeet was developed perhaps 50 years previously. Skeet was created by Charles Davis and William Foster in 1920 as a training aid for hunting ruffed grouse.

How do they know? The same way ducks know how to wait until you're pouring coffee before sneaking into your decoys. It's an avian conspiracy. Wink

Or when you take the first bite of a sandwich and you get a fish bite.

Joined: 01 Mar 2017 Posts: 52

Shoulda' taken the shot one handed..? After all - you were totin' a sixteen.

Bill K,

You are absolutely correct about Davis & Foster inventing skeet to practice gunning for Grouse. Many of the different angle shots are on the skeet course, however not all of them. It's is impossible to cover all the different angles and flight patterns a Grouse can make in the forest. I like shooting clays better, with the course set up thru the woods, it makes for a more realistic Grouse gunning experience.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Had a friend admit to me one time that while elk hunting he had his pants down with his behind hanging over a log, when a 6 point bull ran by. His rifle was just out of reach.

I think I would file that experience under "don't ask, don't tell."

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2125 Location: Hudson,Wy

Recently in Nevada, a blue grouse flush the instant I sneezed hard. It escaped unchallenged.

Wyochukar,

It happens to us all sooner or later while Grouse hunting!

all the best,

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man