doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Channing Will-Picture

Mr. Will, I have been enchanted by the picture below your post from the first time I saw it on another forum. Can you please describe what is going on in the picture?

Peter,

Honestly I cant remember where I found this picture. It enchanted me as well when I saw it. There was no story with it when I found it so from what I can tell the grouse is simply being more friendly than usual for some reason. Ive heard stories about people in the woods on quads and having grouse follow them, but have never seen it. Ive been hunting them my entire life, and the damn things never do this for me. I think the gentleman in the picture is trying to feed it a twig of some kind, maybe I should try that instead of my Parker this fall!

I remember a cock pheasant that would not get out of the road and when my dad got out of the car and tried to shoo it away it went after his foot with a vengeance. I wonder if that is what is going on with the ruffed grouse,some sort of territorial thing.

Thanks for the responses. I have a friend with a lot of hummingbird feeders and flowers for hummingbirds. One afternoon I planted myself amongst them with a finger extended and stayed there perfectly still until a hummingbird lit on my finger. That is why I relate to the picture. My current challenge is crawling through the cover with a camera trying to get a picture of one of my dogs in the foreground pointing a woodcock in the background. Maybe I'll get one before I can no longer crawl. Peter

I once hunted grouse for the better part of a morning, then returned to my vehicle and placed my gun in its case in the bed of the truck. As I unlocked the cab door a grouse walked out of the laurel a mere six feet away and stood watching me. I believe it heard me and was just curious what I was doing. I, of course, was hunting without a dog. I suspect a little drum would call them in for photos, but I have not tried it? They are wonderful animals in my opinion!

My friend Richard who lives in Alaska regularly has grouse at his bird feeder and I believe has actually gotten them to eat from his hand after much work at building trust. I know he's at least gotten them to the point that they let him walk right up to the feeder. He had some video he took one year of a cock drumming right in his backyard.

Destry

This challenge is best solved with a stuffed dog and a stuffed woodcock ala wildlife calander photog Ozzie Sweet.

When my daughter was in the Pacific North West, she shot a video of a grouse who had seen their camp and was parading back and forth on a log for several minutes. She figure he was re-asserting his territory claims. He definitely had no fear of these intelopers.

I grew up on a corn and peanut farm in Texas and still live here. In the spring when the corn was first breaking ground , meadow larks, red winged black birds and grackles would wreak havock on the lucious new shoots and left to do their work would literally ruin acres. My dad would use propane operated pop guns to scare them but eventually even then the birds would have to be destroyed. One morning when I was little,my dad had a prarie chicken follow him and start drumming. He came back to get me so I could experience it. Sure enough when we returned to the field the prarie chicken flew over to us and began putting on his show, this went on for a pretty long period. If we drove away he would just follow us and start drumming again. Now this was interesting in itself but that is not what I considered the most interesting. We have never had up to that time or since that time had prarie chickens in our area and we have hunted our farm and the surrounding area as long as I can remember.
My opinion is sometime things just don't need an explanation. I choose to think like the song "I Saw God Today" reflects by country singer George Straite. I think God is just letting us know he's still around and watching.

I have seen that picture before.
I have been searching the files in my hair-topped computer, but can't bring it back EXACTLY. It will be found in an American "hunting-fishing" book written in the 1950s-60s-70s? and the picture was taken in the 1920s-30s IIRC.
Vegging here in Florida sitting out the Canadian winter and don't have access to my main library. If I did, I'd first look in the George Byrd Evans book.