I never knew my grandparents on either of my parents sides - they had all died before I was born in '48.

My Dad was never a hunter or fisher until he was invited to Hubert's deer camp in the Vermont hills in about '53 or '54. Hubert eventually became fire chief in St. Johnsbury around '70 or so. As it was, Hubert sort of became my 'grandfather' mentor. He was born and raised in the hills and knew hardship through the depression years when he was in his teens so he carried a thriftiness all through his life and never wasted a single thing.
Hubert took me on my first grouse hunt there in those hills in October of 1960. Here is an excerpt of something I wrote about that first hunt.

.. "I think I know where we'll find some pa'tridge." Hubert said as we lurched out of the driveway and down the old dirt road toward the Four Corners. I can't remember how we got to where we went that afternoon and I know I could never find it again but eventually we turned onto a little-used dirt track which wound along through some of the prettiest woodcock and ruffed grouse cover I can ever remember seeing. The young trees and underbrush grew right to the road and scraped down both sides of the little Jeep as we slowly pushed our way through.
Thornapple, black birch, alders, poplar and the occasional wild apple tree seemed to crowd each other for what little sunlight entered there. "There's one right there!" Hubert announced as he pointed off into an old apple tree. The Jeep suddenly bucked to an abrupt halt and I found myself getting up off the floor after having bounced off the dashboard. "Get the gun, here's some shells," he ordered as he thrust a couple of green, paper-hulled sixteens into my hand. "Why two?" I asked, "It's only a single shot!" "There may be more than one bird in
there," he replied logically. I proceeded to load the gun and snapped it gently shut hoping the grouse wouldn't fly before I was ready. He was, after all, only about twenty yards from where I stood. "What should I do?" I asked. "I've never
shot a partridge before." "Simple," Hubert replied with that twinkle again in his eye. "You just shoot it." I turned around and looked for a stick or rock to throw at the grouse to make it fly. I picked up a stout little stick, hauled off and sent it sailing in the bird's direction but all it did was stretch its neck up and peer at me with one shiny black eye. As I was looking around for another stick to throw and scare the bird from its perch, Hubert hollered, "What in Hell are you doing?"
"Well," I said, ''I'm trying to make him fly so I can shoot him. I'm not going to shoot him just sitting there on that branch."
"Why not?" Hubert asked, "Everybody else does.”

I had read enough about grouse hunting in Field & Stream and other sportsmen's magazines to know that it just wasn't done that way; it just wasn't sporting to shoot a bird in a tree or on the ground and I wasn't about to start that way. I explained this to Hubert as I continued to look around for another projectile to hurl at the grouse. Hubert grew up in Tampico at a time when the family's supply of fresh meat was supplemented by that which Mother Nature provided. To waste a shot at a flying game bird when it could easily have been shot from its perch was considered next to sinful. Game was taken solely for the pot, so the "pot-shot" was the approved method of procuring game, not that it was wrong, for certainly then, it was not. It was nothing more than efficient. But, pot-shooting was not for me. Not then and not now.

"Bullshit!" Hubert harrumphed defensively. "I have shot my fair share of pa'tridges and most of them were either on the ground or in trees. If you wait 'til they fly you're likely as not to miss 'em so just shoot it!" I bent down to pick up another stick to send at the dumb bird still sitting there in the apple tree and as I straightened up I heard the unmistakable "P-r-t, p-r-t, p-r-r-t" which I have since come to recognize as an announcement of the grouse's intention to immediately take to wing. Well that grouse took the back way out of that tree, darting and crashing through twigs and leaves while dodging the largest branches as it rocketed back through the thick growth behind the tree it had so innocently been sitting in only a moment before.

Last edited by DAM16SXS; 03/10/19 09:23 PM.