doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Not just for the grouse guys

Smith’s oil at the top of this article is magnetic to me. But it’s the article that is too good to just be let disappear into the magazine stack. I imagine all of us have a similar enduring memory of a special day in a special place (maybe many) and if it’s long ago, the same concern as the author:

“Maybe it’s better that I don’t know what’s happened there over the years and that I assume the old chimney is still standing sentinel over that wonderful bird cover where grouse forage on drops from the old apple trees and roost in the big white pines…”

https://sportingclassicsdaily.com/snow-grouse/

In my life those kind of memories often come back as remembrances of "the graveyard covey". So often an old, overgrown graveyard would be part of the cover for a covey of 'buhds", bobwhites. There would so very often also be a single rabbit in the nearby vicinity.

Grandad quipped that the luckiest charm you could carry in your pants pocket was the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit.

I’ve never hunted ruffed grouse in the east.

That said, it would seem that in the east ruffed grouse are associated with either agriculture, or, the remains of what once was agriculture, abandoned farms, especially. Some of my best hunting is in areas of Pine and Aiken counties that were logged off at the turn of the last century, and then mostly forgotten about, save for periodic paper mill logging. There is a bit of evidence that people attempted to farm, but, scant evidence that it was worth the effort. Red pine and aspen do well in soil you can’t even grow vegetables in, and much of those two counties fall into that description.

The good news is if the state owns it, you can pretty much hunt it. The bad news is the state owns most of those two counties, and they are poor. One thing to hunt there, another entirely to live in an area that looks as if anything of value was scraped off a long time ago.

Best,
Ted

Where I grew up in NW Pennsylvania it looks alot like this lovely rendering in early winter. The abandoned farms and little homes were there too and we hunted around many of them as younger men. It was already a "resistant pocket of depression" by the time I graduated high school in 1976 and that particular malady only seems to have deepened since my departure from there in the middle 1980s.

Access to many of those places is no-longer available because so-much of it is posted now. That sense of a community's use of a "shared resource" is overshadowed now by a fear of "liability" (& perhaps by some previous bad behavior). Bird populations there have also plummeted for a number of reasons. West Nile Virus was blamed heavily by the State Game Commission but the numbers had already been badly-reduced before that particular pestilence became generally known there.

I always wondered about how wild turkey populations affected the ruffed grouse populations in the coverts of my boyhood home (because as one gained population the other seemed to lose) but I have by told by several "experts" now that my observations were merely a coincidence.

Oh well...

ditto...

Thanks for the kind words FallCreekFan. It's a true story that occurred about 45 years ago. Like so many of the overgrown Appalachian abandoned farms of that era, I'm guessing that Stone City is now mature forest (hopefully not developed) and no longer good grouse cover.

A rare and pleasant experience to be able to thank the author personally for a fine story well told.

And a second thanks for the power of your writing to surface our own special memories.

wonderful images...

That picture reminds me of a place we called "Windy City". All that remains there now are sidewalks and non-native plants and trees.

It reminds me so much of my own "Scrubapple Hillside" in Vermont's North East Kingdom.

I started hunting those covers in deer season in 1961 but soon learned they were grouse havens and the occasional woodcock flight would drop in.
There were old "tote roads", originally farm roads, in those wooded hills. we hunted abandoned farms like the old "Bedore Place" or the "Hall Place" or the "Fink Place" up on Fink's Hill. Today they have been logged twice since '61 and the cleated skidder tires have ground into the earth any evidence of what we once knew; foundations, stone walls, stone dams for water power...
There was a spot off the back corner of a field of the Heath Farm that had the remains of two model A's and a '29 Ford touring car that we used to call "The Old Ford Covert" but an AH driving a skidder flattened every one of them for no reason whatsoever except that he had the power to do so... Today it is known as "The Tin Pile" and few remember what it once was... but I have pictures both in my pictures folder as well as in my memory.
I only wish it was easier to post pictures here...

similar to a place I used to hunt in ny in the seventies...

50 miles north of Grand Central station, in Manhattan...

now, all just houses, lawns and cultivated shrubs that deer just love...

specially junipers...

That was mighty fine writing and evoked deep emotions. I even forwarded the article to my dad who is an accomplished hunter but who started out as and still is at heart an old New England partridge hunter.
I grew up hearing tales of places that used to be great bird cover but were now housing developments. Now I'm making the same observations to my own boys.

Thank you Jason.

Seems like it turned out to be mostly for the grouse guys after all.

Maybe, but, it was good reading with a nice art representation.

Grouse hunting later in the season is sometimes hit or miss. Often, I stomp around in the snow and don’t even see footprints. Other times, you hunt all day and stumble on a spot that half a dozen of them fly out of. There is a glacial ridge that runs a few hundred yards on some public dirt I hunt in Pine County, MN, that I was walking parallel to, in about two feet of snow. The ridge is about 10 feet tall, and for no reason I could discern, the grouse rocketed out over my head, presenting a few wonderful shots. I got three out of about eight that were loafing on the ridge. They flew off, one or two at a time. There wasn’t a good reason for them to be there, no food, almost no cover, and fairly exposed to avians.

Never have seen another grouse anywhere near that spot. Believe me, I’ve looked. They were on that ridge 25 years ago, but, not since, that I can tell.

Best,
Ted

Stan;

Have you discovered Covey Rise magazine?

Last year John Boyd sent me some old issues and I subscribed. Produced over in Alexander City, Alabama.

Kind Regards;
Stephen Howell

I have not, Stephen. Sounds like something I need to look into. I don't get a single hunting rag anymore. There are a few hunting articles in the AH Fox and Parker newsletters, but I kinda miss the good stories I used to be able to enjoy in others.

I will certainly give it a "look see".

Thank you, and may you steadily gain in strength and vigor!

Stan;

Here is a quick look at Covey Rise magazine.

https://coveyrisemagazine.com/

Kind Regards;
Stephen Howell

Is that the correct title they put on that print?

Those old covers, birds flushing, and quiet surroundings become something personal and lasting. Articles like that do deserve a second life beyond the magazine stack—they remind you why you started in the first place and what keeps pulling you back.