My hunting season will be cut short this fall (28 Nov) and my best buddy in this is 13 yrs, 2 months, and 15 days old, so we need to make the most of what will be our short season. Teal season was a bust, to say the least. Drought is to blame there, I suspect, and weather hasn't helped. So, we packed up and joined a friend and his two dogs that we hunt with every year. We managed just a few sharptails, but they were my first.


If drought is bad in Iowa, it is horrendous in Nebraska. These Hackberries were wilted, even early in the morning. No wonder we found so few birds.


But the Sandhills are beautiful with huge horizons.




And some interesting wildlife. For some reason, Gus found this more interesting than all the other turtles he has seen.


Sharpies are better eating than I expected when grilled just right.


Very little hunting pressure where we were, but unusually few birds too. Hard to say whether the heat or the few birds were responsible for that.

Gus and I will miss our late winter hunts in Nebraska this year - well 2023 actually, but so it goes. With luck, I'll be back in the game for turkey season and spring rifle matches.

Gus and I had about 9 days at home before packing up and rolling out again. This time North. It was much cooler, almost perfect temperatures. But we got some light rain - nonstop for 1.5 days. That chased the ruffs up into the trees so that we didn't find quite as many as I expected, but we got into them nonetheless. Vegetation is incredibly thick as Lloyd mentioned. Many birds were heard but not seen. Still a great time, but I need another frame to continue this post, so it will have to wait on Dave.

It is warm, though wet so we camped, and will camp again next week, though it will be another 10 degrees cooler, but drier.


It is a bit of an understatement to say the cover is thick. Even with orange, it is hard to see a hunting partner.


But the colors are coming and with them, leaf drop should be pretty quick






Gus was 13 yr, 2 mo, and 22 days for this picture, but still holding his own. None of my dogs have been this strong at his age. He is a remarkable golden.

Thanks Brent and Gus for sharing your hunts with us. Savor every minute!

Looks like a great time and wonderful to see Gus out there still doing it.

I

Great pictures Brent.

Brent,
I'm headed out next week, your photos are a great inspiration!
Karl

Karl, I'm headed back out again on Thursday. They have had several good frosts now, so I hope a lot of leaves are down.

wonderful photography...kudos to you an gus...

Looks awesome. What state did you hunt the sharptails? Oh and the choice of guns?

Good luck the rest of the hunts!

The sharptails were in Nebraska. My Greener and the Cashmore were the guns of choice depending on the wind. The sharpies were really hard to get close to, so the tighter chokes of the Greener were helpful.

For ruffs, I carried the Cashmore and kept the Osborne as back up. I need to figure out how to get a bit more drop on the Osborne, but I can make it work.

I’d 2nd that. How ‘bout a third frame of the guns you used?

I'd love to post some pics of the guns but Nebraska was too hot and the north was too drippy to get it done. I'll be leaving in a few days for Grouse Camp 2 and I promise better photos and gun photos. Should be perfect weather.

I liked that Osborne.

Grouse camp 2 is now in the books. Much tougher than I thought. The weather was fine, and birds were abundant. About 60% of the leaves were down and more falling every minute as hard frosts were occuring nightly. Nonetheless, i've never been so frustrated over getting a shot. For example, two of us got there in mid afternoon. We threw up tents and then went off for a brief hunt - maybe 1.5 hrs. We flushed about 12 birds, but never fired a shot. I might have seen feathers on one of them. They were uncanny about keeping out of sight. And every day there after, they only got better at it. Where they had to be visible, they ducked behind dogs more often than has ever happened before. So, very few shots were taken, few of those (2) were actually reasonably good opportunities and only one was converted. Crazy times. But we had plenty of birds to keep us happy.

We had some interesting interactions with landowners. Some were really great, one or two not so much - one was claiming hundreds of acres of national forest as his own private land. Met a really great CO (unrelated to the landowner issue), and some other great folks. There wa a woman who I'd seen before out there hunting with her fluffy white foo-foo dog of some sort and an old lab. She was darn passionate about grouse and she certainly took her share. Another guy with a pick up truck full of kids. Some had guns, some did not. My favorite had a nice alder stick gun with which he showed a ton of enthusiasm and good "muzzle" control. Tons of road hunters. More than I have ever seen.

But we got some grouse - even me. Only one was a spruce grouse - the most handsome of all the gallinaceous birds that I've ever seen.

I'll just post a bunch of photos and minimal commentary. Grouse camp 3 is set for the first week of November. That will be the end of it for me, with only 3 weeks left of pheasant hunting before shutting down for the season.

You would think, on this ridge of rock and scattered trees, grouse would be easy to shoot. Not so. No shots fired for about 8 flushes or more.




Snowed the first night


Did not deter Gus


Hard to really show the size of this tree, but it is among the biggest Norway Pines I've ever seen

For some reason, I found most of the grouse in the less grousy habitat. What constitutes textbook grouse habitat was often devoid of birds, but a few pockets held them. Mostly they were scattered in overmature or conifer stands instead of places like this.


Or this


They were feeding on alder cone buds and lots of greens and maple or ash seeds. But one bird had these red-to-white berries that almost look like mountain ash, but not quite, unless they were unripe berries. What color is MT Ash before they are brilliant red? Lloyd, if you see this, I would love to know what you think about these.

They were also eating something that had a small somewhat bean-shaped seed. May have been rose hip seeds, but we never saw rose hips in the crops. The seeds were always in the gizzards.



I promised pics of the guns this time, but the new kid in camp got in the way. He's less than 12-mo old, and coming along well. He will be a good one. Pheasants will be his next objective in three weeks.


Here we go. We had three hunters, 6 guns, all doubles.
Left to right, a Henry (Scotland), Cashmore (England), and Boucher (sp?, French). Back-up guns were Greener, Osborne (English), and OShatz (Polish) respectively.


We finished well, that's all that counts.


Next trip may include a bit of time hunting soon-to-be-mine acres that I know hold grouse - though that is not why we are buying it.

Awesome! Good luck.

wonderful images...thank you...

Looks fantastic, particularly from the perspective of the office...thanks for sharing.

Looks like a 5 bird day for you and Gus. Those red fruits in that birds crop look like rose hips to me, the paler fruits look like another dogwood variant (Redosier?). Great photography of both guns and countryside!

No rose hips, but the dogwood - that's a probably a really good guess. Thanks.


Our best day was only 3 birds, but the buddy with the Bourcher pulled it off. The last being the only spruce grouse of the season so far.

I'm headed back up in a few weeks for one more stint.

Brent, I don’t think those cylindrical shaped catkins are from tag alder, more likely they are hazelnut bush catkins. I used to think they were from alder too, but alder catkins are typically larger (young Alder looks a lot like hazelnut, but they aren’t the same). I’ve read grouse eat from alder but I really wonder? Grouse like alder swamps on windy days for escape cover. I’ve collected a lot of grouse with hazelnut bush which sometimes grows thick in mature woods (e.g., in a mature conifer woods, but grows elsewhere too). The green leaf is likely from trembling aspen or maybe speedwell? The red berries may be autumn olive or high bush cranberry. It looks like you had a good hunt. You are right ….grouse hunting is tough. 10x harder than quail hunting. I like to think of it as the Super Bowl of bird hunting. Maybe wild chukar hunting is harder, but I’ve never done that. Btw, I’m heading to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula tomorrow for a hunt. Supposed to be cold and wet early on. Is what it is…

You might be right about the alder/hazel. I thought alders were bigger and fatter as well. A quick google suggests you are exactly right. They sure do like them. Thanks for the correction. Until last year, I had been 48 yrs absent in the grouse woods. I have much catching up to do.

Grouse is tough in its own unique way, but pheasant hunting, where we go, is tougher by far - at least so far as physical exertion goes. But grousing has much rougher footing and more balancing acts, scrambling, and what not. Just different. Doesn't really matter what's tough or easy. We like them all and do as much as possible, which will be much less than normal this year.

Good luck in the UP. I'm hearing lots of conflicting reports on bird abundance around the Great Lakes. I hope you get into good numbers.