Any grouse/woodcock hunters here?

Reveal yourself!

Grouse when I get far enough north. Not real avid, but i enjoy getting out there, and they sure are tasty.

Only if they rare their mangy heads while I am out chasing other critters

Darin, this one's for you

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Blue grouse? No no no Willie. Im talking King Ruff! A much more noble bird!

I love going grouse hunting with my dog Killeen. He's not that great at getting them when down(he ran right pasted this one)

You are in Wisconsin. Grouse heaven!

Never ate grouse, only dove and it was TASTY!

Tucker943 said:

Blue grouse? No no no Willie. Im talking King Ruff! A much more noble bird!

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Out here Ruffies are wittle itty bitties compared to the king grouse of the Northwest... The Blue Grouse.

We have Blues, Ruffies and Spruce Grouse out here. Been hunting them for 30 years,

Gary

I killed a spruce grouse once by accident. How do blues fly compared to ruffs? Are your ruffs spooky and wild or do you have to step on them to flush them?

some parts where i hunt there both spooky & step on them. On Ridges they don't move you could walk right pass them. Boss grouse taste better then Pheasant.

Dumb as rocks here

I hunted them once when I was a kid. I used to hunt pheasants a lot but we didn't have grouse in our area. I flushed one in a thick bunch of brush I was busting through. My Dad asked me why I hadn't taken a shot. They had neglected to tell me you could shoot hens as well as roosters.

Willie, Ruffs, here in The Mid Atlantic/lower New England region are one of the greatest game bird challenges. They are insanely skittish, hardly let dogs point them, and will flush wild on you 30-70 yards away constantly. Theres no stepping on them here. A great day is 20 flushes, 1 to 2 kills.

We usually shoot grouse out of trees. I remember one time a buddy shot at one with a blunt arrow, hit the 2" branch by it's feet. The arrow landed back at our feet, bird still there, Ryan pulled back and just missed behind it's head, close enough it ducked but stayed. I drew back a broadhead and dropped it like a rock. Two arrows for one grouse

The guy that ate that Grouse heart looked like he wanted to throw up after. Like how he dropped it on the ground too, showing much respect for all living things.

It was still pulsing...

That's the nature of myocardial muscle, super cool. You can chop it up and each piece will beat separately until you push them together - then they'll beat as one.

sotc said:

Dumb as rocks here

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Same here. The Blues are a tad "smarter." They will at least fly away if you miss them. Cool thing about the Blues is that they can get to be the size of a small Fryer Chicken.

I was on an old gated abandoned logging road about 10 years ago hunting grouse in the Cascades. I was walking with a buddy of mine. He had a 16 guage, and I had a .22LR with a scope. 3 Ruffies sitting on the road edge. We spied them about 50 yards away. I pulled up the .22 and shot the first one in the neck. The other 2 just sat there looking at their buddy floppin' around. So I lined up on #2, and missed... twice. They still sat there. Finally pegged him on the 3rd shot. Then the 3rd grouse flew into a nearby Alder tree. Where my buddy walked to about 15 yards from him. We waited for him to fly away... no dice. Just sat there. So I threw some bark from a rotten Douggie at him. It took off and my buddy shot him as well. 3 grouse in about 5 minutes.

They don't call them "Fool's Hens" around here for nothin'.

Gary

The ruffs I hunt up in Maine can be dumb, but here in PA, my dog will make say, 12 grouse contacts in a hunt. 5 will flush wild before she goes on point, 5 will flush while she is on point before I can even get to the matter to flush and shoot, and 2 might hold tight long enough for me to flush them.

If you guys are wanting to hunt smart birds, why not go after crows? Those dudes are smart, I see them regularly hiding food and such....killing snakes. I don't know how they taste, though.

Like shite, I bet.

Tucker943 said:

The ruffs I hunt up in Maine can be dumb, but here in PA, my dog will make say, 12 grouse contacts in a hunt. 5 will flush wild before she goes on point, 5 will flush while she is on point before I can even get to the matter to flush and shoot, and 2 might hold tight long enough for me to flush them.

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I have had Ruffies hold long enough for me to actually step on their tail before they flush.

woodworkingboy said:

If you guys are wanting to hunt smart birds, why not go after crows? Those dudes are smart, I see them regularly hiding food and such....killing snakes. I don't know how they taste, though.

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They are smart. But by nature flock to calls and decoys. If you set up a couple of crow decoys, and hide in the brush and call... they will come en'masse. They don't call them a "murder of crows" for nothing. I have killed 50 to 60 crows in a sitting. One thing about them though... is once they are on to you, they stay out of gun range. Smart buggers. They will have a "sentinel" bird that will sit just close enough to keep an eye on you. The sentinel bird will "caw" continuously at every move you make. Alerting the flock to stay away. So once that happens, you have to sneak up undetected and kill the sentinel bird. Once accomplished, you can wait about 15 minutes and start calling again, and they will start to come to your calls and decoys.

But... killing that sentinel bird is no easy feat. Almost impossible to do by yourself. You have to have another person keep the birds attention whuile the other stalks it. Killing crows was pretty entertaining to teenage boys during the "pre-video game" years.

Crows can also tell when you have a weapon. I had crows that routinely got into my neigborhoods garbage cans. So if I exited my home unarmed and waved my arms to scare them away. They would flitter away about 50 feet and look at me like I was crazy. But if I snuck out of the house with a .22 or a pellet rifle... they would flee in earnest as far as they could. I did that little experiment many, many times. Only conclusion I could come up with is that they recognized the rifle as danger. Pretty cool.

Gary

Jay, I hunt grouse for these reasons. Beautiful bird, equally beautiful habitat, challenging dog work, and tough to hit in flight.

Looks like fun, Chris.