NH Grouse Hunting Update: 10/14
Cold and blustery have been the two adjectives to describe our weather pattern lately. Yesterday morning was a crisp 24 degrees, and we had some biting wind on Friday and Saturday of this weekend. It snowed last night and seems to be sticking around a bit today, but it will be gone soon - we have a slight warm up in store for us this week it appears.
The good news is that it didn’t seem to dampen the grouse and woodcock hunting this weekend. After a morning pursuing some pheasants for my clients’ springer spaniels, we turned to some more traditional covers in pursuit of our native birds on Friday afternoon. We weren’t disappointed, as we moved around 13 grouse and 10 woodcock in the afternoon, with some excellent work from Krystal’s springer Phoenix and Jo-Ann’s springer Bonnie. These are close working bird dogs that literally scour the woods in search of bird scent, and it appeared that they don’t often miss a bird.
On Saturday, we hit several covers in search of grouse and woodcock, as we employed two, and sometimes three dogs (either Phoenix, Bonnie, or Krystal’s springer Levi, and Monty), with good results. The dogs all worked the woods independent of each other, which was great to see. Our morning went very well as the flushers kicked some grouse up in range, and Monty had a nice point on a pair of running grouse (lots of runners right now) that got away. Things slowed down a bit until our last cover of the day, where we put up 4 more grouse and 5 or 6 woodcock. Alas, none fell to the guns, but you can’t hit birds if you don’t shoot, and both Krystal and Jo-Ann were shooting often.
We had a great time and it’s probably safe to say that everyone, dogs included, were tired and satisfied with the weekend’s efforts.
The good news is that it didn’t seem to dampen the grouse and woodcock hunting this weekend. After a morning pursuing some pheasants for my clients’ springer spaniels, we turned to some more traditional covers in pursuit of our native birds on Friday afternoon. We weren’t disappointed, as we moved around 13 grouse and 10 woodcock in the afternoon, with some excellent work from Krystal’s springer Phoenix and Jo-Ann’s springer Bonnie. These are close working bird dogs that literally scour the woods in search of bird scent, and it appeared that they don’t often miss a bird.
On Saturday, we hit several covers in search of grouse and woodcock, as we employed two, and sometimes three dogs (either Phoenix, Bonnie, or Krystal’s springer Levi, and Monty), with good results. The dogs all worked the woods independent of each other, which was great to see. Our morning went very well as the flushers kicked some grouse up in range, and Monty had a nice point on a pair of running grouse (lots of runners right now) that got away. Things slowed down a bit until our last cover of the day, where we put up 4 more grouse and 5 or 6 woodcock. Alas, none fell to the guns, but you can’t hit birds if you don’t shoot, and both Krystal and Jo-Ann were shooting often.
We had a great time and it’s probably safe to say that everyone, dogs included, were tired and satisfied with the weekend’s efforts.
