VT Grouse Hunting Update: 11/5/2017
Saturday turned out to be the opposite … and a very frustrating day of grouse hunting. That morning was dominated by quite a few pointed and closely flushing woodcock (nine to be exact) from the efforts of Bode and Rosie, but strangely enough not a single grouse flush in an area that traditionally has held a good amount of birds. The afternoon session, where we were looking for grouse (my client had limited on woodcock in the morning), yielded only three flushes and none of them offered any opportunity for a shot. The areas that we were in had been the scene of quite a few good days on grouse in the past, so it was surprising to take the bagel. The weather conditions had changed that day - from rainy on Friday to cool and sunny on Saturday - but there was still enough of a breeze for good scenting conditions for the dogs, or so we thought. Just in the wrong spots that day, which turned out to be our worst on grouse sightings this season.
Sunday's breezy weather (ahead of the storm front that came in on Sunday night) made it even more challenging for the dogs to successfully scent and lock down the birds. It was swirling and gusty yesterday to put it mildly, so we had several times when Monty and my client's two Brittanies, Kiya and Pink, seemed to look unsure of where the birds were when stopping on a point. We did have a few staunch points that were rewarded with close flushing chances on grouse (one of which flew right over Monty and the other flew a few feet over my head - thanks Brian for not pulling the trigger), but there were also several times when one of the dogs would lock on point and nothing would be there at all - a grouse that had already gotten out of town we figured. We also had several occasions when the dogs didn't seem to scent the birds at all, pushing them in to flight, rocketing away from us.
While we moved thirteen grouse on Sunday (one taken by Brian), we only moved three woodcock, none of which provided good opportunities for shots. We noticed quite a few areas with chalk from a day or two before in them, but no timberdoodles to be found - perhaps headed to points south we assumed. The season on woodcock ends in New Hampshire and Vermont in a little over a week on November 14, and there still seems to be a few of them around - more than most years at this time.
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The great question, "Is New Hampshire or Vermont better for grouse hunting?", may have to go unanswered for another season. It appears that I didn't compile a large enough sample size from Vermont to know for sure, and I cannot, in good conscience, reach a definitive conclusion on this topic without doing so. Research will have to continue, and I am hoping that it will in December …
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Yesterday was bittersweet - the end of another grouse guiding season for me, my tenth in total, and each year presents its challenges. Most of them are physical as you might imagine, but there is certainly a mental side to hunting our wily grouse these days. The goal is to stay a step ahead of them, and there's been a few times when it has felt that way, but for the most part I'm several steps behind, trying to cram the successes and failures of our days of grouse hunting in to a memory bank that is overfull already. As usual, my clients were an interesting and entertaining mix of folks with a common obsession ("affliction" as one of our veteran grouse hunters at the lodge has put it) and unusually optimistic outlook on bagging a couple grouse or woodcock on our hunts together. Much like grouse coverts, there are clients that have been with me from the start and some that have joined me along the way - I appreciate them all and eagerly anticipate dragging them over hill and dale in search of the King of Gamebirds once again next year …
