SBH Hunt Report: Grouse in Maine
Day 1
No grouse here?! (Click to see it way bigger.)
We just got back (yesterday) from a week in Maine chasing the ever-wily ruffed grouse. At least we think that’s what we were chasing. So many leaves on the trees and so much ground vegetation it was tough to tell most of the time – which sucked!
Of course, it didn’t totally suck to get out in the woods and hunt grouse. But we burned up lots of road and leg miles just to even see a grouse, let alone a shootable grouse, and then you have to factor in the required less-than-100% shooting percentage….
Here’s what we experienced, one day at a time.
Expectations Dashed
First an overview of the conditions. We’d heard the Maine summer was hot and dry, like the summer on much of the East Coast. We also heard that Maine was 2 weeks ahead of where it normally is, yearly cycle-wise. And then there was the killer grouse forecast.
So we expected to see many leaves down, the ground vegetation (notably raspberries) largely dead, and thus the grouse – lots of grouse – holding better, and better shooting opportunities than we had last year.
Nope.
Apparently in the area of Maine we went – roughly the Greenville, Rockwood, Jackman triangle – the summer was late and wet. All you had to do was look around to verify that. The trees had as many leaves as New Jersey – maybe more!
Not a good sign, but hey, we were there to hunt regardless of the conditions. So hunt we did.
Day 1
Jay arrived in camp with a cold (crap!) and Lyme disease (from a tick bite in his…crotch), and Brendan got there with a slightly cracked rib he got while playing football with his three sons. A couple geezers.
Nonetheless, after getting up at 5:30 like a couple of kids on Christmas morning, we beat ourselves silly on day 1, hunting a combo of new areas found with Google Earth and familiar covers. We hunted so many areas over the week that some have blended together, but here are a few day 1 highlights:
> 30 degrees in the morning, sunny, probably got up in the 50s, seemed hot.
> One good thing about hunting early is you can tell by the leaf colors what trees are where. Aspens were easy to spot.
> We saw a line of aspens about a quarter to half mile off a road, hunted it and put up woodcock left and right. No grouse, maybe because it was too far from a road – and not entirely grouse-friendly cover from there to the road – but also maybe because of the heat (more about that in our day 2 post). We bailed on the spot because of a lack of grouse.
See that light-green band back there? (Click to see bigger.)
> Eventually we hunted two spots we knew held grouse. At one we flushed none (!) – but put up tons of woodies – and at the other spot we flushed three, two of which acted weird as heck. We’d be seeing no birds, stop to talk and strategize, and all of a sudden see the grouse: clucking, ruffs up, doing a little dance, then they flushed and were gone in half a second.
Day 1 Count
We wound up the day with only three grouse flushes but 30+ woodcock flushes. Jay shot two woodies, Brendan shot a woodie and grouse – that was flushed by a woodie. Seriously. He had his gun up, watching a running woodcock, the woodcock flushed and scared a grouse Brendan hadn’t seen into flushing. Bang, our first grouse of the trip.
We have his whole story on video, but the number of bleeps required – he was pretty excited! – might render it unintelligible. We’ll see what we can do with it.
It was nice to see so many birds – the woodies saved the day, and we could’ve put up 50+ if we tried. But the lack of grouse was a bummer, and worried us a bit.
Not a terrible day, but an odd one.
Tomorrow: Day 2 Report
Category: 2010-11 reports, Hunt reports, ME, Ruffed Grouse, SBH, Woodcock
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hey you guys were here shortly after the remnants of a tropical storm that came through. I was in the rangeley area and they got upwards of 5 inches there, That may account for the damp comditions but in the rangeley area it was just about peak foliage on opening weekend. So still lots of leaves out there.
I enjoyed the short story. I will be going to Maine the second week of October with my 20 month old Llew it will be fun to see her reaction too grouse and woodcock, since she has only had experienso with Bob’s so far. I’m originally from northern Maine, so very familiar with the heavy leave cover early in the season, and will be hunting the Seboies Plantation area where i have a camp.