SBH Hunt Report: Maine Grouse, Day 4
This birch cover looked better from the road than it actually was (click to see way bigger).
We knew rain was in the forecast for day 4. Rain and wind. We were going hunting anyway, but figured it was a good day to jump in the truck and look at new areas – in this case meaning entirely new.
We drove south quite a bit to get out of the firs that seemed to be an issue, south in part because of an online USDA map that showed lots of aspen and fewer firs down there. What did we find? Lots of birch. Birch, beech, a few aspens and maples – either not the right density or too much cover (too big), and pretty much every leaf still on the trees.
We put in our time, hunted some, but didn’t see a damn bird except for one random road bird that promptly disappeared in the yellow jungle. It was so windy we couldn’t hear each other shouting even 30 yards away. Crazy.
See any leaves?! Pretty dense....
Last Spot o’ the Day
We drove back up to an area that was somewhat familiar to us to hunt the end of the day. Our plan was to take a look at some cuts found with Google Earth, but we never made it to those areas, which were pretty far in. Instead, we decided to hop out off fairly good logging roads and hunt patches of cover that looked good – and that we could hunt.
We found a couple birds here, of all places (click to see way bigger).
Lo and behold, even in all that wind (and with Jay sneezing his cold virus out every couple minutes), we bumped a few birds. Slowly the lightbulbs started to glow.
Day 4 Count
Getting ready in the a.m.
It was a terrible day to hunt and we figured it would be. We did flush three or four grouse (we couldn’t tell if the last one was a re-flush) and five or six woodies, but no birds on the ground.
Jay had an easy shot at one grouse, but because of the wind had no idea where Brendan was so didn’t take the shot. Ah well. Most of the woodies were shootable, but as we said, we weren’t shooting them.
The day wasn’t a total loss because at some point that evening – maybe helped by the Knob Creek – we realized that the only huntable cover for us was shorter stretches with edges on four sides. The edges could be swamps, creeks, roads, mature forest, whatever – it just had to pen a bird or couple of birds in so we could hunt them.
And the trees had to be the right density and type so that we could see the birds – sometimes running in front of us – and hopefully get a shot.
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> Gore-Tex-lined hunting pants were key, on this day and the rest of the week. Brendan had the LL Bean ones, Jay had Cabela’s ones because Bean won’t have more of the Gore-Tex Upland Technical Pants until next year. Both performed well.
Tomorrow: Day 5 Hunt Report
Category: 2010-11 reports, Cabela's, Clothing, Hunt reports, LL Bean, ME, Ruffed Grouse, SBH, Woodcock
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