Minnesota Grouse Trip, Day 2: Good!

Niiiiiiiiiiice-looking cover.

Morning came late on day two, which gave us ample time to get our gear together and head on over to Reeds Outfitters just to see what kind of interesting stuff they had – like musky-sized in-line spinners that cost $20-30 apiece!

We were amazed Reeds didn’t have any waterproof, shooter-friendly neoprene gloves, but we did get a good tip from a guy named Mikey, who works there, about where to hunt grouse. He advised us to steer clear of the Walker area and instead head west. Quite a bit west.

Seems like we’re slow learners sometimes, but we have learned to be very leery of advice. Still, Mikey seem to know quite a bit about guns, dogs and birds, which gave us a bit of comfort. Plus we knew we hadn’t seen what we needed locally, at least not yet. So we took his tip (one of them) and ran with it – on a better bird day than day 1. Day 2 was cooler and cloudy, just the kind of weather that hot birds needed.

After about an hour ride, we hunted some state land that was all mature forest – though we once again flushed a grouse in it. That grouse was down in a lower bottom, as were all of the grouse we had seen the day before. So one pattern seemed to be wetter bottom lands in mature forest. But we weren’t interested in flushing “a” grouse here and there. We’re Serious, so we wanted to get into some Serious numbers.

We drove around, looked at some more spots and eventually found ideal-sized aspens by a swamp with an old logging road cutting through it. We had high hopes, but after a good 45 minutes to an hour of stomping through one side of it then across the road to another piece of it that also was bordered by a swamp, we were ready to call it quits: No flushes, and all we saw was some old grouse poop on one stump.

We both headed back up the hill to the old logging road to walk back to the truck – and then Jay found a log covered with recent grouse poo. While he was looking at it, he started to hear some crazy chicken clucking, looked up and saw a grouse with its ruff up right at the edge of the road, about 10 yards in front of him. Naturally, as soon as he made eye contact with the bird, it flushed to his right down the road and was gone, no shots taken. But it was a bird!

When you see this, get ready! (click to see bigger)

By that time, the only stretch of the cover we hadn’t stomped was the stretch that the bird had flown toward. So we hunted it, with Brendan on the road and Jay inside the cover.

Jackpot.

It was one log or stump after another covered with recent grouse poo and birds were popping up like… well, like electrocuted chickens.

At first we paused at a stump and, while looking down, the bird (having already run) would flush. After we got burned on that a couple times we’d come up to a stump, then look ahead for a clearing where a bird could flush. Naturally the birds waited to flush until we stopped looking around, and instead looked down or started walking again.

We did take a few shots and reflushed one bird, putting our total flushes at six in just 25 minutes or so. Even though we had no birds on the ground, we were stoked, to say the least.

Here's Jay on the other side of the cover (click to see bigger).

New Spot, Lots of Birds Again

We left that spot, drove around, hunted a similar but not as good area with no success, then circled back to the main road. We wanted to drive back to a spot we’d seen on the way in that looked good, but we’d seen a pickup truck there earlier so stayed away.

When we got there, the pickup truck was gone – but we saw grouse feathers where it’d been parked. Usually that’s the kiss of death and we avoid it, but we decided to stomp this one out because the area we wanted to hunt was far enough off the road that we figured most guys would stay away from it.

We walked down the road, intending to angle off to a likely looking stand of aspens near a pond. We saw a shell casing or two from this year on the road, which again gave us pause but also encouraged us that this was a birdy spot – somehow, because we hadn’t seen what was holding the birds yet, unless it was just moisture.

Turned out the stand of aspen that looked so good from afar actually was too old, and seemed a little dead/ragged. So we kept to the road and hunted a little around a beaver pond/swamp, but no luck. Then we headed up a hill, with Jay on an old overgrown logging road that looked good, and Brendan on the main logging road.

Suddenly a bird flushed from the side of the road Brendan was on. Jay hoofed it over there, and Brendan said the bird flushed “down there” – he pointed downhill to a swampy area where the bird had gone. The 40-watters went on over our heads: Aha! Low area equals birds. So we went down the hill, and promptly flushed another bird. It was on like the fabled Donkey Kong.

We ended up flushing four birds out of that low area and Jay shot one, a young bird. On the long trek back to the car – it was a cloudy day, and we would’ve been in serious doo doo without our Garmin GPSs (both are Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx) – we flushed another one or two birds though out of range.

Jay's bird....

We were psyched! Ten or 11 birds in two spots – it seemed the dry conditions were concentrating the birds into wetter areas, good news for two guys unfamiliar with the area and no dog.

We finished the day by scouting out some new spots by car. Two looked especially sweet, but we saw bird hunters coming out of one and other bird hunters going into the other. We also saw several more orange-clad, with-dog hunters in the area, and had a good talk with a few, but it was apparent to us that this was a popular area. It was also Saturday, and we intended to hunt those spots later in the week, but weren’t able to….

Up Next: Heading into a Record Storm

Category: 2010-11 reports, Hunt reports, MN, Ruffed Grouse, SBH