Days 6-7, ME: Decent Numbers, But…
Near the end of day 6: grouse 17, wooodies 1, hunters zero.
Where’s the next good cover? We don’t know, but we’re going to find it. Sometimes that’s our problem when we’re after birds. We’re always in search of the undiscovered honey hole or clue to finding more birds. It’s a problem and a benefit at times. Day 6 of our Maine grouse hunt was more on the benefit side while day 7 wasn’t.
Day 6
On day 6 we decided to shoot north-ish again from Rangeley, this time on a different road. The road was sort of near (on a map) a road we’d hunted off on day 5 with good results. But it turned out this road was gated shut pretty quickly. We hunted a decent-looking area near the gate and flushed one grouse and a woodie, but that was it.
Since we were near an area where we’d had success – a particular type of river bottom – we decided to hunt across a road from that bottom as well as a loooooooong ways down one bank and back up the other.
We put up a couple of grouse on the side of the road away from the stream edge, Brendan shot once, but no bird. The short story on the long walks down on the stream edges was that we flushed a bunch of birds, none shot. From that we learned a thing or two, which will be in the hunt round-up coming this week.
This cover had the right stuff. The pine in the background is one clue....
Right after Jay took this photo, he stepped onto the bank and a grouse flushed from a tree right next to him. Doh!
The Federals were doing it for Sean....
The count for the day was was 17 grouse flushes and 4 woodcock flushes, with Sean banging one woodcock.
Definitely a letdown from day 5, but hey, that’s what you get for committing to a new area. Should add that there aren’t many roads up Rangeley way, so once you commit to an up-north area you’re kind of there for the day.
Day 7
If day 6 was a letdown, day 7 was even more so. Once again we went to a new spot on the map. We ended up hunting wet areas with alders and pines, but that wasn’t what we needed. All three of those elements were important (pines, alders, wet), but an area needed another one or two things to make it good or great.
Had to ford this stream to get...
...here but no birds.
We’d scratched out only 2 grouse and 4 woodcock flushes by 3:00. Didn’t know if if was that low count or the fact that it was day 7, but we were dragging big time.
And then we found ourselves near a cover we’d hunted on day 5. This was a hillside at 2,500 feet – way higher than we’d been finding grouse, but the habitat was good and the birds were there.
Second day in a row Sean redeemed us....
On day 5 we’d put up 3 or 4 grouse from this hill, so we had pretty high hopes walking in (“pretty high” because you never know…). Thankfully the birds didn’t disappoint. About 5 minutes in, 3 birds flushed from one pine stand. We chased them, and Sean ended up dropping one that again flushed from a tree with one shot. Amazingly, it was the first bird we’d gotten that day, so we all felt good about it.
We hunted that hill for 30 minutes and got 8 flushes (4-5 birds), giving us 10 grouse flushes and 4 woodie flushes on the day.
Bottom Line
The bottom line was two crappy days. Okay, not entirely crappy – we were hunting in Maine, saw birds every day, it wasn’t pouring rain, etc. – but based on what we found on day 5 and figured we knew, we all felt we should’ve done better.
Sean had to bail before dawn the next day, day 8, the final day of the trip. So that left two of us, both beat, both knowing darn sure neither would say uncle before the other. Once again we decided to go to a new area. Glad we did (more tomorrow!).
Pic of the Day
Jay was the only one up for trying to get across, but was outvoted....
Category: 2011-12 reports, Hunt reports, ME, Ruffed Grouse, SBH, Woodcock
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