Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310310127
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was like walking into a Renaissance painting, color everywhere, reds, yellows, oranges, flaming from the balmy creek bottoms to the sun-kissed ridge tops.
I'm not certain if my gang was ready for this bare-arms action. It appeared that since the last grouse hunt in February the ridges had gotten steeper, the shotguns heavier and the brier protection on our hunting pants thinner.
A couple days after our hunt, my young companion would ask with a puzzled look, "Did you get unusually tired this time?"
We were like a football team in August, too much fat and not enough muscle.
Early season can be tough on a dog, too. Gun dogs, like athletes, improve with time afield and experience, but there seldom seems to be enough time to achieve prefection. Either grouse are too wily and unpredictable or dogs don't live long enough. One day they are puppies that waddle toward you like furry piglets, the next they have gray on their muzzle and dullness in their eyes. You hope for a few good years in between.
My companion's dog is young, a setter with silky, white hair, easily seen in the autumn woods. Her eagerness for the new season was reflected in searching patterns that reached out a bit farther than her owner desired. Adjustments were made, gentle at first, then with a blast on a whistle, later a shout. At the beginning of every season, you must establish who will be running the hunts.
Autumn holds a special magic for a hunter. Clean air, crisper temperatures, an artist's palette of color, the eagerness of a pointing dog, the birth of expectations. Some see fall as nature's benediction; hunters view it as an invocation.
So where are the grouse? That is something you hope to establish at the beginning of the season. Or, at least, by the end of it.
Bruce Richardson, a Highland County resident and a founder of the National Ruffed Grouse Society, once made one of the most profound statements I've ever heard about this upland game bird. "They don't have any habits," he said.
It definitely is that way this year. The birds are scattered, anywhere, everywhere and nowhere. Food is so abundant they can find more than enough to stuff their crop in an area little larger than a bushel basket.
Every plant, every bush, every vine, every tree appears to have berries, fruit, seeds or nuts. If not food, thorns. Sometimes food and thorns. Briers, too. All had claims on our hide.
The dog punched the first grouse of the young season from under a tree lap. It was a big bird, chestnut etched with black, and its powerful wings brought it closer to me than to my companions. It moved rapidly, in contrast to the slowness of my gun coming into shooting position. No question, the grouse were in shape for this opener.
I have witnessed such flights scores of times, but they've never become routine. Maybe it was awe that kept me from shooting. More likely, it was slowness. A little later in the season, I expect to be prepared for an opportunity like this.
The next grouse flushed wild, in a hollow below us. After that a woodcock, twittering like a remote-controlled toy, gave the three of us something to shoot at, and something to watch heading unruffled along the contour of a hollow.
The brief hunt didn't do much for egos or flushing rates, but, after all, it still is October.
by CNB