Sunday, January 22, 2017

End of Season

Our grouse season ended Saturday but my last hunting day was on Thursday. Thicket and I moved 4 grouse but none would hold still for a point. At least I know that there may be some "breeders" left for next spring.





Thicket enjoyed the time afield even if the birds didn't cooperate.


 
 
As always I look to nature of interesting pics. Here are some different fungi I saw.


 
Just read that the Pa. Game Commission is proposing to end the after Christmas grouse season next year.  While this is surely not the reason for the grouse decline in Pa maybe it will allow some "breeders" to survive and perhaps increase the population. 


Monday, January 16, 2017

Finally Made it Back Out

The weather, health problems, and medical procedures have kept me out of the woods for several weeks. Things finally "lined up" and Thicket and I headed north today to hunt the Windy Ridge, Brady, and Irvin coverts.


 
I saw Thicket working scent below me but she crowded the grouse and it flushed out in front of her. Later her beeper went off  but before I could reach her the bird flushed. Whether she crowded it or it flushed on it's own I don't know.
 
This was only my second time hunting the Irvin covert. It looks like it should hold some birds and although Thicket hunted it hard we moved no birds today.


 
 
As we worked our way back toward the truck through the Brady covert something lying in the old gas well road caught my eye. When I picked it up I saw that it was the paper disc off the end of my roll crimped shell that I had shot at a bird Emma had pointed several weeks ago. A reminder of a bird I should have hit.
 
 
No birds were found in the Brady covert either so the hunt ended with two bird contacts. Hopefully Thicket  learned a little something from them.


 

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Wild Flushes and Empty Points

Emma and I hunted the Belden covert last week. The battery in my camera went dead part way through the hunt so pics are limited. It's a lung bursting climb up the ridge to get to the clear cut. Much of the cut is thick with blackberry briers with aspen and locust trees coming back. Right now I hunt mostly the edges.






I heard one wild flush and Emma had two empty points. After we made it back to the truck we traveled up the road a little ways to the Sandy Run covert. I had only been there once before shortly after it had been timbered off some years ago.  It's a cut on the side of a steep ridge with a logging road running through it. It had been fenced but now had the fencing taken down.  I walked the logging road with Emma working the steep slope. I saw two different grouse flush wild in the cut below the road even though Emma and I were nowhere near them. At the end of the cut I followed a road that ran around the lower part of the cut that had been pushed out when they had put up the fencing. Emma went on point in the tangles and I slowly worked my way in. She held tightly and even though I trampled the cover thoroughly I didn't flush a bird. If the weather holds I may try to get back to this covert for another try.