Last January, Betsy and I spent time in the country south of Tucson and I fell in love with it. The vast rolling oak savannas, beautiful desert and one million acres of public land with its three species of native quail are a bird hunter’s dream.
 
A friend, Rolly Reidhead, and I recently returned from a trip to the area both to hunt and to get out of the Minnesota winter. In years past, Rolly hunted there with his father and was excited to go again.

 

Jeff Hintz is a good friend and Minnesota neighbor and he and his wife, Carol, migrate to Tucson every year. He is a serious dog guy and avid bird hunter and works his experienced pointers on quail several days a week during, before and after the quail season. He provided invaluable help to Rolly and me.

 

My favorite Arizona quail is the mearns—over gambels and scaled. Compared to last year’s mearns population, the numbers are dramatically lower and we truly hunted for them more than we found them. We had better success with gambels quail when, for several days, we hunted their cover. 
 
Rolly and I brought seven dogs and all performed quite well, considering the conditions. Traveling 1,600 miles from their snowy kennels and freezing temperatures to sunny, warm, dry Arizona was a big change. But it was fun to see young dogs in new country and witness their first contacts with the various quail.

 

We didn’t find as many birds as we hoped but had a great trip nonetheless.  As Arnold Swartzenneger said in The Terminator:  “I’ll be back!”

There are grouse hunting days and then there are those special days when everything just goes right. November 2 was one to remember.

Ben McKean is a friend from Minnetonka who was able to slip away from a day in the studio of his commercial photography business. We met at our kennel around mid morning, loaded dogs and packed a lunch of bread, cheese and apples in my truck and were soon off.  

So far this season, my days in the woods have produced more flushes than last year by a good margin—perhaps not as big a bump as predicted but an obvious increase. This is corroborated by many of our clients, guiding customers and other serious grouse hunters.  

And I do mean “flushes.”  A majority of the grouse encountered were heard but not seen due to the latest leaf fall I have ever experienced. Leaves of most trees and shrubs hadn’t even begun to fall until well in mid October—and then many were still green. Later, the culprit was the foliage of hazel, the brushy shrub with foliage at just about eye level, which didn’t drop leaves until late October.

The season has been unusual in another way. Though the prediction was for higher grouse populations, during September I found fewer birds and broods than last year. Or at best, hunting was spotty. By the second week of October, though, I found substantially more birds. Where did they come from? Why couldn’t I find them earlier?

Despite years of research, no one really seems to completely understand ruffed grouse. They are still somewhat of a mystery. But that is okay with me and one of the reasons the ruffed grouse is called king of upland game birds.

With monster drumming counts last spring and evidence that Minnesota and Wisconsin are approaching the peak of the 10-year grouse cycle, this seems to be the year to hunt ruffed grouse. But I have other reasons.
 
#1.  There are only so many autumns in one’s life and whether at the peak or in the valley of the grouse population cycle, there will be grouse in the woods.     

#2.  Fluctuations in grouse populations don’t matter to dogs. They will hunt their hearts out and search for birds like they do always. They will carefully select which cover to hunt by following their noses along damp alder edges and into aspen cuts. Excitement will mount when one dog catches a scent, gets birdy and stands on lofty, intense point.

#3.  Autumn is a fine season to be in the woods. The dogwood berries will be white on bright red stems and the aspen leaves will turn golden and, permeating the entire forest, will be the evocative smell of damp, fallen leaves.

I can’t predict if my dogs and I will find few or many grouse in a given day. Some of my best days were in “low” population cycles and, conversely, the biggest disappointments have been in “high” grouse years.

But it doesn’t matter. My dogs and I will be out in the woods and we will be hunting for them. For me, the sport is in the pursuit.

See you in the woods.

 

There are two kinds of hunting:  ordinary hunting, and ruffed-grouse hunting.
~ Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

 

It begins with those first chilly nights in August. Then the days shorten noticeably and the angle of the light is different. My favorite time of year is now very near.

Betsy and I traveled to southeastern Arizona in early January as both a vacation and an opportunity to hunt Mearns quail with our dogs. 

 

That corner of Arizona is distinct with converging areas of desert, grasslands, rolling hills and several mountain ranges.  We explored an area southeast of Tucson near the towns of Patagonia and Sonoita.

  

Tuesday, I spent the afternoon hunting ruffed grouse with three young dogs.  It was a beautiful day—damp with temperature in the mid 30s and a light breeze from the east.  The cover is down now and, since the birds seem to prefer older timber, they are much easier to see.  It is a great time of the year to be out in the woods.  Heck, even I can hit one now!

Based on greatly improved statewide drumming counts last spring, we were excited about the prospects for fall grouse hunting.  Our expectations were quickly dashed, though, after our first few days afield in September.  We didn’t flush the number of birds we expected and saw few legitimate broods.  The grouse we did find were wily, ran a lot and were difficult to get pointed well enough for good shooting, even with veteran grouse dogs.  This became the theme for the rest of the season.

The good news was that we found more woodcock than normal.  These little birds sure helped us keep our interest up when the grouse were hard to come by.

Lately, we’re still finding a fair number of grouse when working the dogs.  The birds are mostly in more mature cover where they will likely spend the winter.  This cover lends itself to better dog work—the birds have more places to hide and tend to sit while you walk by instead of running for the next county.   We have even found the odd woodcock, most recently as November 16.