September 16, 2022: For the grouse opener, we headed up past Sultan, WA into state timber land that offers the mix of timber ages that ruffed grouse favor. The other thing that I'm finding correlates with state timber land is a lot of interesting characters. On this trip I was just gearing up at a gate when a lady pulled up and asked if I could help her pull a dead pig out of a stream. In hindsight some healthier skepticism was warranted as being too quick to help has gotten me scammed at least twice (once in Italy, once in Grays Harbor - still too embarrassing to get into the details). Luckily (?), this request was legit and a mile up the road was the dead pig. To my surprise it was a domestic model, at least 4 miles from the nearest private land (a nudist family camp).
We got it rolled into a tarp and drug it about 50 yards back through the stream to the road to load it onto her hitch carrier. My neurons were still on vacation so I didn't ask any of the obvious questions, just wished her a good day and headed back to get hunting (but now with soaked boots). I would make a terrible reporter...
This route was something we had hunted two years ago and only found grouse right by the road. This time we walked two hours before finding any birds and they were right at the top of the mountain. I was carrying my first semi-auto shotgun on its inaugural trip and that extra round did me zero good as I missed on all three attempts... at least five birds escaped. That was as many grouse as I have seen on my handful of grouse trips.
Miraculously, just 300 yards down the road were two more birds and I got off one shot as they dove straight over the edge of what was not technically a cliff but it was unpleasant none the less. The picture below is from the bottom of that hill on our way back out. At one point in the search, Oak jumped onto a stump that turned out to have an even lower cut, it dumped him over backwards and the round picked up speed and scarred two trees pretty good near the top before bounding out of sight. He recovered quickly and even found the bird! First ruffed grouse in Western WA.
I then took what was turning out to be a successful, pleasant Monday and turned it into an hour of the worst kind of suck... On my map, I just had to drop off a similarly steep slope for 250 yards to hit another road and the easy life. When we got to the end of the road it even looked pretty open all the way down so we went for it. The trouble revealed itself in stages:
- What my old man eyes took to be short brush was actually several feet thick of layered fir trees that must have been thinned this spring/summer. The needles were still attached but would make a pretty cool rain impression as we slid down. Not the worst time to have sled for feet but the poor dog was falling through much more often and getting his paws all sliced up.
- This hill was hiding actual cliffs. Nothing super tall but enough to send us skirting their edges.
- The target road wasn't there, it had returned to the forest so our total distance to easy walking went up to a quarter mile. That quarter mile took an hour and at the end both the dog and I just wanted to mimic the wise banana slug and curl up into a ball and call it a day (which we basically did).
December 16, 2022: The primary mission for this trip was xmas trees for the house but I figured it wouldn't hurt to carry the scattergun just in case we stumbled across any grouse. As soon as we started walking through knee to thigh high snow it was apparent that this wasn't going to be a normal bird hunt. Oak was happy to follow along in the trail I was breaking but showed zero interest in venturing much further on his own (despite an amazing amount of rabbit tracks about).
I was very grateful to find a credible Douglas fir without needing to continue on to the productive grand fir sites. However, dragging that tree up the hill through the drifts kicked my backside hard. Oak was bottoming out at his belly and it was getting up to my belly as well. For reasons that had made sense at the time but elude me now, my snow shoes were sitting warm and dry back at the truck... Oak was so ashamed of my performance that he took the lead breaking trail until we got back to our tracks on the road and things were much more manageable.
Back at the truck I traded the dog for the snowshoes and headed out to experience how much less fun it is to chase birds without my buddy. Never saw or heard any critters and only made a half hearted attempt at some tree thinning with my pack saw (I realized I didn't want to come back in the spring and see a bunch of stumps that are 4' tall).
I hope everyone has a great holidays and wishing you all the best for 2023!