Campfire- Ruff And Tumble

For late-season grouse, once you find the source of their favorite food, you’ll often find the mother lode

- Tom Davis

I THINK OF THEM AS Macbeth’s witches: a trio of ancient thorn apple trees in my yard. Not that thorns does justice to their bristling, hard spikes. If I’m not careful and take one in the thigh while I’m mowing the lawn, my language can turn a cloudy sky blue. Still, the old crones aren’t entirely malign. Sometimes I’ll catch an impression of movement in their tops, look up, and see the silhouette of a crested head. Before the processors kick in and tell me it’s a cardinal, I’ll have a dissociative moment when I think, Grouse! My muscles tense in expectation of that thrilling, hurtling flush.

Maybe it’s an example of sympathetic magic, for whenever I’ve found thorn apples, more often than not I’ve found grouse. Now, after all these years, the connection is part of my wiring. The birds come for the fruit, of course, the blood-red, marble-size haws, and they keep coming, filtering in from far and wide, until they’ve gobbled the last one down.

Late last autumn, a thorn apple– craving grouse led me to the mother lode. We were hunting new country. While the cover looked ideal—a rumpled swatch of brush-tangled aspen interrupted here and there by taller oaks and pines—close to two hours passed without a flush. Tina, my English setter, was busting her fanny and, true to her m.o. when the pickings are slim, stretching her casts farther and farther.