Gift Grouse

It was early October, and for a week Bill and I had been hunting woodcock.

- Burton Spiller

Not because we preferred it to grouse hunting, but because in our section of the country the first two weeks of open season seldom furnish good sport on the larger birds. The weather is usually far too warm for the more strenuous exercise that hunting them entails, while the birds, in the last stages of moulting, prefer to remain in the big swamps where hunting them is anything but a pleasure.

Because of these reasons we prefer to hunt the long bills for the first few weeks. Their haunts are restricted in area, and a hunter can look over a half dozen favored covers in a day and still be able to climb into the car when night comes. Then, too, the less wary birds furnish excellent practice for dogs made over anxious by ten months of inactivity, and steadies them for the more serious business of grouse hunting.

Thus it was that Bill and I made our way down the sloping hillside and into the alders which form the beginning of the Beecher cover. It is excellent woodcock country. The ground is soft and springy, and although it rarely exceeds a hundred yards in width it is nearly a mile long, encircling two sides of the small pond. Native birds breed there, and flighters often drop in during the fall migration, but there are no evergreens near it, or any heavy cover. Consequently one never finds grouse there – or no one ever did until the Memorable Day.

We had taken four woodcock that morning. Three from the Millbrook cover and one from an unnamed and inconsequential alder patch beside the road, and we needed four more to fill our limit. We had not hunted the Beecher cover as yet, but we were confident that we could collect the remainder of our quota there, for it was not unusual for the place to harbor at least a dozen birds.