Briar Scratch Acadamey

After decades of pursuing grouse, I have learned to instantly recognize prime grouse habitat from miles away. I have located prime briar patches at 55 mph rolling down freeways (easy) and from Boeing 747’s at 5000 mph (still easy); it’s what I do. While some poor guys are good at recognizing prime investment opportunities, formulas for great inventions or ways to win wars, my gift is grouse finding patches. I hate to brag but I feel sorry for those other guys. General Schwarzkopf may have seen the route for the “Hail Mary” flanking maneuver that quickly ended the Gulf War but if I was there, I would have been able to point out key grouse coverts on the way. I bet he didn’t get one flush on the way to Bagdad.

While you may think this great gift has made life markedly easy and luxurious, I wouldn’t blame you but it should be pointed out that there is more to bagging a grouse than recognizing their habitat. Even if it is from glimpses I spotted on a discarded Platt Map crumpled up on the side of the highway. Grouse are highly clever and masters in the art of deception. I have deduced that they must be become this skilled by receiving highly technical tactical training. How else can you explain their advanced tactics? Let me provide you some examples of a grouse’s advanced level of education.

During deer season but not yet second small game season, in an obviously grousy spot each day, several fat grouse lifted off the ground as I DROVE by on the way to my deer spot. Not only was the spot prime but the birds displayed a proclivity to flush easily; up and straight away. I might add that I should have suspected a ruse right there. Grouse rarely present such an easy straight away shot nor do they flush so predictably and easily. What I should have picked up on was those thunder chickens were setting up a decoy site.

Sure enough, like the sucker I am, on the opening day of the late season there I was in that patch of overgrown blackberries and alders pushing and bleeding through the brush with as much of a forward lean as I could muster. I actually fell three or four times but never actually hit the ground, instead my body just ended up being suspended in space on and in the brush like a mouse trapped in a steel wool ball. Not one flush, not on the first, second or third mile, nor on any of the miles back as I pushed on. (As I said, I can see grouse habitat but that doesn’t mean I can see the grouse). However, I didn’t just keep pushing out of some blind belief but because I know these chickens.

Thunder chickens don’t flush ahead like they are supposed to; they don’t even run ahead like stocked pheasants. They hunker down like well trained professionals. Don’t let the chicken word in their nickname belie their steely resolve. Such advanced skill can only be honed in some sort of strict training. Like the time tested quote of the great ancient Greek general Thucydides, “He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds”. This dawned on me as I stopped to rest and wipe drops of blood off my cold whipped earlobe. These birds must go through a place I can only imagine reflects the harshness of their habitat and their success, such a place would be called something like the “Briar Scratch School for Grouse”.

Oh, I know you’ve seen them dumbly standing in the middle of dirt roads picking at gravel or dusting their wings oblivious to your roaring pickup truck and horn but that is in the summer and spring- early in their birdy lives. You have to start somewhere. This must be when they are meditating and practicing their steely resolve. I know you’ve seen them making an obvious nuisance of themselves and running seemingly helpless and wounded just in front of you in the woods. However, this again is just a clever illusion; it is actually a brave female acting to distract you from her more helpless clutch.

As the sun on the second season opener got higher, it became clear to me that the grouse had set up a decoy spot to draw me away from the true spot that they would actually be hiding in when they again became game. As I pushed through the alders, young aspens, dogwood patches and overgrown thorny tangles, they sat tight, blending in perfectly with the ground. Without an equally trained dog to assist I am almost helpless but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve. I know those little eyes are upon me, anticipating my every move and calculating my intent. I try to appear disinterested in birds as I wander in an irregular path back and forth, never in a straight line. As I get to really birdy spots, I wander by them pretending not to notice the spot. Then I stop for a long pause. The birds are measuring my rhythm, no matter how well trained; their hearts are still racing hoping I don’t get too close or spot them on the ground. This pause can un-nerve the steeliest of birds and force them to bust from behind me. Again, though, my pauses are quiet and there is no flush. Only through training can birds flush when I am in a vehicle but now stay silent as I stand so near shotgun in hand.

I relax from my pretend rest period and remove my hat to release a little steam from my head and wipe my brow. To do so, I leave my gun controlled by my off hand uselessly. As soon as I am helpless, from behind comes the boom of the wilderness drums and the roar of feathers reaching height at speed. My heart leaps into my throat for a millisecond as I perceive being attacked but quickly regain my senses and realize I’ve been beaten again as I fumble to find my shoulder with the stock of my beloved 16 gauge. As I regain my bearings and release my arms from the clawing briars it is too late. The bird is already out of range and banking down into another thicker spot, leaving me alone again resembling an awkward scarecrow trying to navigate the brush. Then, turning to make it down to the spot last seen, again another burst from what was in front of me and was behind; again I’ve been set up and played by the king of brush and a victim of Briar Scratch Academy.

See you along the stream