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When I casually mentioned to Tom, a friend who hunts blue grouse, that I was thinking about writing a piece about
grouse hunting for Inside Outside Southwest, the suddenness and vehemence of his response took me by surprise.
"Don't!" was all he said, and the way he said it startled me. His contorted red face simultaneously communicated
rage, fear and confusion. It was as if I'd proposed giving tours of his bathroom - while he was on the pot. I
shouldn't have been surprised. I imagine I'd have reacted the same way if a writer friend had said as much to me.
Grouse hunting is a very private pursuit. The last thing any of us wants is a hoard of shotgun-toting would-be grouse
hunters stomping about in our fall woods. Yes, you heard me. OUR fall woods. It seems newcomers to the region are not
the only ones who come to feel proprietary, who want to lock the gate after they've arrived. "You can have the towns
- build retail boxes and new-urbanism sprawl to your materialistic heart's content," we equally selfish grouse
hunters want to scream, "just leave MY damn birds alone!"
I can see the irony in this attitude. I am aware of the hypocrisy inherent in living in a place, loving it - but not
wanting anyone else to love it as you do. And sometimes I even feel guilty about it. Just as I sometimes feel guilty
about keeping my favorite trout streams a secret. Sometimes, but not very often. Perhaps this article is nothing more
than an act of public penance written in a moment of weakness.
Over the years, most of my game bird hunting has been for wild native bobwhite quail, some of it for introduced wild
pheasant, and all of that somewhere else - the grasslands of Colorado's eastern prairie, the farm fields of
south-central Kansas, the mesquite and cactus scrub of central Texas. A little of my hunting has been for
preserve-planted quail and chukhar closer to home. All of that hunting has been at least partly social. Hunting road
trips involve a great deal of non-hunting time, time spent talking. Days in the field are often punctuated with
pleasant breaks over Thermos coffee, times when a Kansas friend might light a cigarette and share bits of accumulated
years of bird-hunting lore. His son might interrupt those upland memories with the story of a particularly
interesting hunt for whitetail or mallards. Another old friend who'd driven up from Dallas might be there to keep the
Kansas boys honest - he'd grown up on a neighboring farm and knew that country and its stories as well as they did.
After coffee, after the storytelling, we might all hunt together, or separate into groups of two or three over a dog
or two. My recollections of wild quail and pheasant are recollections where fields of wheat, cane, corn and milo,
tall conservation reserve grasses, plum thickets, fence rows and shelter belts, English setters, English pointers,
German shorthairs and labs, bobwhite, blues and ringnecks, shotgun-carrying Coloradans, Kansans and Texans all share
roughly equal time and have roughly equal weight in the scales that balance memory.
I have been hunting blue grouse for only a handful of years. In my grouse memories, humans disappear entirely.
Sometimes, the grouse disappear as well. Clearly, blue grouse hunting is a very different sort of hunting.
Many hunters go after blue grouse without bird dogs. Unlike pheasant and quail, I believe it is easier to get shots
on blue grouse without a dog. Easier to walk up on them without frightening them. Easier to flush them within gun
range. Often, the grouse get nervous while dogs are ranging and they flush wild, hugging the ground, gliding
downhill. Or they fly up into the trees where they hide (often not too successfully). They do this to hunters without
dogs, too, but dogs seem to make grouse more nervous than humans do. Blue grouse (and ptarmigan, a close relative)
will often let hikers walk right up to them, allowing them to prod the birds with a boot toe before they slowly walk
away. To a hiker who has had such an experience, the allure of grouse hunting must seem to be so much crap. Many a
lout has shot his limit off the ground, or while driving slowly along a dirt road, potting naive grouse from a truck
window. Shooting close to a road or from a vehicle is illegal as well as unethical, but I bet more grouse are
murdered this way, without a fighting chance, than any other. Many cheat at hunting just like they cheated on tests
at school, or cheat their customers in business.
Hunting blue grouse over pointing dogs is something of a challenge, but I wouldn't want to hunt them any other way.
The reasons are many. There are few things in this world as lovely as the sight of a well-bred setter, rigid, a
forepaw lifted and frozen, backlit by a low-angle sun, leg and tail feathers flying in a light breeze, nose moist and
twitching, pointing toward a distant grouse in a dense spruce wood holding steady beneath a young, green oak.
One of the most important reasons for hunting with dogs has nothing to do with finding birds - it has to do with
retrieving them once they are killed. On opening day, last September, I was walking a steep ridge with Freckles, my
eight-year-old English setter. We'd covered more miles than I care to remember, and we seemed to have begun doubting
that we'd put up any birds that day. Well, I'd begun doubting. Freckles was off to my left, about thirty yards away,
well below me on a steep, spruce-forested slope - still working, still believing. Perhaps he knew something I didn't.
Perhaps he'd been scenting grouse all along. I was about to walk out of the forest onto a broken talus slope when
Freckles locked up. Pointing. At my feet. I had about a millisecond to figure it out. Not enough time. A grouse
exploded from the ground beneath me, and flew out into the open over the slope of boulders. I recovered from my
stupor and subsequent heart-pounding awakening in time for an easy shot. I fired, and the bird dropped. And dropped.
And dropped. Where he came to rest, and when, I will never know. I only know it was farther downhill than I would
have wanted to scramble, over rougher terrain than I cared to negotiate. Even if I had gone to get him, it is
unlikely I would have found that bird. I did what bird dog owners do in these situations. I opened my left hand,
directed my arm downhill, and yelled to Freckles, "Dead Bird! Fetch!"
No dummy, Freckles took off downhill but not over the boulders. He went through the woods. He disappeared as the
grouse had before him. I waited for what seemed like forever, and the sight that ended that long questioning silence,
that time of wondering whether I'd ever see either my dog or that bird again, the vision that emerged working uphill
through the timber is one I will never forget. Freckles had found the dead grouse, and was making his way toward me
with it hanging out of both sides of his soft mouth. His eyes were glued to mine, and everything about him - his
deliberate pace, his confident posture, even his expression (as much as a dog's face can have an expression with a
few pounds of bird wrinkling it) - seemed to say, Don't ever doubt me.
You hunt with good dogs to shoot wary birds over their beautiful points. You hunt with good dogs so you won't lose
worthy birds that you have killed. And you hunt with good dogs for the great pleasure of their company. I'd as soon
go hunting without my shotgun as go without my dogs. So what if the grouse often become nervous and flush out of
range? We're not there for numbers, it's not a contest and we don't keep score. If it were a gimme, what would be the
point?
This is not the sort of hunting you will embrace if your idea of a good time is to ride out to South Dakota with a
van full of buddies to meet another bus full of hunters to join an overworked guide and his bewildered dog on a long,
flat field where you line up for a military-style march, an assault, on cowering pheasant that launch into the air
when they run out of cover at the boundary between foot-trampled crops and mowed land, only to face a fusillade of #5
and #6 shot, twelve-gauge triple-A. If the main reason you go hunting is to end the day with a large pile of dead
birds dumped on the ground in front of a platoon of blaze-orange festooned hunters for a photograph that proves you
"slayed 'em," grouse hunting is definitely not for you.
If you don't mind hiking a great many days and a great many miles with your bird dog over rough terrain before the
two of you begin to get the hang of it, if you don't mind walking most of those miles without taking a shot, if you
like steep terrain that blisters your feet and tortures your ankles and knees (not to mention your lungs and heart),
if you don't care whether you come home with your game bag heavy or light, if you have a good bird dog, and you live
in the Southwest and you don't want to be worrying about rattlesnakes as you tromp lowland canyons looking for desert
quail, if you would be quite content to hunt all season and never get a shot over a point (during seasons when water
is scarce and the bird population is low), and if you rejoice a little in your heart every time a wild grouse fearing
you and your dog is heard to flush unseen, well out of range - if you cheer for him, celebrating his escape
- maybe you'd enjoy this blue grouse hunting.
Find a ridge seldom walked. Grab your gun and a handful of shells. Stash some water and a few snacks in a vest
pocket. Remember to share them with your dog. Walk enough miles in the mountains with shotgun and dog to begin to
sense where you might find grouse. And maybe, with a little luck, you will see your gun dog locked up, pointing at
your feet or maybe a bit of brush that lies well ahead. Maybe, a large, loud bird all mottled brown and gray and
white will launch as you walk toward where your dog is pointing. Maybe you will watch with a touch of sadness as it
falls in a puff of feathers. And maybe, once in a while, your dog will return with a soft, still-warm grouse held
gently in his mouth. If the joy of that moment is enough to compensate you for all the world's inanity and ills, for
the dozens of miles scrambled through all that rugged and seemingly grouseless terrain, I will welcome you with an
open heart, a handshake and a big smile to our shared fall woods. Tom just might, too.
Steven J. Meyers has called the San Juans home since 1976. He has been Visiting Instructor of Creative Writing at Fort Lewis College since 2000. His published books include On Seeing Nature, Lime Creek Odyssey, Streamside Reflections, The Nature of Flyfishing, Notes from the San Juans, and San Juan River Chronicle.
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