Slow Day in the Grouse Woods

I know that some find the flush counts that I post here hard to believe, but as much as I can remember they are accurate.  And, as if to prove that we don't have a grouse under every bush, we had a pretty tough day.  We hunted six dogs and Rigby got the short end of the cover-stick so she went out again at the end of the day.

Tommy started out with Veronica and had one grouse that he shot for her.  Then it was Rigby's turn.  She was the last one out of the box last Sunday so she got what should have been a good cover early in the day.  The best we could do was one bird heard getting up wild when we were still a long way from where she was pointing.  Tommy stayed with us for Jack's run and the best he could do was two finds near the end of the hunt.  The first was a single that Tommy shot and the second was a pair of birds and neither Tommy nor the Big Thudd got a shot at the first bird off the ground.  Thuddy got the second bird.  When Tommy left us he had then fired four shots with his new CZ 28 gauge and killed four grouse on the wing.

Bee was up next in the Dead Tree Cover and where we had a dozen grouse last time we were in there we only found three today.  The Little Thudster was on deck but before we ran him we had a great lunch of Venison Chili heat on the portable propane stove that Big Thud had brought along.  After Lunch the Little Thudster had a good outing as we moved a couple of grouse and he stuck a woodcock that escaped by flying right into the sun, just as I was pulling the trigger on the first barrel.  When I could finally see again it was well out and the second barrel was ineffective.  LJ was next with four grouse moved but the birds really didn't give us much in the way of shots.  We came back to the house and ran Rigby again at the end of the day.  She slammed a woodcock that I shot at extremely close range.  We also moved a couple of grouse that she didn't really get an opportunity on.  The sun was setting as we walked back into the yard and it had taken us all day to move 16 grouse and 2 woodcock.  Not typical for this season but all the dogs ended with bird work and we got in some shooting.