I'm in Kentucky getting the nursery ready for my first granddaughter who is due here in early June, but my phone keeps ringing with reports from the woods at home. Tom Parker's pointer Veronica had her first woodcock find of the season Sunday morning in a river bottom cover not far from the house. So, the little birds are definitely back in the North Country and the weather forecast is good. A little rain and mild temperatures over the next ten days should do a lot to get rid of the snow.
However, the really exciting news is about the holdover grouse from last fall. The mild winter seems to have translated into a high survival rate. Tony and Marie walked through one of our training covers Sunday, without a dog as there is still quite a bit of ice on the trail and in the woods, and flushed 23 grouse. Another report from the "No Name" cover had 40 or 50 grouse flushed again by someone without a bird dog.
Now for the math. Let's say those two covers have 60 to 70 grouse in them. To be conservative (and to make the math easy) we'll use the lower number. So that's 60 grouse and I'm assuming that half of them are females. So that's a potential of 30 nesting birds in the area surrounding those two covers. In a good year we'll see broods of 6 or so. In a great year broods will often be in double digits. So if we have perfect weather for hatching that's a potential 300+ young grouse to work on this summer and fall. Multiple that times the number of covers we have and it should be a really great time to be a grouse dog.
