Attack Grouse

Grouse!!!!

Grouse can do some pretty amazing things.  Over the years, I thought I had seen and heard it all.  Drummers in the spring, clucking birds in the brush, and hens whine so loud to attract you away from chicks that they sound like a cat about to get in a fight.  I've also seen birds flop around on the ground feinting a broken wing too attract a dog away from chicks and a couple times I've had hens puff up and run right at me to try and scare me away.  But yesterday morning tops all.  Tony and I were out working dogs and were pulling up to a landing where we planned to run our last dog.  We were in two trucks with him in the lead.  Just as we got to the landing a grouse blew up from the side of the road and flew right at Tony's truck.  Tony didn't see her so he continued to pull over.  The grouse banked hard to the left following the truck and landed right on the roof of the truck.  She then flew back into the tall grass of the landing followed by a series of flushes of 20 - 30 feet as she drew our attention away from the area where there were no doubt a brood of chicks.  We took a quick look for the chicks but couldn't find them and then decided we didn't want to disturb them or further aggravate the hen as she was no doubt still on the edge of the landing where she had last landed.

On another note Pat and Loyd Carney were up for a couple of days this week and we got the lions share of the trail work done in one of our main training covers.  We'll probably wait another week before we start going in there regularly with truckloads of dogs.  Tony has been running his puppies in the first part of the cover quite a bit and is moving a few woodcock.  Yesterday, in addition to the attach grouse we moved three woodcock -- one with Big Frankie and one each for Sam and Little Frankie.  

Looking forward to getting out of the bird field with the dogs and back into the woods.