Grouse and Grouse Hunting: It is a Wary Bird, Haunting the Rough Ground and Shady Places, Daily Racing Form, 1919-10-30

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GROUSE AND GROUSE HUNTING It Is a Wary Bird, Haunting tho Rough Ground and Shady Places. The sportsman who pursues the ruffed grouse in his native fastness needs endurance, patience, a knowledge of woodcraft, and skill with Ills weapon. He will travel uninhabited territory, and must know how to find his way put of it with or without a compass. He will force his way through hazel brush as high as his head, and higher; he will climb over logs four feet through at the butt, and many of them; he will skirt the ends or edges of tamarack swamps; he will find himself in hollows so deep and dark that even at midday the sunlight filters through dimly; he will breast steep hills carpeted in ledves as smooth under foot almost as ice; he will work along the sides of ridges, where one foot will bo half a j-ard below the other; ho must be prepared to shoot in front, to left or right, or behind him, and he will find that fifteen out of twenty shots are snapshots purely, with no time left him in which to calculate bird speed, or distance, or how much to hold ahead, or anything else. If he bags two out of six shots, in and out, through the day, he will have cause at nightfall to take his right hand In his left and shake with himself as a grouse man worth talking to. Where shall the ruffed grouse be sought? In the roughest country in your state. The brushy sides of a ravine, through which flows a trout stream, frequently are the best of grounds. In heavy ridges upon which thrives the beecli those are good places. Dense thickets, stretching far alongside heavy woodlands nnd forming a wnll-like array of slim saplings, witii berry bushes and briers tangling for acres in front, these combine to form ideal ground. Is there a long-lumber road, traversing a wood and having your brush springing up either side, the old tops piled here and there? Walk the entire length of it, and have your gun ready for instant action. Is the ground a wood, then thicket dwindling down to a field of fall-green clover? If so, there is more than a slim chance.


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1910s/drf1919103001/drf1919103001_8_7
Local Identifier: drf1919103001_8_7
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800