Yesterday was one of those perfect days that we Eastern grouse hunters wait all year for: A frosty dawn followed by buckets of sunshine with azure blue skies, drop dead calmness & the Autumn foliage at it's LSDish- trippy-magic mushroom-fantasy best. It just doesn’t get much better than this. Okay, it does but that’s a whole other avenue of entertainment ….
On days like these , you just cannot loose ...... even if you, like I, manage to muff the first three rises of the day, inadvertently, kickover & drain the sole noontime wobbily pop in your backpack, & puncture your nose so badly with a thorn apple spike that it takes an hour to completely stop the blood flow.
Forget the fact that your 2011 hunting boots are AWOL - stuck in customs - & you’ve been forced to go with the same leaky-sieve-pieces-of-junk that gave you so much grieve 12 months earlier & that you left your favorite trail snack & beloved dark chocolate covered almonds on the kitchen counter right by the car keys where you had placed them so as to absolutely insure that you would not never ever have a tinker's chance of forgetting them. <doh>
Nope on days like these – you are totally oblivious to these occupational happenstances of time spent in a grouse covert …… because better than any recreational drug, the combination of fresh air, musty leaf aromatherapy, psychedelic colors & rolling hill vistas will scrape the rust from the cerebral pipes & insure an endless hit of those endogenous opioid peptides.
As per norm, I chose a 20km circuit that had me leave the vehicle at sunrise & return by sunset. No dog, no hunting buddy, no other hunters within shouting, shooting nor very long country mile, no mobile device, no hurry, no worry ….. only 10 hours of a mano-e-mano, 3D chess match between Ol’ Ruff & Myself. Perfect. Well not quite, this region smashed a hundred year old temperature record this past weekend & to say it was way too toasty & that I could have hunted comfortably in a speedo would not have been far from the truth.
To complete a solo 2Okm partridge hunt (alive, of course) – you’ll need a good lunch, with plenty of calorie/snacks, 2 liters of liquid, a dose of youthful enthusiasm, a solid appreciation for the outdoors, a good cardiologist & a roll of your favorite brand of buttwipe.
I’d like to tell you that a great day was made greater by limiting out by noon with a triple, double & trick shot single …. But we all know that the Grouse Gods can be quite humbling & that the best laid plans of mice & Ruffie-ans often go astray.
What I can tell you is that 10 hours past in a heartbeat, that I flushed 12 grouse, got off four shots & barely avoided Le Dreaded Skunk by connecting on my last opportunity of the day. I’d also like to tell you more about the actual & technical details of the hunt …. but fact be known that on this day I was richer by the ambience of nature & that the thrill of the hunt took a well deserved backseat to this fine Canadian land & season of ours!
