A Grouse Hunter’s Almanac: The Other Kind of Hunting

How to Hunt Grouse

52 How to Hunt Grouse First, find suitable cover, then start walking. Keep walking. A dog and a good pair of boots help. In a sense grouse hunting is a simple undertaking, as simple as the previous paragraph. All the state requires is a license, and an older hunter like myself isn’t even required to take a hunter safety course, although older hunters could surely learn a thing or two from doing so. For a few dollars each fall, I am licensed by the state of Wisconsin to wander through the woods seeking my prey. But this is a deceptive simplicity. Outdoor writers have turned out thousands of how-to articles on grouse hunting, enough pages to fill books that would in turn fill a shelf in my library. Reading about hunting, however, can only take one so far, which most of the time isn’t much farther than the distance between the garage and the sofa. Grouse hunting—a practice and a discipline, a religion for a few—requires time, effort, stamina, and years of experience. A hunter must be fit, able to trek comfortably long distances over rough cover. 53 He or she must know something about this cover, an awareness of which habitat is more likely to hold birds. To be effective, a hunter needs to know how to train and use a dog, forming a partnership that increases the effectiveness of both predators. Skill at handling and shooting a shotgun comes only after years of practice at the trap or skeet course and a good amount of time spent shooting in the woods because a lucky shot is just that, blind luck not to be counted on. A grouse hunter must possess some navigational ability, although GPS, modern wisdom we can purchase, shortcuts the use and understanding of a compass and intuitive pathfinding. No hunting retailers offer these skills for sale. We can read how-to articles until our eyes blur and our heads ache, but the skills necessary to be a grouse hunter only come with time and practice. At their worst these articles can trick the uninitiated into thinking that the road ahead is smoothly paved with yellow bricks. At its best, however, a how-to article motivates the would-be grouse hunter to lace up a pair of boots and start that long walk through the woods. Shod with my boots, I have yet to finish mine. How to Hunt Grouse ...