December weather is seldom fun but the third week was mild, so I grabbed the shotgun and headed out to an old lease location where a mixture of hemlocks, aspen, apple trees and some thick brush provided some perfect grouse habitat.
Usually it’s wise to hunt with one or two friends, but this was short notice and no one was available. It looked like it was stone-eared me against the cagey grouse. There was little doubt the odds were going to be on the grouse’s side today.
I began in the hemlocks, walking slowly along trying to keep in the more open areas. A grouse flushed from a tree top only allowing me a glimpse of him, never presenting an opportunity for a shot. Emerging from the hemlocks, I zig-zagged through some brush until reaching a couple ancient, gnarled apple trees sitting among four crumbling cement piers that had once supported an oil field power house. Rain and snow had knocked down the goldenrod here making walking much easier.
I’d walk a few steps, stop and then move ahead another few yards and pause again hoping to flush a close sitting grouse. Skirting a particularly thick bush I saw a flash of motion to my left, a grouse. The bird ran and flushed, flying straight away from me.
Startled, I threw the shotgun up, the true glow bead gleaming red against nature’s browns and tans. The bead was just to the left of the grouse when I hurriedly fired, but the grouse chose the wrong instant to turn that direction. The shot charge clobbered him hard in the head and neck, flipping him over in the air in a cloud of feathers.
I ran to the bird and picked him up. Grouse are truly beautiful birds and I stood for some time just admiring his plumage, the incredible texture and patterns of his various feathers.
Still marveling at my good fortune of seeing the grouse on the ground before he flew, I finished working my way through the cover flushing another grouse and firing in desperation at a blur of feathers through the branches. Shots like these are seldom successful but, you may get lucky. Unfortunately, the bead had been behind the bird even as the gun went off, a miss.
Stepping across a ditch out jumped a rabbit. The cottontail cut back and forth in front of me but I never fired until the bunny hit the 30-yard range. The rabbit summer salted over. A nice late season hunt, a couple hours’ exercise and I had been remarkably successful. The grouse and rabbit, both filled with spicy stuffing and slowly baked in chicken broth at 200 degrees for five to six hours, would fall off the bone and provide tomorrow’s dinner. Truly a red-letter day.
Late season small game hunts do not always produce game, in fact, many times you don’t even fire your gun. But, they do get you out of the house and into the outdoors where you can burn off some calories, spend some time with your friends and enjoy the outdoors.
That is not to say you can’t have some wonderfully successful hunts either. Depending on the year and game populations, your location and weather, late season hunting can be very rewarding as Old Man Winter causes the game to be concentrated in certain locations. Once the snow knocks down the goldenrod and other seasonal cover, rabbits, grouse and pheasants no longer have the vast areas to roam in as they did previously. The game’s forced into creek bottoms, brushy areas, beech brush and hemlock. Depending on the apple crop that year or late season forage like crab apple, thorn apple, multi-flora rose and autumn olive, an insightful hunter can go to areas he knows both food and cover are available.
If the snow is deep and temperature low, you may wish to hunt hemlock groves or other evergreen cover. Grouse bud on hemlock and especially birch buds this time of year. Rabbits will be in the bottoms in the thickest brush they can find and seldom run far, holing up at the first opportunity, making the hunter show up very early or very late in the day. On a cold, crisp, bright sunny day, a careful stalker can catch rabbits huddled up on the very edge of their holes soaking in a few sun rays. This is a great time to use a .22 rifle or a shotgun with a small caliber pistol.
Squirrels are also a possibility. They run at the crack of dawn occasionally or on those few warm, sunny days when the wind is calm. Use a .22 rifle sighted in at 50 yards; a 22 magnum or 17 caliber sighted in at 75 yards. Your shots will probably be long ones. Squirrels carefully conserve energy in the late season and are only active for any length of time on warm, calm days.
There’s also some late season waterfowl hunting available which you may wish to try if there is any open water in your area. Dress very warm for that!
Well, good luck and good hunting. I know I’ll be trying to burn off a few thousand calories after all those Christmas cookies, cake, pies, stuffing, biscuits and other memorable foods. Late season hunts are part of our family tradition.
