Photo by Ken Freel

When I came of age as a hunter, small-game season meant hunting rabbits. Shortly after I was old enough to hunt on my own, I made an excursion into the woods at the back of our farm looking for cottontails amid the brushpiles that were remnants of some logging my dad had commissioned seven or eight years before.

While few details of that day remain clear in my mind, I vividly remember what happened when one of my brushpile stomps produced a thunder of wings and a brown, hurtling mass of feathers that disappeared into the saplings in an instant.

I was still backpedaling in surprise when I realized that I had just seen my first ruffed grouse. By the time I put the shotgun back in the cabinet that afternoon, I knew I was done as a full-time rabbit hunter. From that day on, grouse would always be at the top of the marquee.

Although I usually hunted alone and could barely afford ammunition, let alone the price of a well-trained bird dog, I was sure bagging a grouse would be easy. After all, I reasoned, the birds were living no more than 200 steps from my back door.

Reality, not to mention humility, soon corrected my misjudgment. For over five years -- until I graduated from college and moved out of state -- I faithfully hunted that hollow for grouse without ever so much as ruffling a feather. I missed birds just about every way there is to miss. I shot above, below, in front of and behind birds. I had them scare me so badly that I couldn't shoot, disappear before I could get a shot, or sometimes appear to fly right through my pattern of shot with nary a scratch.

If I hadn't been a teenage male and therefore temperamentally and hormonally incapable of learning, I might have acquired some wisdom during those years that would have ended my streak of frustration.

I didn't.

But since then I've had a couple of decades to reflect on the mistakes of those earlier years, and I can now offer a few tips for how to succeed on grouse when it's only you, the gun, and the birds in the woods.

I also asked Ruffed Grouse Society biologist Mark Banker to chime in on the subject. Although he hunts almost exclusively over English setters today, he earned his stripes by hunting "the first 29 years of my life without a dog," and much of that by himself.

GET READY -- STAY READY
While it might seem to be the most obvious advice, the solo hunter usually forgets it. The classic image of grouse hunting is when the hunter meanders up behind a locked-up pointing dog with his classy double barrel poised and ready.

Unfortunately you, the lone hunter, won't have the luxury of having a dog tell you where and when to get ready. Nor do you have the advantage of a hunting buddy who will flush a bird your way and then yell, "Here he comes!"

When hunting grouse on your own, your only hope is in being primed and ready every time for the inevitable flush every step of the way -- no easy task!

Banker agrees.

"That's by far the most important rule," he said, "especially when you're hunting alone. You can't be just walking along looking around or get tired and carry your gun over your shoulder, because that's when a bird will go up, and you'll never be able to hit it."

Keep in mind that being ready to shoot grouse is more than just being alert to the flush. It also means making sure your gun is in a position where it can be easily and smoothly snapped to your shoulder. Carry your shotgun as though you intend to use it instantly, not like it's something you simply need to transport from one end of the woods to the other. A lightweight, short-barreled shotgun is the obvious choice for many grouse hunters.

It is also critical to make sure your feet are solidly planted as you take the shot. Minimize situations where you're balanced on one leg or tangled in the branches of a deadfall. Grouse seem to know that this is the time to go!