Tips For Harvesting Wildlife
Excerpts From Chapters of the Life of George S. Bachay
Ruffed Grouse Hunting
Most young sportsmen start out hunting for squirrels, cottontail rabbits, and pheasants. As they become more skillful, learning how to lead a flying bird and following through before squeezing the trigger, they dream of hunting ducks, and to shoot a wary ruffed grouse.
Hunting ruffed grouse requires much walking, so take your time. Be on the alert, and plan your stops just before approaching a raspberry patch, a brush pile or a thicket where grouse feed on buds, fruit and leaves of plants such as wintergreen, grapes, acorns and birch. Hunt the edge of woodlots or forest because that's where most grouse will be feeding. When you stop, that causes the birds to flush out of hiding which normally would "sit" tight until you pass by.
Most hunters,
even veterans, walk too fast and often walk right past a crouching grouse, woodcock or rabbit, and they flush the game out before they get within shooting range.
Many times, when stopping briefly to talk with our sons-in-law beside a clump of alder, birch, hazelnut or witch hazel, three to five grouse would take off all around us, catching us off balance. Many times we have stood and watched a covey fly away in different directions without any of us firing a shot.
Grouse often call, "peep-peep," before flushing out of hiding places, so stop often and listen as you get ready to shoot.
If you flush birds from feeding areas in the early morning, go back and look for them again in the same place later in the afternoon. They usually return if the food is abundant. Examine the crop of the first bird bagged and see what it was eating.
When hunting on snow, look for signs where the birds may be roosting under the snow cover. Look for roosting in pine trees if there are bits of cone on the snow under the branches. After bagging a bird also examine the legs. In late autumn, small growths of bristle-like hairs appear on the toes of grouse to aid them in walking on snow.
Our son-in-law, Hugh Jenson, is shown in the photo examining the toes on his first grouse.
- George S. Bachay
1986
Excerpt taken from
George S. Bachay's 'Tips For Harvesting Wildlife : A Unique Collection'
So, yea, you can keep twiddling your smartphone at the bar, wasting your hard-earned ducats on bad humor and bad service, or you can get on up off a that duff and LIVE the world around you. Socialism is for 'app programming'. Adventure is for the creative. Go get it.
Just one of 'too many to count' examples of how our mentor, our grandfather, George S. Bachay instructed us all to be creatively inspired at all times, to respect wildlife by not wasting ANY part of the whole. You should've seen his skull and preserved specimen collection. Breathtaking. Thanks G-Pa. Love 'n miss you.
A vast melting pot o' creative mania is right in front of you at all times. Engage it. Grip it. Harness it.
Stay creative. Fight for it if you have to.
