Corey's First Two Ruff Gouse

In the state of Wyoming grouse may be taken using any number of weapons. We went up to Cottonwood Lake a few weeks ago for a Family Home Evening campfire cookout, and I had the .22 pistol along. A grouse ran off the road to the low side, and then flew back across the road into an alpine fir; it sat above the road on the edge of a steep embankment. Corey shot lots of branches off the tree before wounding the grouse. It flew higher up the mountain, across a little meadow to a red fir where it stayed. We ran out of ammo, so I ran back to the car to get more. Corey snuck up on it and dispatched it on the 6th shot. He was shooting low, so I had to keep yelling at him to aim higher. He finally shot it in the neck area. We photographed him the next afternoon with the grouse. We forgot a camera for the little outing and so we waited for good light.

I had Corey pose in a trick-shooting-pose to impress everyone!

He isn't very proud of this one at all!

Nice weather for the middle to end of October! A few day before Corey shot this one, Tyler and I had gone up in the same area to hunt elk--we saw 6, 4 of them were bulls, but we couldn't get on them--and ended up shooting one of two ruff grouse we spotted in the road headed down from Cottonwood Lake. I think this one is the 2nd grouse that flew off before Tyler could get it.

This next grouse was shot the following week up Star Hill. We were looking for elk again, this time with Uncle Adam. We spooked this grouse out of the bottom of the draw. Corey had taken his Powerline 880 pellet rifle and he crawled through the brush to get this grouse. He shot 3 times, hitting it once. It was pretty exciting, especially since we didn't see any elk. We did see a really nice buck rutting on the hillside with 4 or 5 girlfriends.