Opening Day of Grouse Season 2010

Today was the long awaited day when the bird seasons of 2010 began. I got up at 4 PM yesterday, after my graveyard shift and didn't sleep until noon today. I had to pull over and sleep while the kids explored an old homestead and orchard with Jesse, our Shorthair pup. Since we moved back to Oregon we have been looking forward to hunting grouse, huns, quail, pheasants, chuckars, and the waterfowl.

Today we took our new pup, Jesse, a German Shorthair Pointer, out for his first taste of hunting. Since he doesn't even know his name yet, we just got him 5 days ago, this was just a "get your feet wet" type of a day.

We picked huckleberries on Monday night and I took the .22 and 20 gauge shotgun to see how he would do around gun shots. Needless to say he was in good shape.

The area we headed to is an old logging road in the bottom of a very thick, brushy draw, with a stream in the middle of it all. Lots of grouse like to live and die there . Unfortunately someone was hunting it when we got there, so we headed high, looking for Blues. Instead we found some Ruffed Grouse.

It rained all day and so it was pretty wet out there. All the boys wanted to go, so we headed out this morning with a gun for everyone but me--I was supervisor/safety dude. We hiked a mile or two and had just looked over a small part of the earth that didn't fall when Adam partook of the fruit, and were headed back. We'd eaten fresh huckleberries and enjoyed the walk through the trees and meadows, but hadn't seen any grouse yet. Just off the summit of the ridge, I spotted an adult grouse walk across the trail in front of Corey and Jesse. Corey and Tyler put shells in and snuck up to where the grouse had disappeared into the thick trees. Corey spotted his immediately and shot through an alder branch to get his. Tyler crawled back into the thick trees and brush and spotted the other, taking off its head with my old 870 Wingmaster with the 30", full choked barrel. Unfortunately we didn't see anymore, but Cole and Jared and I are headed out again soon so they can get some too.

I'll post this now, but I'll edit it after getting some sleep. I'm going on 31 hours right now without sleep, so I'm a little off on my thought processes.