Written by: George Skakel. Staples, MN
Within a year of our wedding, 35 years ago, my new father-in-law, a man of some means, invited me to go Ruffed Grouse hunting in Minnesota. I had never heard of or had ever seen a Ruffed Grouse; in fact, I kept talking about Ruffled Grouse until eventually corrected. I was all excited about hunting in the woods over trained dogs and in preparation for this new adventure I purchased a handsome new Orvis “hunting” jacket.
In the first hour of the hunt our dogs, wearing special collars that emitted a particular sound when on point, which was all new to me, located a grouse. Upon hearing the dogs on point the idea was to, as quickly as possible, get through about 50 yards of incredibly dense cover, so dense most of the time I could not see my boots much less the dogs. As I approached the dogs, who were still on point, my adrenaline level and heart rate were both peaking. Suddenly, I was startled by loud rapid wing beating and detected a blur out of the corner of my eye. I had no idea what had just happened. Steve Grossman, our host/guide/dog trainer and now good friend, laughed and asked incredulously “why didn’t you shoot?” I responded “at what?” Steve came back with “The grouse of course”. By lunch break, after having several similar opportunities, I finally had bagged my first grouse and also must have lost 3 pounds, was a sweaty mess, needed to change my shirt and my new Orvis, now not so handsome, jacket no longer had any buttons and was missing 2 of the 4 pockets and the front zipper was partially torn off. I was hooked or course and have been hunting grouse as often as I can for that last 35 years.
