November/December 2008

The Gun Room
Grouse Hunters: Suspicions Confirmed
by Steve Smith

ith the possible, and I emphasize “possible,” exception of the bobwhite quail, the most traditional upland bird in America has to be the ruffed grouse. By that, I mean the earliest sporting writing, what we call the “gentlemanly comings and goings,” the breeding of dogs to hunt a specific bird, the choice of guns and gear and clothing – all of those things we think of when we think of tradition. It’s hard to argue that bobwhites and ruffed grouse are number one and two, or numbers two and one.

As a result, when it comes to grouse, our subject here, a lot of stuff has been written and said about which gun and which dog breed and which state is the best. Well, some figures sent to me recently may put some arguments to rest.

Ken Szabo from Ohio runs a neat little newsletter operation called the Loyal Order of Dedicated Grouse Hunters. Ken’s been doing it for years, and he’s as knowledgeable about hunting the bird as anyone alive. Ken asks his members (where-to-join information is at the end of this article) to fill out a scorecard and send it in at the end of the year on what sort of season they’ve had. The scorecard asks for: state they hunted in, resident or non-resident, days they hunted, hours in the field, number of flushes (some respondents included reflushes), flushes per hour, number of shots taken, percentage of flushes that got shot at, birds killed, gun action type, gun make, gauge, choke, breed of dog, number of points/flushes the dog had. Wow.

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