By one way of reckoning,
my life is framed by two
seasons-Grouse Season and Waiting for Grouse Season. According
to the rulebook the ruffed grouse season begins in September,
but I have rules of my own that are more restrictive than those
of the state; rules that seem to evolve as I get older; rules
that tend to reduce my bag as they increase my satisfaction.
I don't hunt grouse in September's heat. Instead, I observe an
unofficial but less arbitrary opening day marked by the advent
of autumn's color and coolness. In September I would rather cast
a grasshopper pattern, one winged with a quill from last December's
final grouse, near bankside willows and wait for it to disappear
in a slurp. September is for trout. October is for ruffed grouse.
Last year's convergence of color and coolness occurred on the
evening of October 12. On the morning of the thirteenth, I opened
the grouse season in the Wedding Covert, a scant ten acres of
oak saplings and berry vines encircled by mature aspen, flanked
on one side by a large meadow and on the other by an old logging
road. The covert ends at a deep ravine where you can't reach
around the oaks. I named it the Wedding Covert after meeting
a betrothed couple there a few years ago, all decked out in their
nuptial attire and accompanied by a photographer. The bride and
groom may have been hunters, or perhaps they simply liked the
way aspen |
leaves look with a white gown and black
tuxedo. In any case, we were an odd contrast-they in their formals
and me in my tattered orange vest.
I love a lot of things about grouse hunting, but I especially
love to name places. The ruffed grouse is such a grand bird,
and his environs are so lovely, that it won't do to refer to
a covert as the north half of the southwest quarter of the northwest
quarter of section eight, township sixty two north, range twelve
west. Nor is it proper, according to my rules, to call a covert
simply, the McLaughlin property. These are perfectly adequate
handles for a pheasant patch, but not for the home of a grouse.
Grouse coverts should be named descriptively and with a bit of
style. Better yet, one should name a covert for a memorable experience
had there. In naming their coverts, as in naming their children,
grouse hunters reveal their own hearts and show themselves to
be poetic people.
And sneaky people. Aside from the intimacy involved with christening
a covert, this naming business practical function of providing
a discreet circumlocution by which a covert can be discussed
without divulging its exact whereabouts. Maps will not help you
trace my wanderings through the Wedding Covert, through Tall
Pine, Big Marsh, Mulligan Stew or Purgatory. Some of these places
have other names on maps and some have no names except the ones
given them by grouse hunters like me. I named |
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Tall Pine and Big Marsh for obvious features. Mulligan Stew
has a little bit of everything. Purgatory was so named because
it's too full of woodcock to be Hell and too full of briars to
be Heaven. Whenever I hunt Purgatory, I hope someone somewhere
is praying that I make it out intact. I have other covers that
I have not named yet; one should never rush the naming of a grouse
covert.
Besides the foregoing hints, the only directions I give you about
my coverts is that they are located Minnesota. As long as I keep
my descriptions nebulous, can talk freely about my coverts without
fear of intrusion. Of course, given my tendency to talk at length
about things I love, I may inadvertently reveal too much, may
at some point suspect that we actually share or two,
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