Rifle Ruffed Grouse Hunt

Cock ruffed grouse in snow

Merely mention ruffed grouse and rifles in the same sentence and true ruffed grouse hunters will go apoplectic. I know. I used to be one of them.

Not anymore.

Up in the Northeast and Great Lakes States where ruffed is King, pointing dogs and shotguns are the only way to pursue these birds. Can be high-end, engraved doubles and noble English setters or plain pump actions and a backyard bred brittany. Doesn’t matter. You shoot Mr. Ruff when he is on the wing. If you can see him.

Here on Dancing Springs Ranch you cannot.

Been hunting this ranch for five seasons and have had but two chances at flying ruffed grouse. Missed the easy one, bagged the tough one. I did have a fleeting opportunity earlier this year, but the wiley ruffed flushed along the edge of the hawthorn thicket amid a ragged pack of sharptails. By the time I’d sorted the fantail amid all the stuffy sharp tails, it was too late.

Hen ruffed grouse in snowy hawthorn thicket.

The remainder of the season was like all the others. Covey get’s birds, points, I hear the brrrrr of wings, then silence. Limb sitter. Sometimes I can pick through the tangles, physically as well as visually, and spot the bird, sometimes not. And then comes the philosophical debate. Do I salute him and move on, or do I tumble to the gastronome in me and head shoot him?

Gasp! Shotgun a grouse sitting still? Gasp! Pass up one of the finest eating upland game birds in North America?

Ruffed grouse, male.

Well, those are the questions. Whether ‘tis better to cheat and eat or nobler to pass and starve? Hunt after hunt, bird after bird, I’ve starved. Until yesterday.

About two hours before dusk Covey was complaining. Enough lounging about soaking up heat from the fireplace. Time to do what we were bred to do. Time to stretch and run and romp and sniff and creep and point and hunt up some birds! Of course the subtleties of game laws and closed are lost on Covey. What? You can’t shoot sharptails and pheasants fairly tracked, pinned, and flushed? In her world if it flies it dies. So let’s go already. You know there are two dozen sharptails in the oats.

Come on dad, let’s hunt! Covey.

But forest grouse season was still open. So we went. With a different angle than usual. First, we would not be working the grain fields. Second, we would not be packing a shotgun. Twenty-two rimfires were legal tools for taking forest grouse. And my Kimber Classic was leaning by the door, it’s five-round magazine stuffed with Remington 22 CB rounds. Little 33-grain bullet. Muzzle velocity of just 740 fps. I was using them to harass starlings house shopping round the barn. The Leupold was zeroed.

Lest you fear this was unsporting, too easy, cheating, whatever, know that I trudged a couple of miles through foot-deep snow as we searched. Covey easily plowed four times that distance. We ducked under limbs, pushed through brush, sweated through a shirt, then chilled in the wind when we stopped for a breather. When Covey started looking “birdy,” I removed my hood and listened hard, watching the brush for flickering wings, fanning tails. For the first time all bird season I didn’t have my ears covered with muffs, stuffed with foam, or buzzing with some electronic hearing aide/sound attenuator. And I still didn’t hear the flushes. But I easily spotted the first bird in Covey’s wake. It had uncharacteristically perched on an open branch across the creek. Standing tall, proud, smug. The word had gotten out among the Dancing Springs Ranch ruffed grouse: Don’t fly and you won’t die.

At the subtle crack of the Kimber 22, Mr. Ruffed tumbed to the snowy brush below. A prime cock bird and the first red-phase tail I’ve seen on the ranch.

But there was a new word. Twenty-two rimfire. And when it cracked (barely) Mr. Ruff tumbled to the idea. Covey heard the subtle shot and rushed back, heard a flap of wings, picked her way through the brush, scooped up the bird, and brought it in. My second DSR ruffed grouse in five seasons! And the first red phase I’d ever seen. A mature male. Gorgeous. And no pellets in the meat!

Two hundred yards along I spotted another. Like the first, it had elevated to escape Covey. Like the first it knew nothing about 22 rimfires and my new ethics. My first shot clipped a limb. That out of the way, the second met the brain. Covey again retrieved. A gray phase. Perfect. The impact was so mild that I couldn’t even see where the bullet had hit. No broken wings. No broken legs. No pellets in those plump, delectably white breasts. Chef’s choice.

Covey retrieved both grouse from the hawthorn thicket. Good girl!

So complain all you want about proper ruffed grouse wing shooting. Back east I’ll join you. Even in north Idaho, where ruffed grouse do fly properly, I’ll joing you. But here on the ranch they play by different rules. And hitting a ruffed grouse in the head with a 22 rimfire fired offhand — at least as sporting as squirrel hunting. And even a smaller target. To my delight.

Now, to the kitchen. Carrots and potatoes from the garden, a bit of cabbage. We’ve got some roasting and basting to do.

From now on there’s a new ruffed grouse hunting ethic on Dancing Springs Ranch. Head shooting with a 22 rimfire for optimal dining quality! Note the color phases of the tails and the larger size of the older male. Those black feathers are the display ruffs for which these grouse were named.