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Black Grouse


This was taken the 23rd of December, last day of the season.
Actually I was out looking for Grouse which is in season till the end of February but anything else would be a nice added bonus.
The last few days it had been snowing a bit in the mountains so I packed my skis, gun and dog in the car and headed for the mountains.
It is about 15-20 minutes drive and it was just enough snow that it'd be a hard walk on foot, it wasn't really enough for skiing either but I knew it'd
get better when I came to higher ground.
The first hour or so is the sort of terrain one could expect to see Black Grouse or Capercaillie.
No such luck even if my Gordon Setter covered the terrain with intensity and
she rarely miss a bird in her search.
After the first hour we reached the climb up to Grouse territory, I could see the dog marking where there obviously had been birds earlier.
I changed the ammo in my shotgun to something lighter as the Grouse is fairly easy to kill compared to the bigger birds.
After about an half hour I noticed the dog getting very busy and clearly was following a scent.
After about 5 minutes I saw her tryng to climb into a crack in the mountain, when she was on her backfeet she could just reach the start of the crack.
I could see some bushes in there and the whole thing was about 3 yards long and maybe 20 inches wide, at first I thought it might be a Hare
but her tail was just moving slowly, she gets far more exited with Hare.
She then reached maybe an inch more towards the crack and now it was clear that she was pointing at a bird.
I had no reason to think that this was something other then a grouse as I've never seen anything else this high up, with the exception of hare,
which I now had ruled out.
I moved towards her while I thought about how I'd get her to get the bird on it's wings, she could not get up where the bird was located so when I
was 5-6 yards from her I got ready with the shotgun and calmly asked her: What do you see?
That was enough, the bird exploded out from where it was seated and flew behind a boulder.
When it reappeared it was about 15-16 yards from me and I was over the surprise of it being black instead of white
and I took the shot then and there as I had loaded the gun with a lighter load and would not risk it getting too far from me.
It was sufficient and the bird went down, it was indeed a nice Black Grouse :)
The dog, gun and the Black Grouse.

A illustration photo of a Black Grouse