On a sun-splashed day in my youth, I was upland-bird hunting in the Belgrade Lakes region when two thoughts hit me about cover preferences for woodcock and grouse during an extremely dry fall. The lessons stuck.

One October afternoon after weeks of little rain, I worked my English setter through an alder run with cement-dry earth beneath. In normal years the dog found abundant flight woodcock there, but no such luck that season. Woodcock need damp, soft soil, where their prehensile bills can probe for worms, their favorite forage.

That fall in such a drought, it became obvious woodcock would be feeding on the edges of brooks and streams or around upland spring seeps. Alders often grow in these wet areas, a canopy to hide them from probing raptor eyes, and moist earth attracts worms.

At the end of the alder run, my setter swung uphill into open scrub pine and gray birch and to my surprise, the dog locked up. I figured a stray ruffed grouse had scented the ground there earlier before roosting in a nearby pine.

I moved toward the little, statute-like setter with my eyes scanning boughs above the point, but on the ground 15 yards from her, a hidden grouse flushed diagonally. I aimed the shotgun a tad over the rising bird and watched it fall like a stone. I had trained the setter to point downed birds.

While walking to the dead grouse, I noted a huge patch of sunlit coltsfoot carpeting the ground, and grouse had shredded some leaves, evidence easy to decipher.

They’re feeding on coltsfoot, I thought. A coltsfoot leaf looks like a colt’s hoof print or large cucumber leaf.

Coltsfoot grew beneath the pine and gray birch, and along the top edges of an ancient, shallow gravel pit beyond, perfect soil for this wort – used as cough medicine in the 19th century. Folks smoked the dry leaves or made an infusion with the plant. Grouse just ate it.

I ran the setter through more coltsfoot, watched her point three more times and shot another grouse – two in two hours, not bad. It also made me realize that grouse often fed on coltsfoot in dry years.

Grouse habitat may be a cornucopia for this bird, but in my experience old ruffie keys on a certain food on some days. I grew up in Windsor east of Augusta, where abandoned apple orchards were everywhere, many planted after the Civil War and during the early 20th century. Yellow Transparents, Cortlands, Granny Smiths, Northern Spy, Wolf River, McIntosh, Johathans, Baldwins, Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious and many lesser-known varieties grew across the countryside. So many orchards taught me plenty about apples, making me sound nerdy on the topic.

Early in life I noticed a point about grouse and apples: This bird loves ripe Yellow Transparents, an extra-early apple that American farmers started importing from Russia in 1870. Farther south than Maine, Transparents ripen in late July through September, but here this variety sweetens in early fall. Grouse pound them in preparation for winter.

When grouse forage on Yellow Transparents in any year or coltsfoot in dry years, I’ve often told friends that hunting around these forages resembles shooting clay targets. At times when I walk up to coltsfoot or Transparents, birds flush so consistently that it reminds me of clay-target games. Of course that’s an exaggeration but you get the gist.

Speaking of targeting forage, in the days when I ran bird dogs, I never noted that grouse keyed on poplar leaves in October, even though this foliage occasionally filled their crops. While bowhunting from hidden tree stands later in life, though, I watched grouse as they walked into abandoned orchards filling in with poplars, and note the word “walk.” They often strolled to the food, fluttered up to a limb and then filled their crops with leaves.

Of course, in late season grouse bud in poplars (often quaking and bigtooth poplar) and also like hawthorn and other fruit choices.

No one needs to search for one grouse-forage item, but if hunters notice grouse in a coltsfoot patch during this dry year, it wouldn’t hurt to push into a few more coltsfoot patches later to see if a pattern develops. It’s satisfying to the core to note grouse in a certain forage hit places where you know it grows and flush more birds.

And in my opinion, no game critter on the continent produces tastier meat, meat that deserves a real French Chablis, French bread, pilaf-stuffed tomatoes, green veggie, china and linen napkins.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes, a writer, editor and photographer, may be reached at:

KAllyn800@yahoo.com

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