I headed up north with my father in law to go do some birding. Poor guy has a bad hip, can barely walk and doesn’t get out much. I wasn’t sure what to expect for birds, on account of this Saturday being moose opener. Surprisingly there were only 4 moose camps in the bush, usually there’s way more. The traffic on the trails was almost non existent.
It turned out to be good for us. A light drizzle started our morning but within 30 minutes we were into a group of spruce grouse. My FIL loves the spruce ones so he took all three. The rest of our adventure had us searching the highlands and lowlands for ruffeds. I can report 95% of leaves are down. Before lunch we bagged a couple of ruffed grouse. While my FIL built a fire and got our lunch going, I took a walk with my 22 and bumped into a nice cluster of birds. I knocked 3 out of 5 down. After lunch we started to head out of the bush. On our way out we completed our limit. In total we saw 15 birds. And who knows how many we either drove passed or walked passed. On our way out we were stopped and checked by the local CO. I thought he was a cop in a black truck with lights but it’s a ghost truck, emblems and all. Nice guy anyway, says there’s not too many moose hunters with tags. We probably only saw 5 other hunters all day. It did remain cloudy with off and on showers most of the day. It’s just great to be outdoors instead of being cooped up in doors with lousy weather. Ended up giving myself a nasty cut while cleaning the birds. Those bones are razor sharp. I don’t think a fox or wolf could just eat these birds whole without choking on a bone.
Also noticed quite a few mushrooms out. Saw a good amount of lobster mushrooms and slippery jacks.
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