Grouse Hunting With My Son

Grouse are one of the game birds that you don’t need dogs, fancy gear, calls or other stuff to hunt. Grouse also make for a great family hunting opportunity as for now there are relatively plentiful in many areas. This story about hunting grouse with my son and contains photos from many different hunts. They are actually quite simple to hunt and taste delicious too! There are many species of grouse scattered throughout the United States and hunting them varies from area to area so check your local regulations first. Locally we have two types of grouse we hunt, the Ruffed Grouse and the Blue Grouse. Ruffed Grouse are more common and found in many different habits. They are smaller usually yielding about a pound of meat and they usually don’t spook easily allowing you a good shooting opportunity. Their natural camouflage makes up for they lack of flight instincts and the older bigger ones don’t stick around as long for sure. The Blue Grouse are much bigger yielding 2 or more pounds of meat and they are very flighty so getting a good shot at close range is a rarity. They have a bluish hue which is how they got their name, but they also blend in well with their surroundings. Blue Grouse are general found near or in high elevations so we usually hunt for them in the mountains and foothills. Retrieving them can be challenging if they roll down the mountain.

Grouse can easily be hunted with almost any firearm, but a shotgun is easiest. A .410 bore shotgun works great for Ruffed Grouse where you can easily get into its effective range, but blue grouse will usually fly off before you get close enough to shoot them. A 28 gauge and bigger covers all the grouse and ranges. We use modified chokes for everything except the .410, which is a full choke. .22 rifle and handguns are excellent choices too and you won’t have to pick all the shot pellets out of the grouse meat as you eat it. I would still rather find a shot pellet in my home cooked meal than a hair in my fast food. Centerfire rifles can also be used and I just shoot the grouse’s head off as it you wouldn’t have any meat left otherwise. I maybe should have put a “Trigger warning” at the beginning of this story, but if you clicked the story knowing what it was about you can’t complain about getting offended at this point. The story name should have been enough warning that tasty animals were killed. We only shoot delicious or dangerous critters as we are hunting to harvest food, not to kill and waste anything indiscriminately. Wild game animals and birds are all natural, low in salt, low in cholesterol, hormone free, antibiotic free, taste good, and are a renewable resource with proper management. Proper management does include hunting to keep the populations in check and leaves plenty of breeding pairs to ensure that future generations also enjoy harvesting them.

My son Jeff has been around firearms his whole life and has had firearm safety instilled in him during all of his growing up years so he is meticulous when it comes to safety. I taught Hunter Education classes for 25 years and was a police firearms instructor for well over 20 years so he learned a lot about safety. He was finally big enough to take the Hunter Safety class when he turned 10 and passed it. My kids and I are all enrolled Indians and usually hunt using our Indian treaty rights in our Usual and Accustomed areas under our treaty regulations so the hunter orange is not required. We will wear it once in a while if we are hunting at a time when the woods are filled with state hunters, but overall if you see tons of people while you are hunting you are in the wrong spot.

Jeff really enjoys grouse hunting and he has been out in the woods since he was born. We used to ratchet strap his car seat onto one of the quad racks so he could ride around with us while we were hunting. He has travelled hundreds of miles in a car seat ratchet strapped to a quad before getting big enough to sit on the seat. Most of our harvested grouse are incidental harvests where we ran across them while hunting big game and see a grouse. He started hunting grouse when he was 10 as they were easy to hunt until he got big enough to pack a big game caliber rifle, at which point hunting was shifted towards big game. We did do a lot of grouse hunting and kept an eye out for big game over the years so he has harvested many tasty grouse over the years. I will never forget how happy and excited he was when he harvested his first grouse. Unfortunately, most of the early hunting photos were on 35mm film and others were taken with a low-quality flip phone camera so earlier pictures of him and his older sister are hard to post.

Spending time in the great outdoors with your son while hunting is rewarding and an experience they will remember. We spent countless hours hunting in some very scenic areas that many people will never see, other than in photographs. Jeff is a good shot so missing a grouse is extremely rare and usually only happens because we misjudged the range and used too small of shot. He does skeet shooting too so flying birds are not safe either when he gets them in his sights and they are within shooting range.

Jeff still enjoys grouse hunting after all these years, although he doesn’t get to hunt as much anymore since he is a college student now and lives far away from our treaty hunting area. His Hunter Education card is good in almost all 50 states so he can still hunt with a state license if he wishes, but storing and firearms would be a major problem while he is in college due to the new laws so he will have to settle for the times when he comes home for the holidays now. I’m sure he can’t wait to get home and go hunting again, but his life has become very busy since he started college.

Jeff got really good and fast at cleaning the grouse too using the method I showed him where you stand on the wings and use slow steady pressure to pull the legs effectively separating the innards from the breast meat. We remove the skin from the breast instead of taking the time to pluck it as removing all the feathers and pin feathers is a big pain. We slice the breast meat, dip it in an egg wash, and coat it with Krusteaz Bake and Fry mix (Now renamed Breader and Batter) before frying it in oil with a little minced garlic added. Chanterelle mushrooms are usually out for part of the grouse season and it is hard to beat a good fresh grouse and mushroom dinner.