It has nothing to do with shooting, it really is about hunting. About blood, sweat and tears; preferably the game’s blood, but most certainly your sweat and probably your tears for lack of descent chances of a clean shot. We are talking about wood hunting here, dense woodland or at least bush country. Sometimes the game sits extremely hard, your dog flushes them only a few feet away, at other times the game cannot wait to get away from you – usually long before you reach the area where they are. The result is the same; you just cannot see them long enough to get that clean shot. On other occasions you are utterly amazed of how easy it can be to shoot quite a few birds. That is when you are on a winning streak, you should cherish those moments; before you know it your luck runs out.
To be honest, the terms under which we are hunting differ from those in the southern part of Sweden, but maybe not as much as you would imagine it to differ. Our birds also like open spaces; mires, clearings and so forth, but always close to heavy cover. Cover they are really good at getting away in. Capercailzie, black grouse, willow grouse are more inclined to run, to get ahead of you, than the pheasant. There is also the woodcock, but I guess you already know about them. The fastest bird on the face of the earth, always dodging and turning when flushed and – at least where we live – always living in the densest woodland there is. That means heavy underbrush, spruce and birch, all there to help them get away. But, the woodcock is a bit of a favourite game to us, and there are so many of them. We just do not seem to be able to leave them be.
What capercailzie, black grouse and willow grouse are concerned; they must be considered as an unusually cunning sort of creatures! Do not expect to find them in the open. If you do, you should consider yourself lucky and take what you can get, because it rarely happens. If they are in the open and they hear you closing in on them, they always scurry away into the trees or the densest undergrowth they can find. They always see to it that they are close by to that kind of shelter only to flush, all at the same time, and almost never in a way which allows you to a clean shot. It is in moments like that, that you are glad to have had the common sense to buy a spaniel; or, preferably at least a couple of them. The swift and “hard hitting” spaniel has the ability of forcing the birds to their wings without them being able to plan their escape. Instead some of them are bound to be coming out of the trees, out in the open, where you can get a clean shot at them. What breed can do this better than the spaniel?
No matter how good your spaniel is at his work, you still have to do your part; to actually hit the bird. Those birds never fly in a straight line more than a few metres and they always head for that lone spruce in the open, behind of which they can hide. They have a tendency of flying in constantly tightening curves, which makes it even harder to get your aim right. The willow grouse is a natural born expert in this field; not only that; often enough it seems to aim for your face and sometimes knocks the hat off your head! Never a dull moment!
Still, you have to find those illusive birds. Not an easy task, I can tell you. Normally there are very few birds to find, because they are wild birds, no one breeds them to enhance the number of birds and many of the young ones die before adulthood. A harsh living condition with cold weather, rain when the chicks are very young, kills many of them. Fox, marten, ferret and, above all, hawks, cause heavy losses. I guess that is the natural order of things.
You may have to hunt for hour after hour before you actually find a bird, not always, but often enough, but one thing is certain; you are in for a long walk…
