My First Grouse Hunt

My first grouse hunt took place this week with myself and co worker. It was Thursday afternoon, the wind was light and the temperature was a comfortable 55 degrees or so. I had never been grouse hunting before. I usually go pheasant hunting because I am from southern Minnesota where there are no grouse to hunt. So now that I live up here I figured I would give it a shot and I am glad I did. We took off and headed up north to some state land about 25 minutes or so away from Duluth. We arrived at our spot around 4 o'clock or so and began our adventure. We loaded up our guns and put on our blaze orange vests and headed down the first trail we found in search of my first grouse. I really didn't know what to expect I knew that it would be harder to knock down a grouse than a pheasant or duck because of the size difference but I figured I would have fun trying at least. So we took off down the trail looking along the edges of the trees to see if we could spot one. We walked down the first trail for 10 minutes or so and saw nothing. We then decided to head down another trail would take us in another direction and hopefully give us a little more luck. So we headed down the trail and finally about 5 minutes into the trail we saw our first grouse of the afternoon. The grouse got up and flew across the trail infront of us, I fired 3 times and missing all three and then my buddy that was hunting with me fired 2 times and knocked the grouse down to the ground. I had figured out that it really was going to be a lot harder to knock down a grouse than a pheasant that was for sure. So we picked up the grouse and continued down the trail in search for more grouse. As more and more time had passed I was beginning to wonder if I was going to get another chance at a grouse or not, when finally about 10 yards ahead of me I spotted another grouse and I thought here is another chance, the grouse got up and I started shooting, and wouldn't know it I finally got my first grouse. What a relief and fun time. Grouse are definitely the hardest bird I have had to try to hit. So after I looked at my grouse for a few minutes and admired my first grouse we picked it up and headed back towards our truck hoping that maybe we would see a few more birds before we headed out. And guess what , We did we ended up getting two more birds a piece before we left. So overall I would say that my first outdoor adventure grouse hunting was a successful one for me and I can 't wait to get back out and do it again.