A Fox Gets the (interesting) Game....

[CJB964]

On a trip north last season carrying my new 16 A, I flushed a grouse, fired with the cylinder choked right bbl with no success, fired again and saw it come down with the XF left bbl. We looked for her until I was ready to agree that maybe I had missed twice, and at just that moment my dad almost trampled the bird as it busted out of a pile of dead grass, only able to fly about 3 feet in the air but still able to run like hell. He was finally able to secure it and as we celebrated the bird's resiliency, we noticed the central tail feathers were far shorter than those adjacent. This prompted sending the tail to the Game Commission who returned this email:

This bird had a tale to tell with that tail. He nearly became someone’s snack before you crossed his path. When the central tail feathers are plucked out from the base (as with a predator holding on to them as a bird escapes), they begin re-growing soon after. So they are shorter than the neighboring feathers and have an extensive blood sheath at base. This means your grouse had used up at least one of his lives before he flushed in front of your barrel.

If the tail feathers are broken off somewhere along the length (by say, struggling around in the brush), they do not re-grow until the following natural molt occurs so the bird would have broken off tail feathers, but not newly growing ones.

Here's to the mighty ruffed grouse - avoiding predators, dodging cylinder fox chokes, and damn near outlasting a search party.

[kgb]

Very interesting bird find.

However, "everybody" knows you can't knock down a ruffed grouse with anything tighter than IC; be prepared for the naysayers!