Day 2 Tug Hill Area

 9/21/22:  

Lexi and I hunted all day under clear skies, light winds, and temps around 70 degrees in an area about 10 miles west of Lowville, NY.   Overall, there are tons of covers one can scotch-hop. 

Essentially, the state forests are a haphazard patchwork totaling around 70,000 acres.  While there's a great deal of farmland in the area, I didn't find any SFs that were clearly abandoned farms.  In general, they are woods with lots and lots of swamps. 

9 Partridge flushes:  

      - 4 heard, not seen

      - 2 repeat flushes of same birds

      - 3 shooting opportunities: 1 miss, 2 failures to turn safety off

     - We also saw a partridge by the road so I let Lexi out to see if she could pick up the scent where it ran into the woods.  She wound up flushing that one and another I had not seen.  Wasn't in a SF, just a training experience to acquaint her with partridge scent.

3 Woodcock flushes: 

    - 1  bird flushed twice, 2nd time was heard not seen

    -  2 shooting opportunities - missed both 

Tug Hill State Forest            12,242 acres

    - Patchwork would be an understatement.  Must have been a series of opportunistic acquisitions vs. one big purchase.  If any of this was ever farmland, it must have been many generations ago.  Nonetheless, there are hundreds of wild covers to explore.

Tug Hill Wildlife Management Area  5,100 acres

  - Largely, a disappointment.  The cuts they've been making won't be productive for another 5 years IMO.  Some big stretches of genuinely old growth forest.  Many swamps and therefore, covers that border them might very well hold grouse and woodcock not to mention ducks and geese.  Numerous designated parking areas show this is meant for hunters.

Lookout State Forest            39, 215 acres

   - Some cuts that are 4+ years old look good but ground is dominated by briars and some raspberries.  I did find some apple trees in one spot and superb woodcock cover in others.  Extremely tough going in the grassy areas bordering streams.  Some sort of vines are mixed in with normal ground cover making every step a battle.  Briars are pretty mild by Connecticut standards.  Dozens of promising covers in this area.

Grant Powell State Forest     8,077 acres

   - I camped for free on Bee Tree Rd thanks to a permit from rangers.  Near a large swamp, parts of it had been selectively cut decades ago and slash (i.e. branches left on the ground) is not a problem.  Some smallish cuts were probably done just this summer and are completely cluttered with slash.  Wont' be ready for at 5 years minimum.

Sears Pond State Forest        5,648 acres

    - Numerous snowmobile trails are maintained in the Barnes Corners area and afford a grouse hunter readymade walking trails deep into state forest lands.  Lexi flushed a pair of grouse in thick cover near a stream that we happened upon while following one of the snowmobile trails.  Flushed them a second time, one coming up from heavy ground cover just 20 ft away from me.  It flew right in front of me but I fumbled with the safety and it was gone.  One of the best looks I've ever had at a ruffed grouse.  

Grouse Boondoggle Recon

 9/15/22:  Since I came home earlier than I expected, I've decided it's finally time to have a close-up look at the Tug Hill plateau in NY state.  My hunting buddy Lew has made an annual pilgrimage to areas a bit south of there for decades hunting pa'tridge and woodcock but the covers are not as productive as they once were. Perhaps I can find him some new options for future hunts.

NY Department of Environmental Conservation (aka "come on man, I gotta shoot something") says that Tug Hill has the best ruffed grouse numbers in the state. In true wild-goose-chase Dan fashion, I'm headed up there on 9/19/22 to do some serious scouting and to introduce Lexi to both grouse and woodcock.  She's stumbled upon a a couple of the latter which surprised her greatly when they flushed.  Time to connect the dots so she recognizes these are the kinds of birds she should be looking for.

I'll be camping for free at the end of a dirt road just off Rector Rd. in the Grant Powell State Forest a few miles west of Lowville (Sarah Gottesman's birthplace) thanks to a permit from a helpful NY Forest Ranger in the area.  Naturally, that will invite some rain but just to make sure, I'll bring my shotgun and buy a hunting license.  The main areas I intend to check out are Tug Hill State Forest and Tug Hill Wildlife Management Unit.  Best to get any hunting and/or scouting done before the lake-effect snows fly (average of 133 inches annually).

So, if we get any birds, I can say it was a hunting trip.  If we only see but don't get any birds it was a scouting trip.  If we don't see any birds at all then it was a classic Dan trip.

I Have Returned

 9/3/22:  3,300 miles of driving over 4 days but I'm back home.  This time my knees had little or no pain vs. last year when I could not have done it without Lidocaine patches.

My plan to fish Paradise Valley in Montana chiefly centered around the Yellowstone River.  There were also some small tributaries that looked tempting as they flowed out of the nearby mountains.  Due to very poor research on my part, none of that panned out.  Like Henry's Fork, the Yellowstone is simply too deep and fast to wade but is ideal for drift boats if you are willing to hire a guide.  The water looks quite good despite the catastrophic early spring floods.  I completely misunderstood that the valley is extremely dry, hard baked and hot, even well up into the mountains.  I thought it would be greener and cooler - not.

So, I moved on to the Big Horn River which some guys from CT I ran into at Island Park, ID put me onto.  It was about a 3-hour drive but fit nicely as part of my gradual swing eastward, in the general direction of  home.  I heard on the radio, when I was about 15 minutes from there that Montana Fish & Game put a ban on fishing the river because of high heat.

That put me on the edge of the eastern Montana "bad lands" which are flat, hot and dry.  News was full of dire warnings about heatwaves from Colorado to Montana so, I just kept right on driving and started for home.  Lots and lots of construction zones dragged the speeds down to 55MPH and often lower.  Aggrivating.

I'll need to do a much better job of research for next year's trip.

Zanesville, OH

 13 hours of driving but no knee pain so far. 

Tomorrow should be the home stretch.