Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 9 5 wherever Tom Prawdzik puts his boots on the ground, he does so with a definite plan in mind—a plan based on knowing grouse behavior, the lay of the land, and how the latter is likely to influence the former. Time and time again on that hunt in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Tom told me precisely where to stand— and he was invariably right on the money. For my part, I didn't miss them all. P rawdzik's first bird dog, back in the 1950s, was a Brittany named Freckles. He shot a lot of grouse over her but thought he could do a little better, so in the early '60s he picked up a couple of English setter pups. His flush rate jumped dramatically, and he never looked back. "My criteria for judging efficient grouse dogs," he says (note the use of the word efficient again), "is a dog that spends ninety percent of its time searching for grouse and points at least seventy percent of the grouse it finds." In some respects Prawdzik's thoughts on the qualities that characterize top-notch grouse dogs conform to the conventional wisdom. He likes a dog that hunts wide and fast, a dog that clips right along and covers a lot of ground. This is another area, he'll tell you, in which the average grouse hunter, by over-controlling his dog and wanting it to hunt too close, falls short. Prawdzik's ideal grouse dog is also very light on its feet, moving easily through the woods without excessive panting. The kind of dog that charges through the cover shredding its tail, tongue, and other body parts is precisely what he's not looking for; in fact, the one dog he had that fit this description was statistically the worst grouse dog he ever owned. In this same vein—and this is where his opinions begin to diverge radically from the field-trial standard—Prawdzik prefers a dog that runs with a relatively low, quiet tail, for the simple reason that it cuts down on the possibility of injury and chronic bleeding. As for how the "The more time dogs spend working woodcock scent," he states, "the fewer grouse they'll find. My flush rate may drop by as much as one grouse per hour when the dogs are finding woodcock." Indeed, maximizing the hourly flush rate—which for Prawdzik includes all grouse seen or heard to flush by all members of the hunting party—is the key to hunting efficiently. You're always going to miss more grouse than you hit (at least over the long haul) so it just makes sense to give yourself as many chances as possible. One way to do that, of course, is to hunt the best, most productive cover you can find. Which, in turn, requires that you continually scout for new cover. "That's probably the single most important thing you can do to improve your grouse hunting," says Prawdzik. "Most hunters find a few good spots and keep going back to them. What they don't realize is that grouse cover, with some exceptions, only stays prime for about ten years. You should constantly be on the lookout for new cover." These days, thanks to GoogleEarth and other satellite imagery programs, you can scout for new grouse cover without leaving home. Prawdzik jumped on this literally as soon as the technology became available; now, the ever-expanding folder of aerial photos he's downloaded from the web is as indispensable a part of his hunting kit as his 20-gauge Beretta over-and- under and 3-inch 7½ shotshells. I flinch just thinking about that combination, but it obviously works well for him. Another point of emphasis for Prawdzik, in the context of hunting efficiently, is putting yourself in position to get a good look when a grouse flushes. As I discovered when I had the pleasure of hunting with Tom along with his son Dave and our mutual friend Bubba Wood in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a few years ago, he doesn't simply turn his dogs loose and follow them through the woods, letting the chips fall where they may. Far from it: Whenever and