from feather to taco from Bus Huxley on Vimeo.

It’s a cold and clear October morning, the sun just angling through the bare trees, with warm blades cutting the frost as it rises. There is no wind, and when I stop walking, I can hear everything in the woods around me: the flutter of a chickadee, the knock of a far-off woodpecker, and the muffled steps of a ruffed grouse. Bingo. I rely on aural cues to seek my quarry because this woodland bird has evolved to be invisible to visual cues.

A ruffed grouse, or patridge colloquially, will instinctively remain motionless until its perceived threat stops moving. At this point these small, chicken-sized birds either begin to creep, low and slow into thick cover in an attempt to hide or suddenly, just prior to being stepped on, take off in explosive flight, with short, powerful wings loudly beating the air and propelling them as fast as 30 miles an hour, launching them to safety two hundred or three hundred yards away.

It is the bird’s explosive escape that tends to test my cardio pulmonary fortitude and most often leads to the continuation of life for the grouse. The creeping and hiding business is not always an effective option for the feathered future fricassee. Moving slowly through the woods, stopping often, I listen. With my head on a swivel and my mouth slightly agape, I hear the telltale grouse shuffle. Now it’s time for the eyes to go to work.

I use the same gun I’ve had since I was a kid: a Model 37 Winchester 12-guage single-shot. It is from the 1950s. A full choke makes for a tight shot pattern and requires a bit more accuracy, but also yields a quick kill and breast meat free of #6 birdshot. It’s never pleasant to bite down on a lead pellet in your taco. I have used the same tool my whole life and am comfortable with it — the weight, length of the barrel, feel of the hammer, pull of the trigger, break of the barrel. This familiarity shortens the time between visual location of the partridge and the shot.