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Joined: 27 Nov 2020 Posts: 84 Location: mtns of central PA

ColdIron, I flushed a nice mature red phase bird here in central PA last week. I was glad to see it because grouse numbers are low in my county. I’ve found a couple pockets but I just run the dog there, I leave the gun at home. Here’s hoping they have a good nesting season. Hard to beat the beauty of a ruffed grouse (though I’d say a native brook trout or a male wood duck are on equal footing). I still haven’t found a woodcock this year, though they seem plentiful in other parts of PA, at least it seems from social media. I’d like to try upper Midwest grouse hunting one day, but I’m not able to travel much at the moment.

I carry similar tools and fear the Conibear traps. They are illegal here except for underwater sets, but you never know. In some parts of PA and WV, distant from the warden’s eye, things get pretty wild and woolly as you know... Great to hear your Tioga Co trapping history. By the time I came of age , fur prices were just too low, but my dad grew up trapping muskrats for funny money.

Boon,

Sense you already own one nice sweet 16, we need to get you into a Classic American 16 gauge SXS double gun also. We kind of have a tradition around here of Grouse and Woodcock hunting with them. The new RST and Poly SpredR shells make these guns fantastic Grouse & Woodcock guns!

all the best,

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Fantastic L.C. Smith 16 gauge Grade #3 on GI for sale right now.

Joined: 27 Nov 2020 Posts: 84 Location: mtns of central PA

Dave, one of these days when money isn't so tight, I'd be happy to give one a loving home... My grandfather hunted an Elsie for decades before blowing up the barrel in a mishap (winter grouse hunt, he fell and didn't notice he'd plugged the barrels with snow).

Though I reckon in the future I'll get a couple by default, as my dad has a 2 American doubles in the safe & I'm the only son (the other kids and brothers-in-law are not hunters). One is a 16 gauge Field Grade Elsie he bought from an older grouse-hunter we know--nothing fancy but lots of life left in it. A new pad would help the LOP on that one, and we aren't even sure what it's choked. The other is a bit nicer, a Philadelphia Fox in 12 gauge, choked full and fuller--a good candidate for spreader loads. It belonged to my grandfather's eccentric cousin, a well-off farmer in Greene County PA who died without heirs in the late 1980s. I'd love to hunt with that one.
When we were working on the house, we found the Fox up in the attic along with a Remington 14 pump rifle (quite an interesting gun, calibered .30 Remington) and a pump .22 with a hexagonal barrel.

My grandfather's cousin was quite a character. His longtime girlfriend was part of the McGuffey family (of the McGuffey Readers, a popular primer in the one-room school house days), and she loved to fish for smallmouth bass with a fly-rod on the South Branch of the Potomac River. Indeed, we have her bamboo fly-rod with her name inked on the grip. I'll fish it one day, but I need to have the silk wraps redone on a couple of the guides. It's not by a famous maker so I'm not worried by knocking down the value, I'd rather fish it.

Way back when, before he turned to English setters, my grandfather had a couple big-running Irish setters... In the days before GPS, he would slow them down in the grouse woods by fixing a length of heavy logging chain to their collars.

Boon,

L.C. Smith 16 gauge Field grade guns are great Grouse guns, the 12 gauge Fox with light SpredR's gets the job done also. The Fox 12 gauge will be a real nice Turkery gun!

all the best,

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man