These, Among Many: A Gallery of Good Fortune :: By Robert DeMott

In southeastern Ohio, where I have lived since 1969 (transplanted from New England), ruffed grouse, my main hunting obsession for most of my time here, have become so scarce that pursuing them has become at worst utterly futile, and at best an elegiac exercise, like remembering the faintest strains of long-gone music, or the first kiss with Mary Lou what’s-her-name.

I don’t mean I wax sloppy, blubbering sentimentally for the “good old days” when grouse seemed to be as conspicuous as backyard robins. I had a field companion who did that too often for my taste, and we stopped hunting together. He remembered when flushing a gang of grouse in an afternoon was routine and complained bitterly when we’d flush only a couple in four or five strenuous hours of hauling ourselves up and down 300-foot inclines, or walking with turned ankles for hundreds of yards at a time on sloping side hill benches. Mr. Nimrod put away half a dozen Rolling Rocks on the drive home to smooth over his disgust, but could never erase the insistent anger in his voice, as though he’d been tricked out of some part of his birthright.

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