Unexpected challenges at annual “grouse camp” hunt

One hundred yards into the hunt, Jeremy Thompson from New Hampshire said his Garmin showed his dog on point 20 yards off the trail. His friend Jimmy Carnevole, from Boston, Mass., told him “I’ll stay out here and cover you.”

A grouse flittered just to the left of Jimmy and I and we started working it with his dog Ava. Jeremy shouted that a woodcock flew about 30 yards further in. Lottie found and pointed it a second time.

Jeremy shot and said he hit the bird. Jimmy asked if he needed help retrieving the bird and Jeremy said “no.” Jimmy started telling me about hunting woodcock and grouse hunting in New Hampshire at their stomping grounds.

A couple minutes after Jeremy’s shot, I thought I heard a cry of distress and then silence. The terrain played havoc with sound. I called out to Jeremy and got no response. We both called out and still no response. I thought “Oh my, I’ll be the only mentor to lose a hunter . . .”

“Lottie’s not a great retriever,” Jeremy told me after he reappeared and calmed down 15 minutes later. “She’ll find dead birds and point them and she found the bird. I walked up and picked it up. Immediately I felt a painful sensation on my arm, then the back of my head, and then all over. The woodcock landed right on top of the hole of a ground nest of yellow jackets.” “I swatted them from my face and realized I had to run, but I wasn’t leaving the bird, so I grabbed that back up, then my gun, and started running. I ran until the stinging stopped and I didn’t hear or see anymore “bees” and then I ran a lot more,” Jeremy told us. Running through a 10-yearold aspen stand in the middle of September isn’t easy. It’s darn hard. I noticed Jeremy’s shield for his shooting glasses were missing. He told me that they are prescription lenses. But let’s let Jeremy tell this.

“When I stopped running and kind of caught my breath I gathered up Lottie. Then I realized I didn’t know where I was or what direction I ran. I called out and got no answer. The lenses fell off the frames of my shooting glasses when swatting the “bees” off my face. I couldn’t read my phone or GPS without those glasses,” Jeremy told us.

“A bit later I heard this barely audible – ‘Jeremy,” he continued. “I moved fast in that direction, I called again and got no answer. I heard a slightly less faint ‘Jeremy’ again and kept heading that direction. I stopped and yelled and got a slightly less faint response and moved fast towards the voices.”

I just started walking in towards that distressed sound earlier when I heard Jeremy faintly yell out from far greater than 150 yards. We answered and he yelled something back. He covered that 150 yards through a thick young aspen thicket in about a minute. He appeared with Lottie looking quite unnerved.

“I just had the worst experience!” Jeremy said. “The worst experience! I need a minute!”

Obviously distressed, but he wasn’t bleeding, he was walking and talking okay, breathing a touch fast but not hyperventilating. We asked “what’s wrong?”

“I just need a minute,” replied Jeremy. Jimmy and I were thinking – wolf, bear, cougar, bigfoot?

“Couldn’t have been too bad there’s a bird in your bag,” Jimmy chided with his Bostonian accent.

A minute passed and Jeremy explained the ordeal. “Are you allergic?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. Jeremy had over 30 sting marks on the back of his head, neck, and arms. He was stung through his shirt, but his bird vest protected his back and chest area.

This happened during the hunting part of the Ruffed Grouse Society’s “Grouse Camp” held annually in Eagle River at Trees for Tomorrow. Jeremy and Jimmy are experienced grouse hunters. They wanted an adventure and to experience Great Lake States’ grouse hunting. I don’t think this was what they had in mind.

Jeremy lost his $300 prescription shooting lenses and a nice shooting glove on his first Wisconsin hunt. But Jeremy did win a sweet 28 gauge over and under that got raffled off at the dinner festivities. Things have a way of evening out. Congrats Jeremy on your new gun and your first Wisconsin woodcock. You also own the best woodcock hunting story ever.

Please remember, Safe Hunting is No Accident!

THROUGH A