A look back to a time when our mountains were alive with the birds.
Winter 2024
By Herb McClure
Photos by Jimmy Jacobs
When talking to grouse hunters today, I cannot help but feel sorry for them. Especially, when comparing their hunting today, to my grouse hunting 60-plus years ago. Most grouse hunters I talk with today, express how few grouse there are in today’s coverts. That being the case, I would like to share how it was in my younger times with the late Arthur “Fats” Truelove. This was in the North Georgia’s Mountains, and more particular on the smaller streams on the North slopes of Georgia’s Appalachian Divide.
Modern Georgia grouse hunters expend a lot of boot leather in pursuit of these birds.
Newer grouse hunters today may wonder why grouse are not as plentiful now as they were back in those times. After World War II was over, the Forest Service here in Georgia’s mountains went about cutting and logging the timber off of the national forest lands. Cutting the best trees and leaving the smaller ones. Making logging roads along the sides of almost all of the streams and parallel to most hillsides. Thus, opening up the overhead tree’s canopies.
This let the sun shine on to the forest floor that caused new growth of vegetation’s to sprout up. Then by the mid 1950s it was their policy to plant grass in the newly made logging roads. All of this was very beneficial to the grouse. Their numbers began increasing, especially in those areas where logging was occurring.
Today’s tree cutting polices have changed, and there is hardly any timber being cut, except for the few clear-cuts, which are soon taken over by white-pines. This is the biggest reason the grouse populations has spiral downward.
But something else took place in the early ‘60s that caused Georgia’s grouse to become even more plentiful for a short time. This was due to a span-worm infestation. This infestation contained millions and millions of one-inch worms that defoliated the leaves off of most all hardwood trees. They would descend down out of the tree’s canopies on a spider-like web to reach the ground, before turning into white moths.
These very plentiful worms help cause an explosion in the grouse population. This was happening during the summer months of 1959 thru 1961. The trees in the higher mountains during those summers
looked like it was January in dead winter. Thus, it was in the early 1960s that Georgia’s grouse were in their most glorious days.
I was most fortunate to have experienced those grouse hunting times that were taking place. I was even more fortunate, to have been taken under the guidance of Georgia’s legendary grouse hunter, Arthur “Fats” Truelove, and his grouse hunting ways. He was the person who taught me to hunt grouse, wild turkey and deer. All of those were learned by being a shadow to his hunting ways.
A grouse taken on the Cooper Creek Wildlife Management Area.
Starting in 1956, Arthur and I began hunting grouse together, until his beloved grouse dog Dot pasted away in 1969. Her passing, caused Arthur to give-up his grouse hunting altogether, which he had started in 1947. Arthur, not having a grouse dog, and also losing his beloved shotgun, a Remington Model 11 made prior to 1940, in a house fire, caused Arthur to just quit grouse hunting. He and I had hunted together for 13 years.
Arthur was the best grouse shooter I ever witness. He was fast on the shot, and he shot where a grouse was going to be. He was the only shooter I ever witness making multiple triples on grouse. He would kill a double on them going one way, and then turning to kill a third grouse going in the opposite way, all in heavy cover.
Arthur was never married, and he devoted his outdoors-life: to hunting grouse, wild turkey, and deer. he was a block-mason in the summer months, but he would quit work each September, then scout and hunt till June the following year. I knew him to grouse hunt six days of a week.
The following statistics are what made Arthur a legend. Arthur’s normal seasonal harvest was about 70 grouse. His all-time best season was in 1961, when he killed 101 grouse. That was during one of the peak population years.
Arthur was once asked by a sports writer how many days in an average season do you hunt? He replied, about 40, and that was only in the months of December, January, and February. Arthur always waited till after deer season had closed in the mountains, to start his grouse hunting. Also, he was asked what was his average kill in a season? Arthur replied it was about 70.
We modern grouse hunters can only imagine such action!
Herb McClure is a freelance writer living in Gainesville. Having been blessed with a long life hunting in the Georgia woods, It has left him at old age with a desire to share some of his hunting stories in writings. Herb can be contacted at herb.mcclure56@gmail.com.