Venus, low on the horizon, just to the right of the notch of the canyon, hangs above Mount Logan, clearly marked in our sights this morning. Aurora shadows Orion, Helios close on her trail, creeping up, bathing the notch in the blue gradient of his penumbra, foreshadowing his inevitable rise.

Our ascent mimics his and we arrive at the top of the canyon at the same time. Aspen, showing the first, faint tinges of yellow, flicker in this early light. Dust kicked up from tires coat trees and shrubs a sagey-grey.

In the long shadows of early light I hike toward the ridge at nine thousand feet, shotgun over the right shoulder. An eleven month hiatus slows my senses—and I forget to look, really look. I’m merely hiking with a weapon, not stalking. My nerves are deadened from the nearly year-long break, spent mostly stalking cutthroat, which is nothing like stalking blue grouse.

Ten minutes into the hunt and a noise to my right, a fluttering, startles me. I swing toward the sound, bring the 12 gauge Winchester around, but do not shoulder it. My eyes sweep left-to-right-then-left. Searching. A winged blur comes into focus bearing away from me to the left. Although it is out of range I snap a quick shot in its direction, at the same time hearing a second flutter of wings to my right. By the time I pick out the bird in the dappled light of trees and shadow, it is quickly lifting. I fire a shot, missing well below it. It settles in a tree eighty feet away.

Grouse are notorious for their ability to completely disappear in plain sight. I move toward the bird, keeping my eyes on the tree while keeping my feet free of the tangled underbrush.

I approach the trunk of the tree and move toward the far side. While still under the lower branches, the bird launches from above in a flurry of wings. The branches shield his flight until he is a hundred and fifty feet away and forty feet off the ground, dodging through the next stand of trees.

I turn back toward the ridge and work my way uphill. A little more alert. More on edge. I periodically stop and let the breeze wash over me, the wind soughing through the fir and aspen trees. Nearing the sharp spine of the stony ridge a rattle comes from below my feet, startling me until I realize I’ve I jostled some lupine seed pods.

I look east over the next half dozen ridges to the mountains in Wyoming, thirty-five miles away. Hundreds of square miles lie before me and I’m blind “casting” for grouse. In a river, blind casting for trout in a river that holds hundreds of fish per mile is doable, considering the fish are contained laterally by banks only separated by twenty or thirty feet. But dozens of miles wide, the land before me does not give of itself so easily.

On the water, the mind works and the eyes pick out pockets and potential lies. Casts are mentally measured then made. All energy seems to flow from eyes to brain to nervous system—all working in concert to determine where the quarry is and then to catch it. The other senses, with maybe the exception of the hearing, seem to fade into the periphery.

In rushing mountain streams and rivers, other sounds are masked by the water’s tumble over rocks. This sound becomes the backdrop for angling. The ears become accustomed to it. Yet amazingly can pick the slurp or splashy rise of aggressive fish. Then I swivel and look for the riseform or shadowy afterimages darting beneath the surface. It’s a curiosity and reaction to sound and movement—but the tension of the hunt isn’t there.

Yet on this ridge I notice something different as I think about the vast possibilities of where grouse might be. My eyes quickly survey the space around me. I have previously found grouse in semi-open areas, more frequently around evergreens than deciduous trees. It is mere milliseconds of brain power used to spot such terrain and move toward it.

And then what? I become aware of my thinking. My mind wanders and wonders why this is so different from fishing. Yet my physical senses are active. My whole body becomes a finely-tuned receptor of stimuli, hyper-sensitive to every nuance and change. The sun on my cheek. The flitting wings of juncos seventy feet away. The flickering tail of a chipmunk, usually camouflaged by leaves and branches, though a hundred feet away, immediately uncloaks. The scent of fir and juniper, crushed below my feet, or brushed against, wafts about me. The index finger of my right hand rests lightly on the safety, feeling its reluctant give as I test it.

I am aware of all this simultaneously and I wonder that since these heightened senses accompany the predator, what are they like for the prey?

It has been several hours and I should probably head back to the others. I move off the ridge thirty yards and circle back, now heading south. I continue scanning with my eyes, but rely more on my ears. After ten minutes and covering a couple of hundred yards I hear flapping to my left and slightly ahead of me. Looking directly into the sun I see a grouse fly to my left sixty feet away. I fire and the bird tilts to the left, momentarily dropping its left leg, then rights itself and continues away. Another bird flushed when I fired and it flies directly away from me toward a small cluster of trees near the ridge.

Instead of approaching directly, like I did the earlier bird that came to roost, I circle a hundred feet to the north, making my way toward the ridge. A thin line of seven trees mark the spot where the bird landed—I think it is in one of the trees toward the south end of the row, although it could have just as easily landed and taken off on foot. I slowly work my way along the trees, keeping thirty feet away so I can see up and down each tree’s height. I stop when I have worked past the first five trees.

This looks like where the bird was heading. I stand as still as possible. A zephyr lifts over the ridge toward the west and ripples the coneflowers, now dried with a dark brown button capping each stalk. I hold my position rotating my head left and right, attuned to each nuance of my surroundings. A minute passes. Then two. I’m not sure if it’s a slight noise or movement in my peripheral vision, but something to the right and slightly above me causes me to turn and stare directly at the blue grouse staring back at me. He’s twenty-five feet away, fifteen feet off the ground.

A head shot drops him and four other grouse flush from the far side of the trees as the shot reverberates off distant cliffs. I get glimpses of them between the branches, but no clear shot. I chamber another shell then pick up the spent, smoking shell from the ground. A handful of feathers flock the Douglas fir. I retrieve the grouse then move north again.

I plan on circling around the far side of the copse of trees the four grouse glided toward. As I move a dozen feet north, a small movement forty feet ahead of me, on the ground, captures my attention. I pause and look up. Another grouse quickly moves between two trees. It is on the far side of a log and I only see its head bobbing past, almost ready to disappear behind a handful of trees to my left. I fire slightly above the bird. She flies directly at me and raises to settle on a branch twenty feet in front of me. I drop her just before her feet touch the branch. The load catches her in the gullet, exploding her crop. Leaves and berries sprinkle about.

Circling around to the stand of trees the other grouse are in I make a cursory glance about me. I feel the heightened perception slowly drain as I realize I need to make my way back to the Jeep. Each step I take seems to bring me back to the task of working my way through the deadfalls and brush, and away from the role of stalker. A dull throb develops in my left knee. I feel a few hotspots on my feet where my boots have rubbed. But I’m relatively unaware of sounds except for a few echoes of other shotguns from several miles away careening off the rock walls of the mountains.

The grouse, hanging upside down from my belt, bounce against my leg, dripping blood and a few leaves and berries. Death is messy. At the Jeep I dress the birds. Later I’ll marinate the breasts in teriyaki, honey, garlic and olive oil. Tonight they will be grilled and served to a handful of friends. And I’ll remember the keen senses of a predator that will have long since left.

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Sorry about lack of photos—my battery was nearly dead, so I left the camera in the vehicle.