Distant Drum
THE GALLANT GROUSE by Cecil E. Heacox '26 David McKay, 1980. 182 pp. $14.95
Someday I hope to show Cecil Heacox a haunted landscape not far from his old college town. There, along four dirt roads (impassable to a car in any gear), stand the remains of a small village long gone: two graveyards, some scattered foundations, and miles of stone wall. Woods have replaced the pastures and fields; the few remaining open areas are a tangle of thorn-apple, alders, brambles, blackberry bushes, and gnarled orchards gnarled, but still bearing fruit. No postcard photographer would give the scene a second look. But Heacox's heart would leap at the sight. He would know at once that this is grouse cover at its best, where America's greatest game bird can thrive and elude its enemies. And perhaps we would hear, coming from everywhere and nowhere, the eerie thump-thump-thump- THUMP, followed by a crescendo of wings beating the air; the forever wild sound of a male ruffed grouse drumming on a log. Cecil Heacox would be enthralled.
This remarkable ' sportsman, wildlife biologist, conservationist, and writer has poured a lifetime of study and admiration for a game bird into his latest book, The GallantGrouse. The result is nothing less than must reading for the upland hunter, and it will fascinate and instruct the ornithologist, the game manager, and the amateur bird-watche'r as well.
The ways of grouse are mysterious. In this near-encyclopedic book, beautifully illustrated by the artist-naturalist Wayne Trimm, Heacox confronts some of the mysteries: the phenomenon of the "grouse cycle," which so directly affects the scarcity or abundance of the species; the periods of "crazy flight," when this otherwise wiliest of birds has been known to fly blindly into buildings and windows; and the means by which a grouse on a log can produce with its wings a miniature sonic boom. Also revealed are such esoteric tidbits as that a fully grown grouse has 4,342 feathers and a normal heartrate of 342 beats per minute! (If that last revelation is true which I don't doubt for a second no wonder this magnificent bird, with the proud ruffs and fantail, can so consistently frustrate its pursuers.)
A word of warning for hunters: From his vast experience afield Heacox has devised stratagems to outwit a grouse. These stratagems are almost as crafty as the bird itself. But let no tyro be deceived. In the moment of truth, when a grouse thunders off the ground or powerdives from a tree, the hunter will be either a) offbalance, b) stunned by the roar of wings, c) quagmired in brambles, d) halfway over a wall, e) halfway under a fence, f) unable to swing his gun, or g) - as actually happened to one of my shooting partners with 40 years experience in the very act of falling down an abandoned well. In upland-hunting parlance, such likely mishaps are known collectively as the "grouse factor," from which no sportsman, even Cecil Heacox, is immune. Nor would he, of all people, ever wish to be.
In recent years Heacox has done less and less hunting. But, with or without gun, he is afield as often as ever, where his "inner compass" points invariably to those tangled covers where grouse abide.
The Gallant Grouse is his tribute to that incomparable game bird. And I, among others, consider it already a classic.
Note that, in the longstanding tradition of thesportsman, Ev Wood, retired Pan Am pilot,Hanover resident, and veteran upland hunter,declines to identify the location of his ownfavorite grouse cover with absolute precision.
