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I finally witnessed first hand the pet grouse my Mom keeps telling me about at her place on Vermilion. She said that everytime she drags the road with the bed spring this Grouse will come from out of the woods and follow her. Then she said she was mowing the lawn the other day and it came out into the lawn while she was mowing. I believed her but didn't realize how tame this grouse was until this weekend. I had been mowing the lawn for about 20 minutes on Saturday and after making a pass I made a turn to make another pass the other direction and there is this big grouse sitting right in front of me maybe 10 feet away. So I slowly drive the lawn mower right at it, because it was right were I needed to go and it just moved over to the side and let me drive past it. That was the last pass I needed to make and I started driving back to the garage and I look behind me and this darn grouse is just running behind me. i'd stop and then it would stop. i'd start driving again and it would start running again. It would stay just about 5-6 feet behind me. Then as I got closer to the garage it bolted into the woods. Then on Sunday I was dragging the road and here's this darn grouse again following me. Then it just sat in the tall weeds where I could just see its head and watched me for about 20 minutes until I finished and went back up to the house. That after noon I was cleaning the gutters out at my Mom's and had filled the back of the Ranger with pine needles. i went into the woods 20 yards to dump them and as I was dumping the needles I heard some movement just a few feet behind me and here's this grouse again, not 5 feet away from me. So I stopped moving and stayed really still. This darn grouse walks right up to me and walks right between my legs as I'm standing there, almost like a cat brushing up against your legs. I was laughing out loud and talking to the darn thing. It just stood there and watched. So after a couple minutes of that I climb back into the ranger and start driving back to the house and the grouse starts following me again. It's the funniest thing I have ever seen. The darn bird thinks it's a human. Keep in mind, we're back in the woods quit a bit with no close neighbors so this thing wasn't raised by humans or anything. It's probably last years hatch since it appears to be full grown and not a chick or anything. Our family are all grouse hunters but my Mom said we aren't allowed to shoot this one. My mom loves grouse hunting too but she said just this one is off limits. Just thought I'd share this funny little story of our confused grouse!!! smile

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I've read of several articles in either the Upland Almanac or The Pointing Dog Journal about this. I also think they did a story on an episode of Minnesota Bound. I believe one of the people to have on was Ted Williams' wife (Teddy Ballgame of Red Sox Fame).

In fact I think the latest Upland Almanac article is about that lives near a shoting club since they show it on a launcher.

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That is a great story. I know that I have had grouse run out to the fourwheeler before riding trails in the spring and summer, and then in the fall they are long gone before I could even get close.

Thanks agian for sharing the story.

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We had a "pet" grouse named Stanley that hung around my family hunting land for three years. He would eat thorn apples out of my hand and let me pick him up. When I would fire up the four-wheeler, he would stand on the front and flap his wings until I got about 15mph and then he would jump off. He was perfectly tame until the dog would run by and then he would just jump to a branch and taunt the dog.

During deer season, he would walk around the top of one of our stilt stands until you would knock him off. He would walk around the ground for a while and then hop right back up. Its amazing how relatively tame some of those birds seems to get.

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Well our buddy is still hanging around the house. This weekend I was filling in some holes on one of our ATV trails and he was hanging out with me this whole day. I would drive a few hundred yards to a pile of wood chips and he would chug along right behind me. Then as I would shovel the wood chips into the Ranger he'd just hang out and eat while I worked. then I'd drive down the trail to dump the load and he'd come chugging along with me. I found myself talking to him as I was working. I felt like Marty Stouffer. I must be One with nature I guess. cool This Fall he's going to start looking more like dinner than a buddy though. Kind of like the old cartoons when one of the characters would start to like like a T-bone, or Drumstick to another character that was hungry!

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No, I wouldn't put this one on the table. smile He better hang around the house though, because during the Fall we get a lot of people driving down our "driveway" road hunting. Our side of the road is posted but the other side is private non-posted land so people hunt it. Last year I was driving down the 1/4 mile of dirt road to our house and there was a car stopped right in the middle of the road about 100 yards from our house. He was uncasing his gun to shoot a bird basically right in our driveway. I pull up right behind him and wait. The bird runs into our section of posted woods and he starts walking into the woods after him. I laid on the horn at the guy. he turns and gives me a dirty look. I yell out the window that he is entering private land and point to the no hunting sign about 30 yards from him. He reluctantly decides to get back into his car and leave. I'm a hunter too so I hate to be a jerk, but first off he's blocking me from getting to my house and secondly he was getting ready to trespass. He obviously didn't know I was the owner, but that shouldn't matter! But now I'm getting sidetracked and that's a whole other discussion. wink

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