2024 Trainer Grouse Camp

I got an invite from Randall Lykens of Liberty K9 to his October grouse camp in Michigan along with Nick Adair from GDIY, and Grayson Guyer of Lost Highway Kennels. This was my first real ruffed grouse hunting trip since the early days when Anja was a young dog. I shot a couple in Montana a few years ago but hadn’t spent much time hunting them since. During the trip we recorded two episodes of Nick’s podcast, which you can watch below.

After hanging out with those guys for a few days, I met up with Nick Green from Nimrod Society. Nick is a hardcore waterfowler and hopefully a future owner of a dog from our kennel. I met up with him to show him our dogs. He got to see both Aura and Archer work birds and rabbits. Young Archer was definitely the standout on my string for this trip, handling these challenging birds really nicely. He’s our first dog that was pretty much raised exclusively on wild birds. He hunted quail in New Mexico, pheasants and huns in North Dakota, and woodcock at home all in his first season before he was a year old.

Despite some epic whiffs on the easiest shots I’ll ever see on ruffed grouse, I managed to shoot birds over points on all three dogs I took with me on the trip: Anja, Aura, and Archer.