Cal in the Field: Maine - Private Ground & Public Woodcock & Grouse | S2E04 | MeatEater

[Music] growing up in montana public land access is part of our heritage something we take great pride in but it has taken the work of many people over the years to ensure that land was set aside for public use in many places like here in maine much of the land is privately owned and access has to be fought for one of the most tenacious soldiers in this battle is brentwest with the high peaks alliance yeah i spent a lot of days out here in the rain it's uh always beautiful this pretty cool little story that you put together you know chunk of private ground that the people around kingsfield have traditionally accessed used to fish swim boat and uh then it went up for sale and you and the high peaks alliance jumped in and secured this thing once again for the public yeah we just heard a lot of community members saying is there anything we can do and our goal is to bring resources to communities and work with conservation organizations to benefit recreational usage and so this one had a lot of multi-use properties you know the fishing being the most popular and then paddling hiking and other uses so it really seemed like something we needed to step up and do it's not trophy brook trout but it's ours and it's worth fighting for in 2020 the crew at meat eater was looking for a property to support with our land access initiative the idea provide more access to more people brent invited me out to see shiloh pond and educated me on maine's version of public access brent is kind of like that brother i never had and sometimes didn't want to respond well his passion to protect this area is contagious for my second trip out brent has promised to show me what the area around shiloh pond has to offer and we are going to spend the next couple days in the big north woods in search of grouse and woodcock and figuring out what is happening to land access in may access to private land has historically been available through a mutual understanding this is roughly how it started paper companies working the land would cut roads log and then move on to new areas allowing the forest to regenerate local residents worked out agreements with the companies allowing them to access the land and liability laws protecting landowners followed suit a precedent was set but a new wave of private ownership has been flooding maine and these informal agreements are breaking no trespassing signs are going up and once accessible land is disappearing local hunting guide steve smith and his stable of hunting dogs is joining brent and me to hunt for grouse and woodcock we are going to be hunting private land but due to maine's de facto trespass law if the land is not posted as private it's fair game for hunting you're just kind of running a typical cycle run one dog at a time up here in maine um we usually try to keep the dog on the ground hour max depending on the weather and uh condition of the dogs and while we're moving along good weather right now good weather right now good sunny conditions we have some moisture in the air uh two weeks ago drier than a bone up here so it was tough on the dog 45 minutes they were burnt out all right miss izzy i mean obviously there's gonna be three of us walking so correct correct dog goes on point typically what you guys do try to find a quick opening go to each side flank each exit point i try to go in flush burn it up and have a good time okay great sounds good [Music] yeah so the dog's got a bell on real thick in here so you can hear the dog where where it's running but then every time she pauses like oh she's on point it should be stuck still that bell won't move [Music] and then obviously if you look through this stuff when that bird flushes you want to be set up in a spot where you think the birds going to come through be real quick to get a shot that's what we're waiting on here comes coming at you two of them good girl no joy no i didn't give it both barrels it's gonna be tough there you go drilled that tree this northern hardwood forest made up of birch maples popples and red clover provide an abundance of feed for hardwood loving birds strip cuts from logging operations generally give the best visibility but the slash on the ground makes for hard walking as a western hunter it still feels pretty claustrophobic in here and our shell-to-bird ratio is trending in the wrong direction [Music] i feel like my reaction time has increased dramatically [Music] but it's more out of spite it just seems like with all the leaf cover you're not going to have much opportunity going through the woods like that we're just busting them the ones we're bumping in here are either too far or you're stumbling i'm stumbling oh that well i mean i don't stumble i'm pretty light on my feet brent well i mean you got to keep you know don't put your stuff on me that's what i'm saying you know knock one down hot chocolate that last one got up i mean right next to me within range for sure and there was just all i could do was hear it well yeah you know so yeah i think we'd be a lot quieter on the road and that's you know we have miles and miles miles of this type of habitat so i think that's you just cover more ground too yeah sounds good man sounds good i'm down [Music] if hunting from the road is what it takes to make brent eat his words i'm amp [Music] he's on point straight you whoa [Music] yeah i see it bird bird coming out with brent flanking and steve's help pushing the bird out to the road i'm finally able to connect with the grouse good girl here is he here is he here here here oh good girl that's a good girl here let me see yeah you have a hard time breathing i saw you hit it in the air and i was just like it was like all right man a wing shot's always better anyways makes you feel better oh that was great dang good dog good girl she's like i've been seeing birds i don't want your guys problem as excited as i am to bag of grouse brent is even more excited he genuinely loves hunting these old logging roads and regrowth forests but access here is a fickle beast [Music] it's funny like how similar the scene is but how different it is it's just like i said back home just be national forest land yeah i know i get that feeling too like i lived in maryland virginia area and there's big national forest areas and there's dirt roads you can just go cruise on and go do your thing yeah like the worst thing that can happen uh when you're talking national forest is they gate the road or they'd blow the road up or bring a cat in you know so you can't drive the road they do that up here too then you have to get your bicycle out or just hike but you can still access all of it well this is kind of up here is more like a perennial shift in where you go because the roads get fixed up based on the harvest and then some of these roads will just be allowed to grow back in and you'll get to use them five years or something before they're too washed out or grown in to really navigate anymore yeah then you're done hunting there you don't hunt there anymore you go somewhere else but compared to like oh kind of a worst case scenario in the west where it just gets harder to go um to like some of your same spots because they decommissioned a road out here they could just sell the whole thing there's a swimming hole that i brought my whole entire wedding party to my wife and i went out the week before to check it out see how it'd be it's a favorite swimming hall we went out with the whole wedding party people in the back tailgates a whole bit they had put in a gate in between those two weekends and so like everyone's like what and welcome to maine you know like we're putting gates up so that was that's a bummer because now you have to hike into that swimming hall and then there's also it never helps because any of those really nice spots that are not managed you end up getting you know nuisance use drinking you know garbage yeah so it's kind of a dual sword it's not it's just a complex issue no there's no one one person to point out exactly [Music] with one bird in the bag we're going to see if we can get a woodcock off of the same logging road [Music] woodcock coming out woodcock coming out yeah i got a good eye on it straight in here it dropped good dog here [Music] beautiful bird yeah very cool first first time i've ever seen one oh well their ears are in between their nostrils and their eyes which is bizarre did not know that yeah their ears are like right here and of course the quote unquote upside down brain well i think that's because of that olfaction has it pushes everything back and under yeah yeah yeah so they're smelling worms i i didn't know about the jointed bill they eat about 60 of their diet is earthworms and the other 40 percent is invertebrates and some plant material that's awesome really cool the idea that this access could be temporary like it could go away tomorrow or before next season makes me feel lucky to hunt here maybe it's the not knowing that makes it special we realize there's all different kinds of uses up here you know i'm i'm a hunter i fish i also mountain bike ride i also hike you know and all those things we have a community approach meaning you know all our neighbors have accessed this wood forever and we've had enough room where we can all do our separate things without conflict right now there's no local connection anymore so you know when you see your land trashed you know there's not a group of people that's ready to spring up and come clean it up you know and that's some of the things that we need to build up more impactful too if you're not living in the community and you're maybe you're coming out to the the woodlot every so often and you see that trash and and you know there's not much you can do about that but i think having some public lands conserving some land is an important part of the matrix because you know forever all these forest roads we're using are the forest companies are paying for them and we're just out using them and i think it's our turn to kind of step up as a community at least conserve some of the areas that's really important to us protecting great places to fish hunt and camp is a huge challenge whether you live in the appalachians or the rocky mountains every day we lose more ground to development or through folks making ground previously open to hunters off limits [Music] which is why people like brent and the high peaks alliance are so important in protecting areas like this for generations to come while taking a couple of birds out on the road is certainly fun i want to see if we can put our skills to the test and some of the regrowth hardwood strip cuts come on you birds not good come on grass out in front of us get up get up coming your way [Music] it didn't come out wait on it it's on it's on red it's a rough grouse flying your way i'm back on the ground come on bird up up up you come out no it must have looped back on you [ __ ] get him oh yeah yes it's called teamwork brent hell yeah kale so uh west side to the east side i'm glad i brought my good trusty western montana bird dog our strategy worked you want to be ready the whole time and your hands on that safety and it just really drives home how important communication is knowing where your your hunting partner is when you're doing these types of hunts is just be very simple to get excited and make a mistake i couldn't have had a better flush ever yeah man that these strips are perfect it's kind of one of the practices they started doing after they stopped clear cutting is that they have to do these offset strips and that i think works out pretty well for bird hunting because you can just run them like hedgerows yeah did you only shoot one time on that all i needed all right good deal well you put it right in front of me nice wide open shot i felt like you know it was hard lining that up it was perfect that hard i'm just trying to make it it was perfect i was going i was a little nervous because i was going over all that slash piles and i was like getting ready to stumble but i got in a spot and waited oh yeah plenty of heft that's awesome man they are gorgeous birds oh they're great good girl with our approach dialed in we take our newfound talents to another strip cut good dog man all those woodcock are like i'm on piccatail's side today thanks sir well done good dog and hats off on that shot you waited after the bird got a little bit further out we are starting to fill up our bags with woodcock and grouse and damn is it a good time gracie get in here there's just something about working in unison that makes upland hunting extremely rewarding [Music] that's how the slow kids get them wait for them to land again so that is gracie's first grouse oh all right well it was like the wind's perfect for your side of the hedgerow there they so all those birds when they flush they want to get that wind under their wings and they're just coming right out i got directly parallel with you yep so i hadn't been thinking a little bit i would have stopped short because that bird came directly parallel from you yep so had i pulled up it would have been pelletier direction i find grouse like to hang so tight too that a lot of times you have back over the shoulder shot yeah and the first thing did you notice you and i got a little too far ahead on the road and those birds we walked right by them so it kind of shows you the value of the dog you know right that's pretty one got a grouse out of the grouse spot that's good that's good no it's just you start thinking about you know what everyone uses the land for and it's kind of cool that in maine you can just come up here and mind your own business and do your thing whether it's hiking or hunting or fishing and there's all these all this opportunity to do it and that's kind of what we're working to protect is what you've experienced right here oh yeah and it's such an interesting thing right like you gotta uh have a real mind towards private business right because it's private land and and it's and how to communicate that uh you know continued respect for the land in a public sort of fashion yeah you know in the in the larger sense it's just being a good neighbor you know like when you know the landowners or you at least try to start a relationship and that's what we're starting to attempt to do is have better relationships across the land and be a point of contact for people and landowners when there are conflicts so we can have a good resolution not a gate not a yeah not a pissed off landowner or something like that we're back at brent's cabin just as the rain starts to fall but we're not gonna let a little water stop us from cooking over the fire and i'm always surprised how little fat or under the skin of these there are some like in that area there's a good like leaf fat kind of i guess i don't know do you call it schmaltz when it's on a game bird that's a good word yeah yeah i mean it is it is very interesting like the new species like obviously the grouse pretty kind of knew what to expect right yeah as far as like chances are it's going to be darn good the woodcock though like [Music] it's a tasty burp yeah there's nothing wrong with it it just looks a little different than what you would expect whereas a grouse pretty much just looks like a chicken you know that challenges people yeah i grew up on u.s forest service ground bureau land management ground it seems more stable like regulations can change use can change in certain areas the fact that this is a huge system of private ground with really the same kind of multiple use type of aspect to it but like i said you kind of feel like a little bit of a short-term renter you just don't know what next month's gonna bring i i think that's a new feeling for people do here just because the ownership's changed so much it is a high level of freedom you know as far as the user is concerned like we just went where we would like this week um for sure but as things get more popular especially this year we have you know a tremendous amount of people coming up here pressuring these but still these landowners are you know they they have timber crews here there's safety issues there's you know trails that they're allowing to use there's they're spending some staff time on foresters so it is a give and take and what we had for a relationship before with people you know working the land were also employed by the landowner that's kind of switched over to where you know you have land managers and they're managing the property and you know so the landowner is a couple steps away from the local uh hunters and fishermen and i use the term locals people who've been coming up here to use the land whether you live out of state or not is like the users the right there's kind of some traditional users too it's usually someone who's using the land that stands up for it oh you gotta if you can find appreciation for the land and a great land ethic a stewardship ethic because you like to eat grouse that's fine by me yeah but you know it's also we're sharing this land yeah you know there's people come out here just pick mushrooms there's people come out here hike up see the view from the clear cut you know so i think respecting each other that we're in it together is you know what what i think a lot about oh absolutely one benefit the other after spending a few days hunting with brent i've come to really admire his passion for protecting recreational access in maine access isn't a one-size-fits-all idea its application is as variable as the landscapes across this country no matter our different perspectives on what makes land public we require guys like brent to help bridge the gap and hold open the door for the rest of us you

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 296,836

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella, Ryan callaghan, elk, bow hunting, nature conservancy, cals week in review, Cals in the Field, Cals Week In Review, Meateater Snake Hunting, Louisiana Hog, Tripletail, Atlantic Tripletail, cajun pheasant, Cal's Week in Review, Cal in the Field, Season 2 Episode 4, S2E04, Maine, Private Ground, Public Woodcock, Grouse

Id: zTlSjwvRrjs

Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021