capercaillie

Up at 8 and started the day with a heavy breakfast again. This time we fried some bacon and potatoes on the pan. I think there was some onion tossed in also. After eating, we packed our gear and drove off towards the hunting areas. This time we took the main road in the opposite direction and after a short drive we turned off to a secondary road, which we followed up the side of a rather large hill. We parked along the roadside and hopped on our skis. We skied down a small slope from the road and got to a swamp.

The weather was foggy, visibility was down to minimums, so we decided to light a fire and wait and see if the fog would burn off as the sun came higher. When we finally managed to get the fire going, (I have never in my life seen such a antagonistic fallen spruce) we came to the conclusion that the fog was not going to clear and decided to head off to see what was hidden in the foggy landscape.

We followed the swamps edges and stopped to look at treetops for birds. On one of our stops I looked at one pine a bit longer. I looked and looked, even turned my binoculars to other trees, but I kept coming back to that one tree and one branch just below the top of it. After some time I even asked my partner to take a look at the pine in question. After looking at it long and hard we agreed that the black lump on the branch had to be a bird.

I started to ski towards the patch of forrest nearby, slightly away from the bird. I thought I could approach the bird using the cover from the spruces at the forrestpatchs' edge. My partner remained in place to observe and try to capture the whole thing on video. As I was skiing, I kept taking quick glances at the bird, just waiting to see it flee. After what seemed like an eternity, I got to the cover of the trees and turned to approach the bird. I was aiming for the tip of the treeline protruding towards the tree the bird was sitting at. Just before I reached my destination, I stopped to remove my backpack, rifle and skis. The last meters I approached in a low crouch until I was behind the small spruce I had noticed on my approach. I lay in the snow and ever so slowly moved sideways until I had the bird in sight. I removed the muzzlecover from my rifle and chambered a round. I shifted myself to get a good steady position. For a moment I thought I had blown it and the bird had fled when I lost it from my sight as I tried to find a good position in the snow. Finally everything was good and I took the shot.

After I fired, I saw the bird fall straight down, indicating a perfect hit. A loud "yeah" from the direction where my partner was observing the situation confirmed my observation. After doing a "little hiawatha" -style "captured game dance", I gathered my gear, put on my skis and headed across the clearing towards the bird. I found the capercaillie right underneath the tree.

After gutting the bird, taking a few pictures and a few other compulsory rituals we headed off again. Every now and then the thin crust on the snow even carried us, but for the most part we kept sinking knee deep in the snow, despite our skis. At a small lake between two swamps we discovered that water had risen on top of the ice below the snow. We turned toward dry land immediately, but our skis got wet enough to turn into lumps of ice in a matter of seconds. Wet snow and water freeze solid rather fast at -17'C. Using our knives we scraped the ice off and got our skis back to working condition again and we were able to continue our journey. I took a few quick snapshots when we stopped for a break to have some tea and sandwiches.

We continued skiing from swamp to the next until the sun started to set. Eventualy we came back to the same road along which we had parked our car and skiid along the road back to our startingpoint. In the evening we again had a heavy dinner and did some celebrating also.