verts as state secrets. When I opened the truck door we were blasted by the cold air. Fortunately there wasn’t much wind, and there was brilliant sunshine. The azure blue skies seemed to go for miles, and the ground was coated with six inches of powdered snow that squeaked under my boots as only snow on a cold day can do. The covert looked a lot different than it had in the fall, as the tangles and blow downs didn’t look as daunting as they had in the early season when they still held their greens. The winter storms had beaten them down. The “Baker Bob” was an old dairy farm, and I’m sure the cover was once verdant green pasture. It is divided by old hedgerows that are now so terribly overgrown they are almost impenetrable with tangles of multiflora rose and an assortment of vines and berries. It also has an area that was probably logged in the not too distant past and has now regenerated with new growth. It is bordered on one side by still active pastureland and on the other side by a thick pine forest. It’s the kind of mixed cover that the Ruffed Grouse Society espouses. I decided we would move through the pines first and then work the hedgerow tangles, saving the new growth area for last. It was a plan of attack that DECEMBER 2012 would make General Patton envious and a plan I hoped would result in seeing a few grouse. As we moved through the snowdusted pine forest I recalled the stories my Uncle Ed, who served under General Patton, told me and wondered if this is what the Ardennes Forest looked like during the Battle of the Bulge. My thoughts were quickly interrupted when a grouse exploded out of the pines above our heads and soared out of range. This brought my concentration back to the task at hand. Topper immediately put on his game face and began the search in earnest. At the edge of the pine forest is a large tangle of blow downs 29