Building a Grouse Dog: From Puppy to Polished Performer by Craig Doherty, is the most comprehensive, how-to manual there is for taking an eight-week-old little squirmer of any pointing breed and turning him or her into that most coveted game bird finder there is: a finished grouse dog. Unlike many general pointing-dog training books, this one concentrates on one species – the ruffed grouse. Grouse are notorious for their caginess, their wariness, and their difficulty in being pinned down so a hunter can get close enough to flush and shoot. It takes a dog that has been trained nearly from birth to handle that task, and no one knows how to do it better than Craig Doherty. Craig was the driving force behind Field Trial Magazine, is a columnist for The Pointing Dog Journal, regularly competes in grouse trials throughout the Northeast, professionally trains grouse dogs for clients from all over the country, and – this is important – guides grouse hunters using his own dogs trained in his outstanding methods; important because paying clients need results, and those results can only come by following dogs that know the game. A number of how-to training books tell you what to do from beginning to end; but if you have started your own training, run into problems, and consult the literature, many times you’ll find that the advice is something along the lines of, “Well, you messed up because you didn’t do X, Y, and Z. Remember that so you won’t ruin your next dog.” Not Craig – if you have run into a snag with your current dog, Craig tells you what to do to get past it and on with the dog’s completed training. So if your aim, your goal, is to own and hunt behind a finished grouse dog that knows what’s what in the coverts, Building a Grouse Dog is the best guide you’ll ever have.

If you ran into Frank Jezioro in the grouse woods, you wouldn't guess that he served as the director of the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources under two governors which is practically unheard of until he stepped away into retirement. You wouldn't know that as a friend and confidant of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a hunting and fishing buddy, Frank serves as a liaison and conduit between the senator and the myriad hunting and conservation groups seeking to have their voices heard on Capitol Hill. What you would know is that you'd be looking at a real grouse hunter. You'd be looking at a man who knows how to breed and train grouse dogs, building them from the ground up, because for Frank, grouse hunting is all about the dogs. His setters and pointers over the years have been the best anyone could ask for. And they've had to be in the up-and-down Appalachian grouse country where Frank lives and hunts. But he doesn't just hunt there. Frank's chased ruffed grouse in Canada and after sampling New England and all the Lake States, he has settled on Michigan, and every October will find him there, and too rarely I'll be there with him. This book is the distilled knowledge and experience of a man who has pursued this King of Game Birds for the better part of six decades and counting. He knows the bird, the covers, the dogs, and the guns. Spend time with this book, and you'll come away perhaps not knowing as much as Frank Jezioro does, but you'll know a whole lot more than you did.

This is a revised and expanded second edition.

At more than 560 pages, this new large-format book is not only the biggest book about hunting ruffed grouse ever published; it is also the most impressive in at least a generation. Award-winning Wild River Press has brought together renowned experts on grouse biology, dogs, guns, hunting strategies, and tactics. Extensive interviews with dedicated bird hunters throughout grouse country invite readers to sit in on a series of rich, highly personal conversations with many legends of the sport. A Passion for Grouse is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of spectacular color photographs that bring the reader right into the authors' favorite coverts, the smell of autumn in the crisp air, moving up behind a white dog frozen on point and shivering with excitement.