Awards and Recognition
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2016 RGS National Hunt - Grand Rapids Minnesota - 1st Place (Overall) Fritz & Ric
2016 RGS National Hunt - Grand Rapids Minnesota - 5th Place Division 1, Brad & Eddie - at least we were in Div 1. 2015 RGS National Hunt - Grand Rapids Minnesota - 1st Place (Overall) Fritz & Ric 2015 RGS National Hunt - Grand Rapids Minnesota - 4th Place Division 3, Brad & Eddie - we know we're not as good! 2014 RGS National Hunt - Grand Rapids Minnesota - 2nd Place (Overall) Fritz & Ric |
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Articles
Gun Dog Magazine December 2015-February 2016 Issue "Labs for Ruffs"
Bob Gwizdz
Career-long newspaper outdoor writer with long-time gigs in Mississippi, Texas and Michigan. Took early retirement in 2007. Thousands of magazine credits over a 35-year period including Bassmaster, Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Salmon-Trout-Steelhead, American Angler, American Hunter and many more. Currently writing a weekly, self-syndicated hunting and fishing column in Michigan.
December 6, 2013
How old to be a legend?
by Bob Gwizdz - Lansing State Journal
It depends, I suppose, on your field of endeavor. Athletes can attain legendary status at a relatively young age. Hunters and anglers? Well, I generally look to see a little gray in the hair before conferring the honor.
But I could be wrong. Because when it comes to grouse hunting, the Heller brothers — Frederick and Ric, aka Fritz and Junior – are as good as any, even though neither is even approaching 40.
I’ve been hunting with the Traverse City pair for about a decade now and I can’t honestly remember a day — from the opener to well into December, during boom cycles and busts, in sun, rain or snow -- when we didn’t kill at least a few birds. Most recently, on a drizzly day just before deer season, the three of us killed six in just a couple of hours before heavy rains chased us from the
woods.
There are a handful of reasons why the Heller bros outshine most other grouse hunters. They’ve got it all – knowledge, dedication and desire -- but what makes them stand out is that they do things differently than many.
Need a for instance? Well, in a world where there are two kinds of grouse dogs — English setters and the other kind — the Heller's are in the latter category. They hunt with Labs. In a game that seems perfectly designed for pointing dogs, the Heller's use retrievers.
The guys obviously spend a lot of time with their dogs (they are marvelously well trained) and that, they say, maximizes their opportunity. They can redirect their dogs with a simple whistle — one means turn, two means stop, three means return — so they’re never out of habitat.
“Our dogs are in the best cover all of the time,” Fritz said.
True. And Junior points out a couple other little advantages.
“When you’ve got a pointing dog working a hundred yards out and he goes on point and when you get there and flush a woodcock — that’s 10 minutes you weren’t actively hunting grouse,” he said.
“And with a pointing dog, once that dog goes on point and you step in front of it to flush that bird, that bird’s concentration is on avoiding you,” he continued. “When a flushing dog puts a bird up, that bird’s concentrating on getting away from the dog. That’s when they can make a mistake and give you a shot.”
Although the dogs are part and parcel of the package, Fritz is fond of saying the most important variable in the equation is the guy driving the truck. The Heller's have identified more than 200 different covers over a seven-county area and they approach their days the same way a bass fisherman does – find a pattern and duplicate it. If they find birds using a particular type of cover or feeding
on a particular food item, they’ll spend the day in that habitat — even if the forest types are a long distance apart — until it fails to produce. Then they’ll adjust. And the Heller's notice small variations in habitat that most folks wouldn’t even see; it’s the kind of attention to detail that pays off with birds.
Their youth helps them in one department that I think many sportsmen overlook — stamina. There is a direct correlation between the amount of ground you cover and the number of birds you flush. These two cover ground at a pace that would put a lot of endurance athletes to shame. Fritz once told me they average three miles an hour in the woods. (Have you ever tried to average three miles an hour on a treadmill for hours at a time?) Don’t believe him? He’ll show you the GPS.
I know when they take me, they often put me outside of the thickest cover so I won’t slow them down (and I get through the woods a lot better than most guys my age). It’s a challenge to keep up with them just walking down a two track, let alone fighting the shin-tangle and tripping over deadfalls.
“There are really only a handful of guys who can keep up with us,” Fritz said. “I know that might sound like boasting, but it’s just the pace we hunt at it.”
Amen.
Finally, there’s one other characteristic that sets them apart from a lot of grouse hunters: They hit what they shoot at it. The Heller's keep fairly detailed records of their hunts and Junior’s most recent log shows he’s killing about three out of four grouse he shoots at. In a game where one for three is probably average — and I know I’m quite happy to shoot 50 percent — that’s pretty stout.
I could go on, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll start spilling some secrets that the Heller's would rather not share. And I’ll not do that. Not everybody has the opportunity to go afield with legendary sportsmen. It’s a situation I hope to take advantage of again very soon.
How old to be a legend?
by Bob Gwizdz - Lansing State Journal
It depends, I suppose, on your field of endeavor. Athletes can attain legendary status at a relatively young age. Hunters and anglers? Well, I generally look to see a little gray in the hair before conferring the honor.
But I could be wrong. Because when it comes to grouse hunting, the Heller brothers — Frederick and Ric, aka Fritz and Junior – are as good as any, even though neither is even approaching 40.
I’ve been hunting with the Traverse City pair for about a decade now and I can’t honestly remember a day — from the opener to well into December, during boom cycles and busts, in sun, rain or snow -- when we didn’t kill at least a few birds. Most recently, on a drizzly day just before deer season, the three of us killed six in just a couple of hours before heavy rains chased us from the
woods.
There are a handful of reasons why the Heller bros outshine most other grouse hunters. They’ve got it all – knowledge, dedication and desire -- but what makes them stand out is that they do things differently than many.
Need a for instance? Well, in a world where there are two kinds of grouse dogs — English setters and the other kind — the Heller's are in the latter category. They hunt with Labs. In a game that seems perfectly designed for pointing dogs, the Heller's use retrievers.
The guys obviously spend a lot of time with their dogs (they are marvelously well trained) and that, they say, maximizes their opportunity. They can redirect their dogs with a simple whistle — one means turn, two means stop, three means return — so they’re never out of habitat.
“Our dogs are in the best cover all of the time,” Fritz said.
True. And Junior points out a couple other little advantages.
“When you’ve got a pointing dog working a hundred yards out and he goes on point and when you get there and flush a woodcock — that’s 10 minutes you weren’t actively hunting grouse,” he said.
“And with a pointing dog, once that dog goes on point and you step in front of it to flush that bird, that bird’s concentration is on avoiding you,” he continued. “When a flushing dog puts a bird up, that bird’s concentrating on getting away from the dog. That’s when they can make a mistake and give you a shot.”
Although the dogs are part and parcel of the package, Fritz is fond of saying the most important variable in the equation is the guy driving the truck. The Heller's have identified more than 200 different covers over a seven-county area and they approach their days the same way a bass fisherman does – find a pattern and duplicate it. If they find birds using a particular type of cover or feeding
on a particular food item, they’ll spend the day in that habitat — even if the forest types are a long distance apart — until it fails to produce. Then they’ll adjust. And the Heller's notice small variations in habitat that most folks wouldn’t even see; it’s the kind of attention to detail that pays off with birds.
Their youth helps them in one department that I think many sportsmen overlook — stamina. There is a direct correlation between the amount of ground you cover and the number of birds you flush. These two cover ground at a pace that would put a lot of endurance athletes to shame. Fritz once told me they average three miles an hour in the woods. (Have you ever tried to average three miles an hour on a treadmill for hours at a time?) Don’t believe him? He’ll show you the GPS.
I know when they take me, they often put me outside of the thickest cover so I won’t slow them down (and I get through the woods a lot better than most guys my age). It’s a challenge to keep up with them just walking down a two track, let alone fighting the shin-tangle and tripping over deadfalls.
“There are really only a handful of guys who can keep up with us,” Fritz said. “I know that might sound like boasting, but it’s just the pace we hunt at it.”
Amen.
Finally, there’s one other characteristic that sets them apart from a lot of grouse hunters: They hit what they shoot at it. The Heller's keep fairly detailed records of their hunts and Junior’s most recent log shows he’s killing about three out of four grouse he shoots at. In a game where one for three is probably average — and I know I’m quite happy to shoot 50 percent — that’s pretty stout.
I could go on, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll start spilling some secrets that the Heller's would rather not share. And I’ll not do that. Not everybody has the opportunity to go afield with legendary sportsmen. It’s a situation I hope to take advantage of again very soon.
October 2, 2012
Hunting Michigan Grouse
by Bob Gwizdz - Traverse City Record Eagle
Rub, my English setter, was busy as usual, working through the waist-high bracken ferns in a mixed aspen-cherry stand when he slammed on point. I took two steps toward him and a grouse rocketed out of the cover, maybe 25 yards away, headed toward a young pine thicket.
I wheeled and slapped the trigger, just as the bird disappeared behind a pine.
“Did you get a piece of him?” asked Ric Heller, one of our quartet, on a wet September morning, the end of the first week of grouse
season.
I really didn’t know; I felt good about the shot, but couldn’t see whether the bird had fallen. Rub, who works at a frantic rate anyway, was going nuts, but to no avail. Heller brought Jones – one of his Labs, named after a fishing hole on the Betsie River — over to the area. Jones was on it like a short-seller on a company with disappointing earnings report.
“We don’t lose many of them,” said Fritz Heller, Ric’s older brother and the ramrod of this expedition. “We don’t get them all, but anyone who says they never lose a bird either doesn’t kill very many of them or is lying.”
Indeed, having a dog that hunts dead well is just about as important as having one that will find ‘em in the first place. And the Heller
brothers’ Labs are some bird-finding fools.
It was my first grouse of the season (on my first hunt, too) and I was the last of our foursome to score. Two hours into it, we were all in the plus column. Excellent.
I’d had a chance earlier, on a fast-parting grouse that I never got on until too late. Everyone else had made at least one of their chances count.
It was what looked like a fine morning that intersected with rain just minutes after we stepped into our first cover. We flushed seven grouse on that first jaunt; Matt Mates, Fritz’s long-time buddy (with whom I’d hunted a number of years back) scored a fine red-phase grouse and, as we doubled back towards the truck, Fritz killed a bird, too.
On the next course, through some low-lying ground in a thick-as-a-brick alder stand, Ric put one into his game pouch. Meanwhile, we were flying birds at the kind of pace that makes one conclude we are at – or at least very near – a peak in the population cycle. And, as is usual in early season, many of them were out of sight immediately or shortly after they flushed.
The trees were still fully leafed (and largely still green) and there hadn’t been enough weather yet to beat down the bracken ferns. Those conditions slow down most mortal grouse hunters some, but never seems to bother the Heller's, who are grouse-hunting machines.
I’ve been bird hunting with the Heller boys – both Traverse City-area residents in the hospitality industry – for about a decade now and have never failed to be impressed by their routine. They hunt hard, cover lots of ground, find lots of birds and kill at least their fair share.
The Heller's hunt with Labs, which is something I don’t do so much anymore as my tired old legs won’t let me keep up with them like they used to. These guys move through the woods as though they were recreational walkers covering the floor at a shopping mall. Nothing slows them down.
They can stay up on their dogs, which are outstanding bird-finders, top-notch retrievers, and seem to fully understand the nature of
their partnerships with their humans. Fritz says they cover the woods at three miles an hour and I think, if anything, he’s underestimating their speed. When I hunt with them, they usually assign me the outside edge of the cover, for which I am quite grateful.
As the day progressed, the sun came out, the wind picked up a little bit and the woods began to dry out. And our bird-finding slowed. We hunted through what looked like ideal cover with just one variable missing – food. Although there was plenty of cherry and thornapples in the cover, there didn’t appear to be any fruit. Only the autumn olive sported berries and even that was spotty.
Autumn olive was the only fruit we found on a day in the north woods.
Fritz offered that he wasn’t finding any fruit this year and the crops in the birds he’s cleaned – and the Heller's have taken their share,
already – have been full of leaves, acorns, and little else.
In early afternoon, after a trip through some fine-looking aspen bordered by fruitless autumn olives, we took a break, Mates reported that we’d flushed 26 grouse (and 11 woodcock, though that opener was still a day away) not counting a couple of birds he deemed were reflushes. We were four hours into it; figure three of those on the ground.
That morning at breakfast, Fritz said he was hoping we’d move seven birds an hour. Depending on how you count time (and birds), we were either just short or well ahead of that. As the crew planned out the afternoon strategy, I begged off. I can’t keep up with the youngsters anymore.
But I came away with two impressions: The Heller's are as good as ever and it looks like we have the makings of another excellent grouse season.
Hunting Michigan Grouse
by Bob Gwizdz - Traverse City Record Eagle
Rub, my English setter, was busy as usual, working through the waist-high bracken ferns in a mixed aspen-cherry stand when he slammed on point. I took two steps toward him and a grouse rocketed out of the cover, maybe 25 yards away, headed toward a young pine thicket.
I wheeled and slapped the trigger, just as the bird disappeared behind a pine.
“Did you get a piece of him?” asked Ric Heller, one of our quartet, on a wet September morning, the end of the first week of grouse
season.
I really didn’t know; I felt good about the shot, but couldn’t see whether the bird had fallen. Rub, who works at a frantic rate anyway, was going nuts, but to no avail. Heller brought Jones – one of his Labs, named after a fishing hole on the Betsie River — over to the area. Jones was on it like a short-seller on a company with disappointing earnings report.
“We don’t lose many of them,” said Fritz Heller, Ric’s older brother and the ramrod of this expedition. “We don’t get them all, but anyone who says they never lose a bird either doesn’t kill very many of them or is lying.”
Indeed, having a dog that hunts dead well is just about as important as having one that will find ‘em in the first place. And the Heller
brothers’ Labs are some bird-finding fools.
It was my first grouse of the season (on my first hunt, too) and I was the last of our foursome to score. Two hours into it, we were all in the plus column. Excellent.
I’d had a chance earlier, on a fast-parting grouse that I never got on until too late. Everyone else had made at least one of their chances count.
It was what looked like a fine morning that intersected with rain just minutes after we stepped into our first cover. We flushed seven grouse on that first jaunt; Matt Mates, Fritz’s long-time buddy (with whom I’d hunted a number of years back) scored a fine red-phase grouse and, as we doubled back towards the truck, Fritz killed a bird, too.
On the next course, through some low-lying ground in a thick-as-a-brick alder stand, Ric put one into his game pouch. Meanwhile, we were flying birds at the kind of pace that makes one conclude we are at – or at least very near – a peak in the population cycle. And, as is usual in early season, many of them were out of sight immediately or shortly after they flushed.
The trees were still fully leafed (and largely still green) and there hadn’t been enough weather yet to beat down the bracken ferns. Those conditions slow down most mortal grouse hunters some, but never seems to bother the Heller's, who are grouse-hunting machines.
I’ve been bird hunting with the Heller boys – both Traverse City-area residents in the hospitality industry – for about a decade now and have never failed to be impressed by their routine. They hunt hard, cover lots of ground, find lots of birds and kill at least their fair share.
The Heller's hunt with Labs, which is something I don’t do so much anymore as my tired old legs won’t let me keep up with them like they used to. These guys move through the woods as though they were recreational walkers covering the floor at a shopping mall. Nothing slows them down.
They can stay up on their dogs, which are outstanding bird-finders, top-notch retrievers, and seem to fully understand the nature of
their partnerships with their humans. Fritz says they cover the woods at three miles an hour and I think, if anything, he’s underestimating their speed. When I hunt with them, they usually assign me the outside edge of the cover, for which I am quite grateful.
As the day progressed, the sun came out, the wind picked up a little bit and the woods began to dry out. And our bird-finding slowed. We hunted through what looked like ideal cover with just one variable missing – food. Although there was plenty of cherry and thornapples in the cover, there didn’t appear to be any fruit. Only the autumn olive sported berries and even that was spotty.
Autumn olive was the only fruit we found on a day in the north woods.
Fritz offered that he wasn’t finding any fruit this year and the crops in the birds he’s cleaned – and the Heller's have taken their share,
already – have been full of leaves, acorns, and little else.
In early afternoon, after a trip through some fine-looking aspen bordered by fruitless autumn olives, we took a break, Mates reported that we’d flushed 26 grouse (and 11 woodcock, though that opener was still a day away) not counting a couple of birds he deemed were reflushes. We were four hours into it; figure three of those on the ground.
That morning at breakfast, Fritz said he was hoping we’d move seven birds an hour. Depending on how you count time (and birds), we were either just short or well ahead of that. As the crew planned out the afternoon strategy, I begged off. I can’t keep up with the youngsters anymore.
But I came away with two impressions: The Heller's are as good as ever and it looks like we have the makings of another excellent grouse season.
Late Season Grouse Hunting
by Bob Gwizdz - Kalamazoo Gazette
I caught up with the Heller brothers for a second day of grouse hunting this season, as I’d hoped I would, just days before the firearms deer season opened. As we headed into the first cover of the morning, Fritz – the older brother – pronounced that this was the kind of cover the pair never even considered until late in the season, as it was just too thick.
And, indeed it was. Blackberry brambles intertwined with goldenrod among the aspens. Had to fight your way through it.
We flushed nine grouse in about 45 minutes. Ric, the younger brother, killed one.
And on we went.
I have mentioned before that the Heller's are among the best grouse hunters I’ve ever known. Last year, Ric – who is single and
therefore has a little more time to hunt than his married brother Fritz – killed 107 ruffed grouse. This year, he was at 103 by deer season.
So I let the younger Heller do the talking about their approach to later-season grouse hunting. The key, he said, is understanding later-season grouse cover.
“Later-season hunting is a lot different -- your foliage is down and your sight plain is so much better,” he said. “Food sites are always a benefit, but when the leaves are down, food really seems to hold them.
“But they've got to have ground cover to hunker in. Golden rod is better than ferns. When ferns die, they just lay over and you lose all ground cover for a bird to hide in. Golden rod stays more upright to provide that cover. And it creates warmth; later on, when you
get snow, they have a space they get in to create the warmth they need.”
I noticed, throughout the day, that we spent a lot of time in goldenrod (among the aspens), a lot less with dead ferns carpeting the forest floor. But I also noted there were a lot of young conifers around. Ric said that was a key.
“You can walk into an aspen stand in the early season where the trees are three or four feet apart, but there’s enough ground cover to hold birds,” he said. “Later in the year, if the ground cover’s gone, you have to have pines. They provide not only holding cover, but cover from snow and rain.”
Having flushing dogs (Labs) instead of pointing dogs plays into making this approach work. If you have a pointing dog, where you have to flush the birds, you have to get right on top of them to do so. In thick woods – like young conifers – you can let the dogs do it for you.
But you’ve got to be able to stay up the dog(s). And that’s where the Heller's really have it together.
“We work off of a remote whistle-sit,” Ric explained. “When I blow my whistle hard one time, they know to sit. When you see your dog acting birdy, you can give them a whistle sit and catch up to them and read the cover as you move up and get in position to shoot the bird. If you get a running bird,
it’s like a pointing dog relocating.
“If our dogs didn’t remote whistle-sit, we wouldn’t kill as many birds as we do.”
Which led to the next question: Are the Heller's killing too many birds for the resource?
“As a conservationist, it's in the forefront of my mind and Fritz's mind,” Ric said. “But that's why we continue to find more and more covers. And we’re very conscious of not shooting too many birds out of any one cover. If we've had a good cover that we shot a few birds out of early in the year, we won’t go back there late in the year. The birds always have to be in the forefront of their mind. You have to leave enough birds to provide seed for the next season.
“But when you have the list of covers that we do -- with quality habitat and ever-changing ecosystems -- there is always an opportunity to take a little from everywhere. We found some covers that were productive last year and are even more productive this year. And good habitat will draw birds to it -- if you kill a bird out of it, it’s going to draw another bird into it.”
We hunted until early afternoon, and then called it a day as Ric had to go to work. We’d each killed one bird, which, for the Heller's, was a relatively slow day.
Meanwhile, weather allowing – and it’s awful hard to hunt grouse in foot-deep snow -- the Heller's will continue to chase grouse through December, when the country they hunt changes even more.
“It’s one of the most enjoyable times to be in the woods,” Ric said. “The weather’s finally cold enough that you can stay out there without getting overheated and your dogs can go all day without overheating.
“Let me email you some dates and we’ll see if we can’t get out at least once in December,” he said.
Oh, well.
As a reporter I think it’s my duty to do so. Don’t you?
