I was able to capture this up in the BWCA in Minnesota. Normally this would be a tough photo to get. Grouse will fly away the second they see people. Luckily they didn't when I got closer. I was even more lucky that they continued their mating call even though I was only 20ft away.
I captured this at 279mm with the Sony 100-400 @5.6 / a7riii. The sun was going down so I capped my auto ISO at 2500 which this photo was taken at.
I only had a few keeper shots from the bursts I took. My shutter was 1/125. I just couldn't go much faster with the available light. I already had my camera on for some time taking other photos in 80 degree weather so I knew sensor noise was going to be an issue also.
This is one of the final shots I got though. I could have done a vertical crop but I wanted to tell the story of how tight this shot was in the woods. I had little room to move and didn't want to get much closer.
The downed burch in the background is certainly distracting but you take what you can get in a situation like this.
Thanks for the view.
What a wonderful image!
I know what you mean about Ruffed Grouse normally running off the second they see a human. I have spent many mornings getting up at 2:30am, so that I could get out to a blind set up by a drumming log well before the grouse got there an hour before dawn. Then I wait, and wait, and wait for the sun to come up so that there is light to shoot by. But the Grouse almost always gets skittish before there is enough light for a proper exposure, and I come home empty-handed, with no photos to show for all of that effort.
So it is with Ruffed Grouse photography.
The fact that you found a Grouse that would tolerate you is pretty amazing! Think of all the hours and days that normally go into carrying a blind way back into the woods, brushing it in perfectly so that it looks natural, defining your shooting lane and clearing every blade of grass and every twig so that you have an unobstructed shot at the bird, and then of course going back the next day and crawling in to the blind at 3:30am and waiting for hours.
You saved yourself a heap of trouble -literally days and days of full time work, just because that one Grouse tolerated your approach. Lucky you!
What a shot man! That is awesome! I saw my first grouse a couple weeks back on a trip in Colorado, but I didnt have much success getting close enough to get a good image!