Grouse Thicket thai sweet chilli

Anyone up for some grouse hunting? :)

Lucky for Lysander, a thin bank of clouds had rolled in overnight and blocked out the worst of the sun’s fierce rays, making for a warm yet breezy day ahead. He was tracking an elk, pausing every now and then to relocate it’s trail among the swishing grasses. A wolf as young and as inexperienced as him would no way take on one alone, but he just wanted to see where it headed. Probably back to its herd, that’s what most of these hoofed things seemed to do, or wander round until it met its unfortunate demise.

Wetting his nose, he stopped beneath a tangle of foliage and sniffed the air. Shit. Somewhere along the way he’d managed to lose it. Grumbling quietly to himself, Lysander nosed at a prodruding twig with a halfhearted snap - the same time a small bundle of thing darted out of the brush with a blur and a hurried flap of wings and almost collided right with the pale boy’s face. Welp. These birds may not have been the elk he was after, but at least they seemed easy to catch, and where one was, surely there were more?

Evening had been napping in a nearby dug out badger den, trying to sleep and ignore the overpowering scent of the hole’s previous owner. But the sound of a bird being disturbed woke her and she became concerned. It didn’t seem like a normal disturbance and it was too close for comfort. Maybe it was just a fox or something romping around in the brush, but she sighed and poked her head out of the den just to make sure. Trying to smell for danger in here was useless because the smell of badger overwhelmed anything else.

And what did she see? A wolf, half-obscured by some bushes, only ten or so feet away. And it was still daylight. Terrified, she quickly pulled her head back into the den, hoping that whoever they were, they wouldn’t notice her and would pass on through without stopping. There wasn’t really a reason to be afraid, but she couldn’t help the feeling all the same. She was rather useless in the middle of the day, sunlight causing near-blindness and all, so she really didn’t want to get into a confrontation with some wolf over nothing.