Squirrels, rabbits, ruffed grouse and ring-necked pheasants are the four primary species of small game for Pennsylvania hunters. The squirrel season opened back in mid-September, and the rabbit and grouse seasons start today.

Next Saturday completes the small-game menu with the first day of pheasant season on Oct. 25. This current season structure is much different than when I started hunting 50-plus years ago. The squirrel and grouse seasons started around the second Saturday in October with rabbit and pheasant season beginning two weeks later around the end of the month. In recent years, the late seasons for squirrels, rabbits and pheasants have also been extended until the end of February.

Despite some of the additional opportunities available, small game hunting seems to have declined in popularity for most hunters nowadays. There are many possible reasons for that falloff. Overall hunter numbers have been steadily declining, not just in Pennsylvania but nationwide. Deer hunting, especially archery hunting, seems to have gained interest for the current hunting community.

Archery season is concurrent with many of the prime weeks of small game hunting each fall. So given the choice, most hunters opt for sitting in a tree stand waiting to arrow a deer rather than tramping the woods and fields in search of birds or bunnies.

Some small game populations have suffered deteriorations as well. Wild pheasants became mostly a memory in Pennsylvania about 40 years ago, and our state bird, the ruffed grouse has experienced notable declines. A lack of places to hunt have also affected some hunters. Personally, two of my favorite old small-game spots are gone, one to a housing development and the other to an exit ramp for I-99.

Even with that somewhat gloomy assessment of the current situation with small game hunting, I take much comfort in so many fond memories of chasing small game during my early hunting career. I was fortunate to have grown up in the country around woods, creeks and fields. My father also bought a 100-acre tract of woodland that my brother and I were proud to inherit after our parents were gone.

But growing up it was a wonderous place for me with lots of deer, turkeys, squirrels and grouse. Dad didn’t hunt, but when I reached my early teens, I began pestering him that I wanted to go hunting. He finally sat me down once and explained he knew nothing about hunting and we owned no hunting guns. He suggested that I would be 18 “soon” and could buy my own guns and that those woods and the game would still be there.

Turning 18 didn’t sound so soon to an impatient 14-year-old, but like so many times in my life, Dad was right. Shortly after turning 18, I saved for a 12-gauge pump shotgun. I can still remember the first time I walked into our woods cradling a shotgun with a hunting license pinned to my back.

Among my volume of cherished personal memories of small game hunting, a few other “firsts” always stand out, and none of them more than my first grouse.

I don’t recall exactly how I became so obsessed with grouse hunting, but I do remember how badly I wanted to get a grouse not long after acquiring my first shotgun. Back then, our property had wonderful grouse cover and an excellent population of birds. I could regularly flush 8 to 10 birds in 4 or 5 hours even while hunting by myself. I liked the thick cover, however, so not every flush resulted in a shot. And my wing shooting needed plenty of help on the shots I did get.

One morning I was navigating a tangle of grapevines on a steep ridge. I paused at a small opening and sensed movement on the ground to my left as a grouse stepped out of some brush and exploded into flight. With a whir of wings, the bird headed straight through a hole in the bushes. My shot was true, and the grouse folded instantly and fell to the forest floor.

That first bird was part of my motivation for starting to shoot skeet, which honed my wing shooting skills immensely and regularly put grouse in my game bag thereafter.

One of the great pleasures of small game hunting is it can be a somewhat social affair shared with friends or family members. That was the case with my first pheasant.

I was hunting with three friends somewhere in Adams or York County in the early 1970s. This was my third trip to southeast Pennsylvania to hunt wild pheasants there. On the previous two adventures, I had come home tired, sore and birdless. And this trip wasn’t faring much better. It was late afternoon, and no one had bagged a pheasant. We had flushed several hens during the day, but of course, only roosters were legal back then. The couple of roosters we saw were well out of range.

As the afternoon sun neared the horizon, we were working one last spot in some high weeds along a creek bottom. I was on the left end of the line as we trudged through the heavy cover when a ringneck vaulted out of the weeds, cackling twice as it bolted to the left and giving me the only chance of a shot. I quickly swung and fired and watched as the pheasant tumbled in a puff of feathers and fell.

“Nice shot.”

“Finally, a cock bird!”

And a few more jabs about better to be lucky than good were forthcoming from my companions. But no amount of ribbing could take away the gratification of a first pheasant.