Wisconsin 2026 Statewide Ruffed Grouse Drumming Activity Decreased 11.6% From 2025.
Ruffed Grouse Drumming Survey
2026
By Alaina Roth, Taylor Finger, Chris Pollentier, Jes Rees Lohr, and Paul Frater
Abstract
The 10-year management plan for ruffed grouse prioritized habitat management into three areas in the state. Data from spring drumming surveys was categorized by these new habitat management areas to better reflect habitat and priorities for ruffed grouse management.
Statewide ruffed grouse drumming activity decreased 11.6% from 2025 levels based on the roadside survey to monitor breeding grouse activity. The northern foresthhabitat management area had a 10.9% decrease in mean number of drums per stop. The central management area had a 21.8% decrease, and the driftless management areas had a 35.7% decrease in mean number of drums per stop in 2025 compared to the previous year.
Methods
Statewide
A 10-year management plan for ruffed grouse was developed by the Wisconsin DNR, cooperating agencies, and partner organizations and was accepted by the Natural Resources Board at their 2019 December meeting. The plan is a comprehensive document outlining the objectives for ruffed grouse management in Wisconsin. The plan outlined three priority management areas, which are areas of the state that still have ruffed grouse populations and sections of suitable habitat where enhancing the young forest component could influence grouse populations. These areas have forests as a major component of their landscape with opportunities to promote early successional forest habitat on both public and private land.
These areas are the Northern, Central, and Driftless Priority Areas (Figure 1). The southeastern part of the state will no longer be a focus of ruffed grouse management or monitoring and will no longer be surveyed for ruffed grouse using a road-side survey
technique. While scattered populations of grouse do exist in this part of the state, abundance is very low as habitat availability is quite limited; thus, grouse would need to be monitored by another method to be detected.
Counts of grouse drumming activity heard along roadsides were conducted on 75 transects throughout these three priority areas in 2026. Sixteen transects in these areas had not detected ruffed grouse for the past three years and were not surveyed in 2026. Transects that do not detect ruffed grouse for three years in a row are placed on a rotation and not surveyed for another three years. A roadside survey for ruffed grouse has been conducted annually since 1964 by DNR wildlife managers, wildlife technicians, foresters, law enforcement personnel, tribal biologists, USFS staff, and Ruffed Grouse Society volunteers to determine grouse population trends throughout Wisconsin. A new 10-stop survey on 117 randomly located transects was initiated in 1994 and continued through 2019. This year marked the seventh year where the southeastern part of the state was not surveyed for ruffed grouse. As per the change-over plan, no "old" drumming routes were run since 1996. Also, "new" routes which had counts of zero for the first three years were not to be run for three years. After that three-year period, they are to be run again every three years to confirm that they indeed are still zero.
Procedures for the “new” routes were similar to the earlier survey protocols except for one count instead of two and 10 stops instead of 15. All analysis of ruffed grouse drumming data, “old” and “new”, was redone to reflect the changes in surveying strategy and priority areas.
Due to this fact some of the data that was published in previous reports will not match with results published here.
Research Census Areas
Ruffed Grouse drumming data collected on these areas will no longer be collected and/or be a part of the analysis of statewide ruffed grouse abundance data in the state. Any data
collected at these sites will only be used for research purposes.
Results
Roadside survey responses were received from wildlife managers, wildlife technicians, and other cooperators that helped conduct the survey on 75 transects in 2026. There were 16 transects that were considered zero and not run in 2026. The total number of routes used in estimating a statewide ruffed grouse drumming index in 2026 was 91.
Statewide, ruffed grouse population indices decreased between 2025 and 2026 (Table 1, Figure 2). The Central priority management area had a 21.8% decrease in drumming activity compared to 2025 (Figure 3). The Driftless priority management area had a 35.7% decrease (Figure 4), and the Northern priority management area had a 10.9% decrease (Figure 5) compared to 2025 survey results. Recent research has indicated that 10-year population cycles are less pronounced at the periphery of the ruffed grouse’s range, which we have certainly observed in the driftless area in the last few decades.
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