OLD HEMLOCK HD TRAILER - English Setter - Ruffed Grouse Video
*** The video was pulled from YouTube. I'll repost it if I can find it again.
Old Hemlock Foundation is currently planning a video on the history, status and future of the Old Hemlock Setter Line developed by George Bird Evans and currently managed by Roger Brown.
Ruffed Grouse hunt brings endings and beginnings
By Jeery Davis
DRUMMOND — Four decades ago I began going north every autumn to hunt ruffed grouse and enjoy what autumns have to offer.
Many dogs, relatives, friends and seasons later cycles continue. No, not the cycle of the bird that brings us here, but the cycle of one end overlapping with a beginning. Sometimes a cycle is a son becoming a hunter and a father putting away his shotgun. This year was a dog cycle.
Tim, my older son from Mount Horeb, lost one of his golden retrievers to a major illness this summer.
Like Chester and Kyla before, Maddy’s ashes were placed under a special red maple, one that seems to know that at least some hunters come north as early as mid-September, well before almost any autumn colors have arrived. But this tree is one of the first, in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, to turn red. Regardless of when hunters come with shotguns, dogs and high hopes of hunting successes, it seems this tree has some red leaves to show off to those visitors.
This tree has become known to us, then, as The Red Maple of Forest Road 231.
This Oct. 6 was that special day. A few red leaves still swayed in the breeze; most had fallen. Some fell as Tim stepped up a steep bank with a can painted on all sides with paw prints. Inside the can a felt bag held a plastic bag of ashes.
RGS Reports National Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Hunt Results
The RGS reports national ruffed grouse and woodcock hunt results. The Ruffed Grouse Society’s National Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Hunt is conducted during the second week in October each year in and around Grand Rapids, Minnesota. This world-class event is sponsored and coordinated by the Grand Rapids MN Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society. Chapter volunteers contribute literally thousands of hours of their time to make the Hunt happen. The hunt is hosted at the Sawmill Inn, owned by the Jacobson family. ”We are proud to host this annual event each year; it gives us an opportunity to showcase the very best Grand Rapids has to offer,” Wayne Jacobson shares.
The Hunt provides an unparalleled opportunity to study the population ecology of ruffed grouse and woodcock. The manner in which the Hunt is structured is what makes it so unique in the field of wildlife research and so valuable to wildlife conservation.
The late Gordon W. Gullion, universally acknowledged as the world’s expert on ruffed grouse, immediately recognized the scientific potential of the Hunt when the event was first held in 1982. Gullion understood that because the Hunt is conducted in the same locale, at the same time each year and using the same methods, it provides an outstanding opportunity to study the annual variation of the local ruffed grouse population and how that variation relates to the 10-year cycle.
Maine Road Trip: Rough It For Grouse
Article by Lawrence Pyne
To experience the best "pa'tridge" country left, just drive northeast.
Good ruffed grouse covers are getting harder and harder to find, which is why my brother and I make a point of annually heading up to northern Maine. Thanks to large-scale forest management, there is so much productive habitat here that the biggest challenge is simply deciding where to jump in.
Northern Maine encompasses more than 10 million acres of mostly working timberland—almost all of which is potential grouse cover. Much of the best is found in the 3.5-million-acre North Maine Woods (NMW), managed by a consortium of private landowners, which is open to the public for a modest fee. Because it is commercially logged, the NMW has hundreds of thousands of acres of young, regenerating forest that provides great habitat for grouse as well as woodcock. Its 5,000 or so miles of gravel and dirt logging roads weave through more cover than you can hunt in a lifetime. If that wasn't enough, scattered throughout the NMW are more than 300 campsites and a dozen sporting camps. It's an ideal destination for both D.I.Y. hunters and those looking for more luxurious accommodations and perhaps a guide.
Access to the NMW is via 15 checkpoints on primary entry roads. Although it's possible to hunt there on a day-trip basis from gateway towns like Greenville and Millinocket, the farther in you go, the less pressure you'll find—and the more birds you'll encounter. Getting 30 or more miles back in and camping is the best way to get the most out of a trip and save wear and tear on your vehicle.
Fat-tire bike allows grouse hunter to get deeper in the woods
On an overcast October morning, Hansi Johnson of Thomson walks down an old logging trail flanked by young aspen. He carries his old Browning 12-gauge A-5, inherited from his grandfather, ready to swing on a ruffed grouse.
It isn't unusual to find Johnson, an avid grouse and duck hunter, deep in the woods this time of year. But he didn't get here in the usual way.
He pedaled.
Parked somewhere behind him along the trail is his fat-tire mountain bike built specifically for hunters. It's a Cogburn CB4, a beefy bicycle with tires nearly 4 inches wide. It's fitted with a sturdy scabbard that holds a shotgun, a rifle or a bow. What it doesn't come with is a motor.
"I love the fact that the gun is off my back and on my bike," says Johnson, who is Midwest region director for the International Mountain Bicycling Association. "It's a total feeling of freedom, especially if you've done it with the gun on your back for a long time."
Johnson has been riding trails to ruffed grouse for as long as mountain bikes have been around. He first rode a standard mountain bike with tires about 2 inches wide. Good, not great, for hunting.
Read the rest of the article: http://www.crookstontimes.com/article/20131031/News/131039894#ixzz2vOgK98PG
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