Ruffed Grouse Society Looking for Volunteers to Improve Grouse and Woodcock Habitat In PA

The Ruffed Grouse Society is looking for hunters willing to volunteer half a day to help improve habitat for grouse, woodcock, and wildlife needing young trees habitat.

The habitat work this fall consists of hand planting gray dogwood in a streamside zone on Hancock Forest lands near Clermont in southern McKean County.
The tentative planting days are:

• Tuesday, 11/13
• Thursday, 11/15
• Friday, 11/16
• Sunday, 11/18
• Wednesday, 11/21
• Friday, 11/23
• Saturday, 11/24
• Sunday, 11/25

Planting starts at noon of each day. Meet at the Clermont Fire Hall (just west of the junction of the Rasselas Road with SR 146 south of US 6). A hunter orange hat and shirt, jacket or hunting vest is required clothing. All volunteers must wear boots and gloves.
Contact Mary Hosmer at 814-512-2101 if you plant to help so the right number of seedlings and hand planters are available on site.

Hunters have always been the first conservationists. Here is yet another opportunity to give back to the hunting heritage.
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The Ruffed Grouse Society was founded in 1961 to promote and increase awareness of young forest management and to maintain suitable habitat that supports healthy populations of ruffed grouse, woodcock, deer and many songbird species that depend on forest diversity to survive and prosper.

Tower MN Ruffed Grouse Hunt - 9/22/2012

Tina With Her First Two Grouse For 2012 - Tower MN

I arrived home from my work trip at 10pm on Friday night and was on the road by 7am Saturday so that I could pick up Tina at the trainer.  She had been at the kennel for a month so that they could road her while I was gone.  Having your dog not get any exercise for three weeks right before the start of the season is not the best way to set yourself up for success.  She was lean and mean.  She had lost four lbs overall.  I’m sure she lost more fat than that and put on some muscle as she was looking ripped.  They shaved her so that helped the look also.

I picked up my dad in Ely and dropped back down to the Tower area.  We have hunted a few spots in this area on and off for 10 years.  We started at a set of trails that has gone from being prime cover to being on the old side of productive.  There has been some new clear cutting in the area so hopefully we will see a rebound in the future.  Tina and I started on a trail that heads downhill to some low areas.  With it being so dry this year I thought that the birds might be lower where there might be some dampness.  About 5 minutes into the trail we came across some blowdowns which isn’t all that unusual in the area except that there usually is a group of deer hunters that have stands at the bottom of the trail and they tend to keep the trails open.  Perhaps they have given up on the area.  I’ve been seeing fewer deer and more wolves each year...  

As we got to the fist set of blowdowns Tina was working off to the left and her bell went silent and the beeper came on.  Once I got an approximate location I turned off the beeper and headed into the woods.  Not much of the cover had come down yet so it was tough to get to her point and the grouse didn’t stick around for me.  Still, getting the first flush 10 min into the hunt isn’t too bad.

We continued down the trail and in just a few minutes Tina went back on point.  She was pointing right in the middle of the trail.  As I approached two birds flushed too low to get off a safe shot and by the time they rose they were headed into the cover.  While I enjoy seeing birds it is nice to be able to reward the dog and myself by getting to take a shot once in a while.  Luckily the next bird wasn’t quite as skilled with its escape.  Tina made a nice point and the grouse held its spot long enough for me to make a decent approach and was able to finish the job with a single shot.  At the shot another grouse got up a bit deeper into the cover but I was unable to get off a shot.

A bit farther down the trail a grouse got me in the classic I’ll wait until he is climbing over the blowdown before I flush maneuver.  Tina held point but the bird was trickier than either of us.

We made it to the end of the trail but didn’t end up seeing any birds in the damper areas like I thought we would.

On the way back to the truck Tina made a wide cast and I was day dreaming when a grouse flushed as I walked past it on the trail.  The flush gave my heart a jump start but I was able to swing around and get off three shots.  This ended up being one of the very few times that I have hit a bird after the second shot.  Usually the third shot just ends up being a wasted shot but this time I think it took me until the third shot to collect myself and actually concentrate on the shot.

In under two hours we saw seven birds and got two.  One advantage to having the blowdowns is that a fair number of hunters used to road hunt that small stretch and now it isn’t getting as much pressure.

We loaded up and headed to another spot.  We hunted this spot right before Christmas last year and about five minutes into our hunt a wolf came right up the trail towards us.  I shouted at it and it left the trail but I thought it best to pull the plug on hunting that spot for that day.

We ended up only getting one point along this trail but a bow hunter that we saw said that he had been seeing grouse in the area so I’m sure we will continue to try it.

Bigfork - Deer River MN Grouse and Woodcock Hunt

10/6/2012

Tony, Quetico and a Bigfork MN Grouse

The weather in the Grand Rapids, Mn area was supposed to be wet snow on Friday so I decided to head up early on Saturday morning.  I met my buddy Tony and his dog Quetico in Deer River and we decided to head up to Bigfork to try an area that we’ve had good luck with in the past.  This area can be entered from two different roads so we thought that we’d try parking one vehicle and then driving to the other side and hunting our way back to the first vehicle.  This way if we got into birds we could always hunt out and back and if the birds were scarce we could bail at the first vehicle, swing back to the second and then head to a new spot.

We put the two dogs on the ground and started down the trail.  It looked to be a good morning for a hunt as there were still spots of snow on the ground.  Within the first 5 minutes we got a wild flush and didn’t get a shot off.  The trail comes to an intersection with two side trails and if you go forward you hit a clear cut that has started to have islands of growth.  It the past few years these islands and the edges of the field have held good numbers of birds.  We worked the area pretty thoroughly and did not move a bird so we headed down one of the side trails towards the parked car.

As we hit the main loop on the lower portion of the trail the dogs started to get more excited.  They started to work an area of newer growth when you could hear them slow their search.  Tony went into the area to check on the search when a grouse got up in front of Quetico ( Tony’s GSP ) and he was able to drop the bird.  We kept moving along the trail to an area that was an awesome hotspot in 2009 and 2010.  There is a large beaver pond along one side and a small pond on the other.  In ’09 and ’10 I’m certain I moved multiple birds in this small area every time that I hit it.  Tina started to get excited first as I’m guessing that she remembered all of the birds that we had seen there in the past.  We were close to the end of this area when the dogs started to tighten up their casts and narrowed their search to some softer ground.  A lone woodcock decided to make its escape and I was able to bring it down and put it into the game bag.

We finished up this trail and decided it wasn’t worth hunting our way back so we loaded up the one vehicle, swung back for Tony’s truck and decided to head to an area close to Deer River that I had excellent hunting a number of times last year.

The dogs worked the cover well but we only moved on woodcock and we didn’t take a shot at it.  I found it odd that we didn’t move any other birds from this area.  As we were leaving I did notice that the cabin across the road had 3 or 4 trucks at it with lots of guys wearing blaze orange and I don’t recall seeing any vehicles at it last year.

Even though we didn’t move a lot of birds it was still a great day to be in the woods with the dogs.

Tina and I with our Bigfork MN Woodcock

Test Your Ruffed Grouse Hunting IQ

The ruffed grouse embodies all of the qualities sportsmen prize in gamebirds. Wild, wary, cunningly elusive, quick to flush and a blur on the wing, the ruff poses the ultimate challenge to both gunner and dog.

The ruffed  grouse is an uncommonly beautiful bird, too, its plumage a study in understated elegance. For these reasons and more, bagging a grouse always feels triumphant. Here’s a quiz that’ll test your knowledge of Bonasa umbellus, also known as the drummer in the woods.

Start The Quiz

Three Wisconsin Counties with Great Grouse Hunting

Wisconsin is arguably the best place in the country for ruffed grouse hunting.  The mix of older forests and newly cut over parcels gives birds the full array of foods they need to thrive. Ruffed grouse are found throughout the Badger State, but northern Wisconsin has the highest concentration. A trip into the northern forests in the fall can be quite rewarding for the grouse hunter.  Here are three of Wisconsin’s top grouse hunting counties.

Vilas County
With 240,000 acres of public forest land, Vilas County is a fantastic place to hunt. Ruffed grouse hunting in the Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest can be spectacular in the fall. The forest’s diverse, high-quality habitat provides everything grouse need to flourish. The hundreds of miles of old logging roads that run through the forest are the best place to start. When planning your hunt, look for sections of the forest that have areas that have recently been logged. These sections offer the greatest diversity of food sources and attract the most birds.

Oneida County

Oneida County also has a high concentration of ruffed grouse. The Northern Highland-American Legion State Forest dips down into northern Oneida County, offering outstanding hunting opportunities. But the best bet for a grouse hunter in Oneida County is hunting county land. Large tracts are located near the communities of Enterprise, Woodboro and Tripoli. These county lands have forests in various states of growth. Look for the best hunting along logging roads and the edges of large clearings.

County #3 and Complete Wisconsin Travel Best Bets Article