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

At 76, Minnesota Northland woman still enjoys getting out to hunt grouse

By: Sam Cook


When she was 12, growing up in Hermantown, Carol Nyholm got her first shotgun. It was a Mossberg bolt-action .410.

“That was my recreation after school every day,” Nyholm said. “I’d run home, grab my Irish setter and my gun and go hunting. I’d be shooting grouse, and I could hear the football team practicing.”
She didn’t know it then, but those early years in the woods with her gun and her dogs would shape her life. Now 76 and living near Babbitt with her partner, Chuck Binkowski, Nyholm still is actively hunting and keeps a kennel of 11 dogs. She has spent her life breeding Labrador retrievers and Brittanys, boarding and training dogs, and guiding grouse and woodcock hunters.

On Wednesday afternoon, she put bells on two of her dogs, Skipper and Star, for a couple of hours of grouse hunting before sunset. The dogs’ bells tinkled as they coursed through the leafless stands of aspen.

Nyholm credits her dad, Ernie Nyholm, for grooming her as a hunter.

“I was a girl,” she said, “but it didn’t matter. I was his sidekick for hunting. We went to Willmar and Cold Spring (Minn.) to hunt pheasants. I did a lot of jump-shooting for ducks.”

This was in years just after the Great Depression. Times were tough. Those birds, along with deer, were staples in the Nyholm household. Nyholm and her younger brother learned early on that if you shot something, you ate it. Once, at the family’s cabin, her brother shot several red squirrels, Nyholm said.

“My dad made him go back to the woods and pick ’em all up,” she said. “We all sat around and skun ’em, and we cooked ’em up. Oh, God, were they terrible.”


Getting to the woods
After a year at the University of Minnesota Duluth, Nyholm trained to be a lab technician in Duluth. But she left the job after a year. She needed to be outdoors.

“I had to get there with the dogs and the woods. And I made it,” she said.

In 1965, she bought a yellow Lab from family friend Joe DeLoia, who began training dogs in Duluth after World War II. She was living in Grand Rapids then, divorced and raising two daughters on her own. She built her Roaring Winds Labradors kennel, which she still operates, from Ginger, that first yellow Lab she bought from DeLoia.

“It was my dream always to have a kennel,” Nyholm said. “I hung out at Joe’s kennel a lot, watching him train, listening in on his phone conversations. Joe really mentored me.”

She and the girls had 40 acres outside of Grand Rapids.

“My mom is very independent,” said Christine McKenzie-Burbie, Nyholm’s youngest daughter, who lives in Bovey. “She raised us girls. We never needed for anything, but it was tough for her, being a single parent.”

Besides hunting and raising dogs, Nyholm also harvested wild rice, an activity she still practices every year. And she ran a trapline for a time.

“She gave me my love and passion for the woods,” said her oldest daughter, Paula McKenzie of Babbitt. “She took me on a sled on her muskrat trapline when I was a little baby.”


Becoming a guide - Read the rest of the Duluth News Tribune Article

Despite favorable conditions, Pennsylvania's grouse count low

By John Hayes / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania hunters should see an outstanding grouse season, by all indications except one -- the absence of grouse.

As the first leg of a three-part split season opens this weekend, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's go-to person on ruffed grouse said spring research and summer sightings don't add up, resulting in a recent advisory that grouse hunting was expected to be "slightly below average."

"Conditions were good in winter and spring, with a lot of early reports of plenty of broods by June 1. Then as summer came, our people in the field were filing reports saying [grouse] numbers were down, down, down," said Game Commission grouse and woodcock specialist Lisa Williams. "It didn't make sense. I was scratching my head, because my gut still tells me we should see a lot of grouse out there."
Pennsylvania's official state bird is North America's most widely distributed resident game bird. While the grouse population has declined in the state since 1980, and the number of hunters targeting them is down, more than 100,000 Pennsylvania hunters are expected to harvest 75,000 to 100,000 grouse in the 2012-13 seasons, contributing some $79 million to the state's economy, according to a Game Commission report.

Ruffed grouse can be found in most forested areas. But like the woodcock and song birds with whom they share the thickets, grouse are habitat specialists preferring what Williams called "really thick, gnarly stuff." Serious grouse hunters know they'll have to get physical in grape tangles and dense stands of seedlings and saplings to force an adrenaline-inducing flush.

Pennsylvania Grouse Cooperators -- a group of 314 hard-core grouse hunters who keep track of their hunts and report back to the Game Commission -- documented 1.32 flushes per hour last season, the highest flush rate among neighboring states. But Pennsylvania has been tough on grouse.
"Losses of young forest habitat over the last several decades have been bad news for grouse, woodcock and other species that rely on these habitats," said Ian Gregg, Game Commission Game Bird Section supervisor, in a written statement.

Young forests up to 20 years old dropped from nearly 20 percent of total forest acres in 1980 to a little over 10 percent today.

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