Grouse #'s looking good for this fall!

[thunderpout]

The DNR's Ruffed Grouse drumming counts are out, and things are looking good for this fall... State wide, drum counts are up 43% over last years counts, with the largest increases being in the NE and nort central part of the state.  Its not known if this will be the peak year of the current cycle, but this years #'s are as high as the peaks of the cycles in years past...(78', 89' & 98') .... I am soooo psyched!

[Bobby Bass]

I am hoping for a good year, Bud and Barney are nine and will start slowing down. Well I guess that means soon they will be walking as slow as me !!!

[willy4003]

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[Dan R.]

Nice pics willy keep them coming

[HD]

Those are cool looking pics! 

[Cody Gruchow]

im going to attempt to chase grouse this year atleast one time.

[thunderpout]

Awesome photos Willy!  You made my day...

[UncleDave]

The DNR says this EVERY year.  It's been a long time since I saw good numbers of grouse.  We usually go to Ely and do a combo fish/hunt trip.  Mention these counts to most of the locals and they laugh that it is just to hype the numbers to get schmos like us excited about heading up.  It ALWAYS works on me.  We already have our trip planned for Ely in early October!  Can't wait.

[Bobby Bass]

im going to attempt to chase grouse this year atleast one time.

Cody, you are never going to catch them! they can fly you know 

[Bobby Bass]

The DNR says this EVERY year.  It's been a long time since I saw good numbers of grouse.  We usually go to Ely and do a combo fish/hunt trip.  Mention these counts to most of the locals and they laugh that it is just to hype the numbers to get schmos like us excited about heading up.  It ALWAYS works on me.  We already have our trip planned for Ely in early October!  Can't wait.

I must admit I have heard more drumming this year then in the past several years. In places where I have seen or heard no birds for a long time.

[Cody Gruchow]

chase them to fly then there dead birds! 

[Randy Kaar]

We just got permission to hunt a lot of land this weekend, As we walked the different properties.
Saw a ton of grouse, More then we have ever seen. We were in the Sturgeon lake/Willow river
area. We saw a ton of nice deer, Which is what we will hunt mainly.

randy

[thunderpout]

Thats good to hear!   Cody... ya can chase them till the cows come home... but ya still have to hit em!

[beeker]

the dry spring really helps em... I can't wait for this fall..

[Go Big Red!]

The DNR says this EVERY year.  It's been a long time since I saw good numbers of grouse.  We usually go to Ely and do a combo fish/hunt trip.  Mention these counts to most of the locals and they laugh that it is just to hype the numbers to get schmos like us excited about heading up.  It ALWAYS works on me.  We already have our trip planned for Ely in early October!  Can't wait.

Exactly, every year the count numbers are up.... I'll believe it when the lead flies...  Boom to bust cycle my  ... 

[Cody Gruchow]

o ill hit them. 

[thunderpout]

The count #'s are not up every year.... The last six years have sucked, last year was the best in over five or more years but it definatly wasnt near the peak like the experts claimed....yeah when the #'s are down you can find pockets with birds if ya hit spots that are hard to get to or on private land where they dont get hunted , but there is definatly a nine to eleven year cycle, and it has alot to do with aspen trees budding cycles, and the peaks and valleys of predator populations... since Ive been grouse hunting, Ive seen some really low periods that turned my grouse dogs into pheasant dogs... but the next few years will be the best years you'll see for another decade! Ive hunted through a few of these cycles now and believe me, they definatly do exist!  Look up the late Gordon Guillian's work with the U of M and the MN DNR, he spent his whole life researching Grouse and their up and down cycle in northern minnesota... but yeah I do agree that they hype the little promising news they get, and it does get the tourism going some for the towns up north... The stuff that gets to me though is the huge full page spreads we'll see in the Star/Tribune about the "big peak" the weekend before the small game opener... it gets the casual/rookie grouse hunters out in groves road hunting the birds in masses!  They get all the young stupid birds the first few weekends and leave the old smart ones for me to hunt the rest of the year...

[UncleDave]

I love the grouse time of year!  Cool evenings and mornings.  No bugs.  Walking the woods so quiet except for an occasion breeze rusting the downed leaves.  Man, I can't wait.  Plus there is nothing better than grouse slow cooked in a crockpot all day!

[willy4003]

..

[Bufflehead]

They tell us the bird #'s are up every year..be it Pheasants, Grouse, ducks, Etc.

Buy them Lic. bring in the revenue

They have said duck numbers have been way above the long term average for years. We have had a 6 bird limit for something like 10 years but all over the net the reports are..nobody is killing any big numbers of birds. Infact many are saying they are killing very few and it's the worst duck hunting they have ever had .

Something stinks and it isn't the gut pail by the bird cleaning table. We should be seeing our skies filled with waterfowl(according to the feds there are more ducks than ever) and our woods and fields filled with birds according to our state and federal game and fish. Funny thing is, according to our Grandfathers and fathers. Ducks covered the waters from shore to shore on our lakes and ponds during the glory days. They have pictures to prove it. Where are they now, if they are above that long term average? Nobody is seeing them from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico.   

Myself, I think our resources are for sale and it's at risk to it's population in most cases. For what? the O Mighty dollar..because of a out of control appetite for money by a spend happy DNR & federal fish and game.

 I remember hunting Grouse back in the late 70s/early 80s and I would jump 6-8-10 birds at a time. A person is lucky to kick up 2-3 at a time now and that's a good covey..maybe the best flush of the year. We continue to choose to protect predators in this state and put the millions spent by hunters and their interest behind that of those predictors.

 Minnesota needs to look at South Dakota and how they have realized what the value of a game bird is to their state. How it is that South Dakota continues to have a thriving growing population of Pheasants and other game including birds small game, waterfowl and big game. IMO, you won't ever see that happening here in Minnesota and as long as we except that fact. They will continue to let our resource slide into the dumpster.

Chuck         

[Cody Gruchow]

does everything have to be political? thought we were talking about how the grouse are having a great comeback

[thunderpout]

Bufflehead, as far as grouse populations go, there are things in the enviroment and land management that affect the #'s that the DNR really has no controll over unless they had enough money to buy up millions of acres of land... the forest management practices have changed dramaticly in recent years because of pressure from the special interest groups that want only old growth forests, instead of doing multi stage tracts of different species by clearcutting and harvesting aspen like we have done for years... it is no longer PC to clearcut or do prescribed burns as the Forestry service and the DNR once did, in fact they are/were tied up in legal battles for those harvesting practices... Grouse thrive on those diffent stages of forest growth as do many other species like deer, and many non-game species also... if it werent for the paper companies still harvesting pulpwood (which has also been cut back drastically) it would be even worse... and as our forests age, its gonna even be worse.  We are going to have major issues in the future if we dont get our "you know what" together.... Conservation groups like the Ruffed Grouse Society are working together with the DNR and other agencies to get things straightened out before its too late.  I dont think I need to go into the loss of waterfowl habitat and why it is happening....  These things arent "caused" by the DNR... Its mostly Forestry practices, Farming Practices, Urban sprawl and land being developed....etc.  Thats what really stinks to me... Yeah the DNR has had issues, but dont be quick with a knife in their back, they are on our side and remember they are basically a buisness and need to promote themselves and our resources to try to make money, they run some things well, and some things not so well, but it is impossible for them to make everyone happy... they get pulled in many directions by many different groups, and with that in mind I often wonder how they manage to acomplish what they do the way the world has changed... yeah, Im not sure politics has much to do with the natural cycle of the Ruffed Grouse either, but the DNR isnt to be blamed for the decline of their numbers, they are the reason we know what we do about about them and what we need to do to help the Grouse and other species.... Bufflehead, if you are using South Dakota as an example of what how we should run things here simply from their Pheasant "management", let me toss this at ya, will you pay $100 to hunt grouse for two weekends, and did you know that half of their Pheasant population is composed of pen raised birds that will never make it through an average SD winter?  If we did things that way with our resources here, we'd have major issues....

[Bufflehead]

 with responses like that..I rest my case

 Just continue to allow whats happening

[Cody Gruchow]

no ones allowing anything but  :censored:ing about it isnt going to help anything. and pout was/is right a majority of south dakotas pheasants are pen raised birds. so your saying we should pen raise grouse and release them? wouldnt work at all. and then it just gives you something more to complain about how the dnr is wasting money and how the goverment is throwing money here and there. truth be told the dnr is underfunded and undermaned to do much of anything. you must not realize how very little they have with how much they have to deal with. yes with what they do may not always work but its better than not trying at all. give it a rest

[Go Big Red!]

Yikes, found that last nerve to chew on...

Look, I enjoy grouse hunting but I honestly, And I assume other hunters do to, get sick and tired of hearing numbers this and boom to bust that. The fact of the matter is, our hands are tied and the only info that we obtain is from the govt. and its divisions.  Do we need to make this political?  No, we read and hear enough of that  on a daily basis.  Show me the birds, show me the projections, and I'll show you a bag limit and one hell of a scratched up face from slamming through the thick stuff all day.  Beyond that, don't blow smoke up my  and tell me that roadside drum counts are up.  I think people are tired of hearing BS and it gets sooooo old..... and now I'm off the soap box.....

[Bufflehead]

News for you nay Sayers, I live in northern Minnesota. I hunt almost every single day. I snowmobile 1000s of miles a year and see country most of you will never even be able to get to any other time of the year.

 Quote thunderpout

"the forest management practices have changed dramaticly in recent years because of pressure from the special interest groups that want only old growth forests, instead of doing multi stage tracts of different species by clearcutting and harvesting aspen like we have done for years... it is no longer PC to clearcut or do prescribed burns"

Check out the photo's below of just a small example of clear cutting and the mess left on the ground. Try walking through that mass of tops and run over tree's



One can ride your sled just about anywhere and most of the time you are riding in aspen slashings..miles upon miles. We rode from near McGregor to the Scenic State Park near Effie and 90% of the time all you seen was new growth aspen thick as hair on a dog. It takes near 20 years of that same aspen to die and thin itself before other species of tree's begin to emerge.

Below is what Grouse eat..notice the variety. In these thick new growth aspen, most of these other species of plants and tree's are choked out from lack of sun light getting through because of the thick aspen. You need a diversity in food available to these birds as each kind of these plants and tree's ripen and provide food at different times. They can't survive on aspen buds alone. responsible logging practices are what we need not clear cutting for profit 

   

[thunderpout]

There's still clear cutting going on, now, but in our national forests and state forests there has opposition and lawsuites from different "groups"  and there has been changes in the US Forest Services, and other agencies approach to forest management as they are caving in to the pressure, and going to the practice of letting areas go and deciding that we need all old growth forests...Our State is changing their ways and the paper/logging industry is in a hurt because of it... have you heard of the layoffs in Grand Rapids and Int'l Falls?   Up on the Echo Trail I saw protesters chaining the fire roads and standing on logging roads to keep loggers from doing cuts...   Bufflehead, I aint no sheep, Im still not sure what Im letting "go on"... I've put my time in up north, I also used to sled thousands of miles a year too across MN, WI, MI....    BigRed, I understand peoples distaste for the big government putting their hands where they probably dont belong, and dictating every thing we do and hear more than we like... but what dont you like about getting drumming counts every spring exactly?  People like us dont need them, we hear it ourselves being out in the woods, so its kind of like the ole addage, "dont need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..." but I like to see the "counts" just to get a rough state wide estimate every year to see where the cycle is headed and how fast... dont need it or live by it or anything... it is what it is... just data.  The people that do the counts are volunteers, U of M students and the MN DNR organizes it... how can ya get pissed off at that? 

[Cody Gruchow]

question bufflehead about the above pictures...how you so sure a logging company that just tears it up for profit, just because someone hired them to. they do it if its to thick(i know dumb) or not growing the way they want it to, there trying to improve the habitat.. we have a potlatch we lease from the state that was all pine trees and it grew way to thick and they cut it all down and replanted they cut down trees that were easily twice my age, do i like it no. but its there land and they can do what they want to with it is what im going to say. if you own land would you want someone complaining and telling you what you can and cannot do with it?


why does this really even turning into a arguement? i mean really we are here to talk about hunting.

[Bufflehead]

The pictures of the logged areas are county land

Hey I worked 14 years fixing equipment for loggers. The days of the chainsaw are gone. Today they use machines as big as a farm combine. Have you ever seen what happens to all the tree's too young to cut. They get run over, broke off, permanently bent over. They wreck more than they take out. It's all about speed and profit not management and habitat.

 Things aren't going to change and go back. The big equipment and what it does to the area is here to stay. Funny, you make a mark with your ATV tire and all heck hits the fan.(they close the road to you), but a logger can drive in with a 60-80,000 lb machine and sink ruts 2ft deep and there's no problem.

 Enough of this stuff. I hope everybody has a fantastic grouse opener. Ruffies slow roasted with fresh mushrooms and cream of mushroom soup over mashed potatoes, Acorn Squash with butter and brown sugar, fresh beggies from the garden..while watching the Vikings kick the Packers pants on a Sunday afternoon or MONDAY night this year. Maybe a fine cocktail or brewski before..good frinds to enjoy it with. IT DON'T GET NO BETTER

Later boys   

[thunderpout]

Bufflehead, those are great pictures of what s in a birds crop,  now take a photo of what is in the crop in the middle of winter.... you aint going to see the same things in there,  You will also find chewed up clover and other leaves, but there are none in those photos because they eat different things in different times of the year.  Those are great photos.  Yeah, Im not a fan of those huge sprawling clearcuts either, My opinion, like RGS'S is to do them in smaller more dispersed cuts to have different patches and different ages of growth... if you do not do any cutting, the old growth forests choke out undergrowth as well, you are right on that grouse need a variety of food sources... but old growth forests do not give that variety, grouse, woodcock, deer, songbirds thrive where there are a variety of edges, openings, thickets, large pines for shelter and wintering, etc. .... Where I deer hunt and do some of my bird hunting they still do some cuts, some of them are bigger than I like to see, but as time goes on, and they do different areas each year or two, you end up with hunting areas that are unbelievable, and arent the vast, purely aspen areas when they leave some stands of mature trees... It depends on who is doing the cutting really...