Late season in Pa

[Jeff S]

Grouse_fan, when I click on your picture of Lilah on my computer, the clarity is amazing. What did you use to take that picture?

[Sporrns]

What a charming and beautiful dog! The rooster and the gun ain't bad either!! Kevin

[grouse_fan]

Grouse_fan, when I click on your picture of Lilah on my computer, the clarity is amazing. What did you use to take that picture?

It was my Samsung cell phone.

[vaturkey]

Sadly this isn't just a Pa issue when it comes to Grouse. Here in the upper Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Grouse are very very few in numbers. I do believe we have both a habitat issue, a predator issue and an unexplained issue. 20 years ago it was nothing to go out and move a half dozen Grouse in a day. Heck, that was a bad day. We beat clearcuts in late season and we also just pushed mountain Laurel. The birds were there. Shooting was tough as you were hanging onto a tree with one hand and trying to swing the gun with the other. Shot at a lot more birds then we killed. Late season you could find birds bunched up around food sources. One rather fantastic morning we put up what back in the old day would have been called a Covey of Grouse. 8 birds came off the ground within a few seconds. Dogs were going insane and guns were emptied and not a single bird harmed. Back then they were cutting timber like crazy in the National Forests. New cuts everywhere. Then Bang.

Everything started going away, the big thing was cutting was flat out stopped by the feds, but there was something else going on. Mountain Laurel was suddenly dying off with no explanation that I know off. Couple with those things was the sudden seeing of coyotes everywhere. Not only were Grouse affected, but the deer population in the National Forests crashed like a stone. Increase in fawn eaters and a loss of habitat combined to affect everything. What the tree huggers (who had stopped the cutting by litigation) didn't seem to realize is once you have nothing but big giant mature tree's your winter food source vanishes unless you have an amazing mast crop. Even then, there is no ground cover for birds anymore and no thermal cover either. Hell, there's not even a place for the Grouse to raise a brood of chicks.

I called it the "Slow Death". Good friend of mine who is a member, kept a journal for 30 plus years. Pretty easy to see what happens when you are staring at it in black and white.

The other factor I'll call it is in addition to the aging out of the habitat is the aging out of the hunter. I'm 67 and while I'm in pretty decent shape overall, the days of me walking 5 miles up and down the slopes of Va looking for one of the few Grouse remaining are pretty much done. I try to hunt where I have a better chance of finding game and where the walking is a tad easier. Doesn't do me much good to drive 2.5 hours, hunt 2.0 hours and drive home 2.5 hours and if I'm lucky I will have heard a bird or two flush and just perhaps I might have taken a shot or two.

I have no idea how, even if I was the King of all, on how to turn this around. Even if cutting was started up in a larger sustained way, there's just not enough Grouse to restart the population. This isn't like the Wild Turkey where you can trap some and release them in good habitat. Hell, its not like "Field of Dreams" where if you build it they will come. The birds aren't like Woodcock and they aren't going to migrate into great cover because there are no birds to migrate. I can take you to some very nice cuts that were done in the last 5 years and there's not a bird in them. It would be like building prime Grouse habitat in Central Park New York.

Bottom line, is I feel your pain Frank. Been there for a while now. I actually went to Gettysburg yesterday to a SGL looking for stocked pheasants or Woodcock. 3 hours of walking around and Sophie pointed one Woodcock, which slipped out the back door when I went in on the point. She pointed a Rooster not far from the parking area that when flushed by me, flew over 3 trucks sitting in the parking area waiting for the stocking truck to arrive. That was 3 hours of driving and 3 hours of hunting and not a bird harmed, but at least we were out there.

PS. I don't wait on the stocking trucks ever. Might as well go to the local Grocery store where I can buy frozen pheasant's for $6.99 per pound.

Double PS. Back to the original post. Very nice bird and one very happy dog. Good deal indeed. Put a smile on my face. Goodness those mountain Pheasants are special.

Picture attached of my Old Golden Abby and my young Golden Gracie. Pic taken in 2010. Killed two Grouse that day and missed a 3rd. This area of Va is now totally barren of Grouse.

[fox-admin]

Grouse in western NY are gone, as are the wild turkeys. The deer herd is smaller. We have had a large increase in the Fisher and Coyote population. I believe the Fishers play hell on ground nesting birds even more than hawks. The Coyote population is enormous. Some young guys I know hunt Coyotes at night with night scopes and it is not unusual to kill 5 in one night in one spot. Fortunately for me the grouse population in the Tug Hill area is still good by todays standard. My son and I can still get 5 to 6 flushes in 3 hours of hunting.

[Rbishop]

Us Southern boys have been saying the exact same thing about the bobwhite quail population in the South. We have turkeys though!

[fox-admin]

My duck club is in rural Wayne County, perfect habitat for deer and turkeys, Last spring the Wayne County turkey harvest as reported to the DEC was 2 for the whole dam county! 10 years ago we would shoot 8-10 just on our property.

[44whiskey]

thanks for sharing your assessment Tom, im afraid you are correct about the return of numbers by clearing cutting. i hope you and Sophie lucky enough find some birds.you have invested so much over so long to pursue this passion. Merry Christmas ,Fred

[ROMAC]

I agree with just about everything you guys are saying and don't have any better answers either. Grouse numbers are frustratingly low, it breaks my heart to think that they might someday be remembered with the same wistful longing as pheasants are here on the east coast. When I was young there were pheasants just about everywhere, now they are the more expensive option at game farms with chukars being a little cheaper.

That's one of the reasons I've pivoted to spend more time chasing woodcock. I'm lucky enough to live within a reasonable drive time to historic migration stopover areas that just flat out produce year after year. It's all about cover and geography. They bunch up by the bays waiting for favorable winds to push them over the water. The areas I hunt have great cover and the type of soils that contain small worms near the surface in the leaf litter.

There's no better mood adjuster than the anticipation of at least 10 or so flushes on a slow day and an easy 20 or more on a good one. There are some days that if there weren't a 3 bird limit per person, your group could probably put up 50 if you stayed all day. The ground is even usually flat! My old knees appreciate the change of venue from grouse country, it's just my heart that aches now thinking about the "old" days of the 70's and 80's.



Heck, there are websites (woodcock migration.org) that exist to tell us hunters when the migration is in full swing! My holy grail is to take a banded bird but that has not happened. I know a guide that some years starts in Maine in the Fall and works his way south down to Virginia and he probably produces close to 300 birds a year for clients and he has never had one hunter take a banded bird so those lines on the migration maps represent only a small fraction of the birds that are moving. The most expensive thing about chasing Scolopax Minor is that I can hunt in PA, of course, but good spots NJ, DE and MD are all less a 2 hour drive from where I live, and the cost of out of state licenses can get a little prohibitive for a day here or there.

[vaturkey]

I agree with just about everything you guys are saying and don't have any better answers either. Grouse numbers are frustratingly low, it breaks my heart to think that they might someday be remembered with the same wistful longing as pheasants are here on the east coast. When I was young there were pheasants just about everywhere, now they are the more expensive option at game farms with chukars being a little cheaper.

That's one of the reasons I've pivoted to spend more time chasing woodcock. I'm lucky enough to live within a reasonable drive time to historic migration stopover areas that just flat out produce year after year. It's all about cover and geography. They bunch up by the bays waiting for favorable winds to push them over the water. The areas I hunt have great cover and the type of soils that contain small worms near the surface in the leaf litter.

There's no better mood adjuster than the anticipation of at least 10 or so flushes on a slow day and an easy 20 or more on a good one. There are some days that if there weren't a 3 bird limit per person, your group could probably put up 50 if you stayed all day. The ground is even usually flat! My old knees appreciate the change of venue from grouse country, it's just my heart that aches now thinking about the "old" days of the 70's and 80's.



Heck, there are websites (woodcock migration.org) that exist to tell us hunters when the migration is in full swing! My holy grail is to take a banded bird but that has not happened. I know a guide that some years starts in Maine in the Fall and works his way south down to Virginia and he probably produces close to 300 birds a year for clients and he has never had one hunter take a banded bird so those lines on the migration maps represent only a small fraction of the birds that are moving. The most expensive thing about chasing Scolopax Minor is that I can hunt in PA, of course, but good spots NJ, DE and MD are all less a 2 hour drive from where I live, and the cost of out of state licenses can get a little prohibitive for a day here or there.



Capture.PNG

Roger, once you turn 65, an out of state license in Maryland is half price. Didn't discover that until this year. That said, I hit some gamelands in Maryland not far from me 4 times in the early season and moved exactly one bird. I'm hoping when the second split comes in next month some birds will have moved down. Above said, the Maryland Eastern Shore is where they really stack up (or so I've been told). Never hunted that as I can find some birds not far from me in Va and I much prefer a 90 minute drive to a 180 minute drive. I have a buddy who is on the eastern short of Va and he said where he is (Northern Neck), there is Woodcock, a ton of ducks and a few Quail. However, there is no way momma is going to leave where I live now, so I'll make due. PS. If it wasn't for Woodcock I do a lot more traveling. Sophie is a damn good Woodcock dog. Hopefully when our Va season comes back in later this month a few more birds will have moved down. January can be fantastic or it can be a bust. All depends on the weather.

[Jim Cloninger]

Nice to see a picture of Abby and Gracie, Tom.

[44whiskey]

what a great picture Roger.Merry Christmas,Fred

[firemanstevec34]

Great looking pup and Sterly. What loads are you using for grouse? I picked up a 12g and a 16g Sterlingworth and will be mostly using them for grouse in Michigan.

[Jeff S]

Welcomes aboard FiremanSteve. I’m in the Grand Rapids area. Where are you located?