Reports from around our state last year showed that hunters had a good year for ruffed grouse and woodcock. If you follow the population cycle that the grouse typically have, then you know 2007 should be even better.

“We’re still a long ways from the peak of the cycle,” Horton said. “We’re still trending upward.”

However, there are so many variables that need to fall into place for grouse numbers to rise.

“This last winter might have thrown us for a loop,” Horton said. “Usually, we see good survival when we have good snow. We didn’t have good snow last winter. In fact, I tend to think that you can use frozen septic tanks as a barometer of the winter for grouse. If you have a frozen septic tank, it wasn’t a good winter for grouse. We had a lot of frozen septic tanks.

“The thing about grouse is they need the snow to protect them from the cold and predators,” Horton continued. “Now, continued research into the cycle from the University of Minnesota showed that there is a link. It’s not just the snow and cold but the combination of snow, cold and predator loads. So, there is the sense that if you have a lot of predators but you have a lot of snow, the birds will do fine. They can hide from them. If you have few predators and not much snow, the birds should do fine because there was nothing to have to hide from. Worst-case scenario is a lot of predators and no snow. This can really knock down a population of grouse.”

Horton said predators weren’t a big problem last winter.

“We didn’t have an influx of predators from Canada,” he said. “We didn’t see a lot of hawks and owls. So, we had the situation of not a lot of snow, but not a lot of predators. So, we should be OK. All those young from last year and the winter we had means there will be more birds that potentially made it into this year. We should see an upward swing. That is my prediction.”

Moving to our second spot, the conversation was all about the abundance of snowshoe hares. Dan Small, who hosts the popular television show “Outdoor Wisconsin,” put the word out that he was going to shoot a couple of hares because he wanted to try some of his recipes, and he hadn’t had fresh snowshoe in awhile. The rest of us decided to stick to birds.

The first grouse off the ground in this spot was a ruff, and O’Dea made an impressive shot. We had decided as a group before the hunt began that ground-swatting was not allowed. This cost Adam and I some shooting shortly after O’Dea bagged his bird when we came out onto a clearcut and there were four ruffed grouse milling around behind some trees. They started to get real nervous when we moved out of the cover, and as Adam tried slipping around behind them to get into shooting position, they all flushed in unison and all headed in the only direction possible where we couldn’t get shots at them.

Leaving that clearcut and getting back into the heavy cover, Adam Johnson and I stumbled onto a pair of spruce grouse that froze about the time we both spotted them. Adam let Dingells get some footage of the birds, and when they finally flushed, Johnson’s 28 gauge provided the power to add them to his meal ticket.

BIRD CONNECTION
There is a correlation in the amount of pheasant stamps sold relative to how healthy the population of roosters is. More pheasants, more stamps. I thought that could also hold true for grouse, and even though we didn’t see any other hunters in the woods those few days we were in Baudette, I thought the hunter numbers may rise in the other more popular parts of Minnesota.