“You see a little more up tick as people talk about how good the hunting is,” Horton said. “But then last year was a good pheasant year, so given the rise in gas prices, those who might make a couple of trips up north probably decided to stay closer to home and chase roosters. I didn’t see a huge influx of hunters last year like you might have thought would happen.

“What we do tend to get more of when the ruffed grouse hunting is good is the out-of-state hunters,” Horton continued. “They watch the reports and there are quite a few people from the eastern United States who used to have great grouse numbers and they don’t have those numbers anymore. New York and Pennsylvania used to be considered great for grouse. Not anymore. They don’t have the timber management, so they don’t have the birds. So, now they come to Minnesota when the hunting is good.”

The hunting was good just about anywhere you went last year in Minnesota. I didn’t make it up to the annual Gator & Grouse Hunt in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness this past October, but Adam Johnson and his crew went up to shoot some television footage.

“That was an interesting trip,” Johnson said. “When we got to Ely, Bill Slaughter had everything ready to go. We motored and portaged the boats up to Basswood Lake and the weather was perfect -- high 40s and low 50s the first couple of days with sunshine. The grouse were flying and hunting was great. The day before we were to leave, it started snowing and never stopped.”

The 14 inches of snow that fell on this crew of hunters, coupled with the high winds, shut down the hunting and made it a real chore to get back to the landing on Fall Lake.

“It was like someone threw a switch,” Johnson said. “The birds hunkered down, the fish quit biting, and we were glad to get out of there.”

THE WOODCOCK
This was the second year in a row woodcock hunters had some success. Unlike the ruffed grouse, the woodcock population doesn’t swing on a cycle.

“No, woodcock numbers aren’t cyclic,” Horton said, “but they have been trending down for years. That’s primarily due to loss of prime young forest habitat. Minnesota is unique because we do have active timber management. In the last couple of years, our woodcock numbers have stabilized. In other parts of the eastern United States, the numbers just continue to spiral downward.”

As usual, it’s all about habitat.

“It’s about creating that young forest that these birds need,” Horton said. “Look at Pennsylvania. Their forests have gotten very old, to the point where they’re recognizing they have to do some management for game species as well, or they’re going to lose them. We’re fortunate because we have a vibrant forest products industry, which helps us manage those habitats.”

What is the outlook for woodcock in Minnesota this season?

“I don’t think it will change much. It will reflect last season,” Horton said. “We saw birds coming north with the early thaw and then we had a cold snap. Those woodcock want to get here early and get established, so they’ll run into a situation like this once in awhile. It hurt them a little, but there will still be plenty of birds to hunt. It’s always a gamble you’ll get a winter that just drags on, and some of the woodcock will starve to death. It happened this year, but it wasn’t bad.”

SOUTHEAST GROUSE
While we think of ruffed grouse as a northern phenomenon, when you toss in the southeastern Minnesota factor, it kind of blows that theory out of the water. As a matter of fact, the woods around the river bottoms is not only receiving accolades for the phenomenal turkey comeback that has occurred there in the past few decades, but in the last few years, there’s been some buzz about the grouse population rebounding.