Well, grouse season is all but wrapped up now with the opening of firearm deer season in Northern Michigan. I hate to see it go. Maybe we'll go a last time or two when the season opens agian in December but we tend to leave the birds alone in the late season--they've got enough on their plate getting ready for winter. If there's not too much snow, I'll run the pups solely for the experience.
It's alwasy bittersweet this time of year. I just don't want to let Fall move into winter. Rifle season is okay for a little while but it gets long for me. And it marks the beginning of production tying, snow shoveling, wood hauling--work. When you you make your career in a fly shop, work isn't supposed to be involved. You just sit around and talk fishing all day (I wish).
This fan is from a nice red-phased grouse I shot this year. Grouse in our area are generally gray phase, so the reds can be rare. There's a thousand theories about grouse and their populations. I find them all weak and incomplete. For example, some folks say that when you start seeing more red phased grouse up here that the grouse numbers are on the rise. Maybe. I thought the overall numbers were down this year and roughly half the birds I shot were reds.
Then there's all the talk about the "cycle". While there is unquestionably some sort of cycle, the reasons are unclear. Much of the talk is a predator/prey argument. The problem is that the predators change depending on the study/theory but the cycle remains the same. Some talk about the bobcat numbers rising or falling, while other studies talk about gosshawks, coyotes, skunks, racoons, etc . . . The other animals likely (I'm guessing here) rise and fall with the grouse numbers and not the other way around--kinda like the hunter numbers. When grouse hunting is great there seems to be many more hunters. My guess is that the grouse cycle is a very complex relationship between the bird and its habitat probably having more to do with food sources and weather.
I gonna miss chasing them this year.
Here's a great link . . . if you like grouse hunting, you'll love the Ruffed Grouse Society .
http://www.ruffedgrousesociety.org/
http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/515/articles/introduction
Posts
