Adam Johnson Outdoors • Reading Outdoors

Pockets of Grouse

By Adam Johnson

The grouse hunting in Minnesota this fall has been what I'll describe as, "spotty." The reason for this description is that in some locations there have been ample amounts of birds and in other spots the hunting has been bleak.

One of my buddies told me about his recent trip to Hackensack where he and two other hunters with a pair of good dogs hunted all day and never flushed a single grouse. On the other hand, one of my other hunting friends strains the timber around Park Rapids and he has been seeing lots of birds.

The whole key to good grouse production is aspen trees and tight cover. In the past few years there has been a shift in forest management and the aspen are becoming fewer. The forest floors are also becoming thinner providing poor escape cover for the birds. This means that hunters need to do their homework and hunt the locations where the grouse are most plentiful.

Surprisingly the poorest woods to hunt are the Federal Forest lands where the logging has moved away from clear cutting and the emphasis on replanting is going to the pines. This is too bad because pines do little for the wildlife and are not much good for grouse. But this species of tree was once quite dominant in Minnesota so there is a movement to bring them back.

The state forests are a better place to hunt at this time, but I worry that these brushier belts of trees will eventually go the way of the big Federal woods. If so, then grouse hunting won't be improving much in the future.

I'm fortunate to have access to some private property that is still good for grouse. The forest floor is full of thickets where the grouse can hide from predators and there are lanes in between the woods where the birds like to sun themselves in the middle of the day.

A couple of my hunting buddies like to chase grouse in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. They take a canoe and paddle into the big wilderness area and do very well on grouse there. You can pick out a great spot as you paddle along and then just pull the canoe up on the shore and hunt there.

The great spots in the Boundary Waters are those where you see a high limestone ridge surrounded by birch and aspen near a lowland swamp. Grouse migrate to the tops of the ridges when the sun is out in the middle of the day and they spend their mornings and afternoons in the lowland areas feeding.

The key to getting grouse this season is going to mean being in the right place at the right time. Putting yourself there means doing some research before you load the truck and keeping your fingers crossed until you get there. The silver lining is that there are more birds this year than the last couple so this increase in numbers should help provide some productive hunting where you do find grouse.