Just hearing something like that is like going back in Time.

Our biggest problem in Maine is the increase numbers in accipiters and delayed spring, cold and wet. Most hunting in Maine, believe it or not, is done from riding the dirt roads and hopping out to shoot one on the road, or in a tree near the road. Seldom do people venture in the woods. We still have logging, so there is a fair amount of turnover. In the past two years I have seen an increase in birds where at one time there were none.

My two cents. I am from the center of Connecticut. I was 12 years old in 1972. I had spent the better part of the first 12 years of my life following behind my father who was a great grouse hunter. I witnessed him shoot true doubles on grouse multiple times. And grouse were plentiful. I hunted them in Connecticut from 1974 until I shot my last Connecticut grouse in 1982 when the Connecticut grouse had all but dried up. They were the same farms & covers that I followed behind my dad on and they sure still looked like great grouse cover. I believe the answer is a combination of predators And some kind of disease.
I have a camp in the NEK of Vermont & there are still birds but no where near the numbers that they once were. I can say the same about Northern New Hampshire. I’m guessing we will all agree that NH grouse have also seen a large decline in the last 15 to 20 years.
All I know for sure is that I love the king and it is heartbreaking to witness. I will add that the ruffed grouse is largely responsible for my love of side by sides. A good pointer along with a Parker a few Ruffs and a good friend are the things dreams are made of.

Rick, our place is in Greenville and I have hunted basically from Casey’s Camp Rd. and north. Where there would be 10-20 flushed walking Frenchtown to Spencer Mtn, today there might be 4-5. All of my wife’s cousins are heater hunters and as a rule, put 40+ birds in the freezer annually. I’m quite familiar with this practice and refuse to participate. The slaughter in late November and December is wholly unethical.

I heard that Vt. may close grouse season too.
possibly all of new England will close all upland hunting.
something to think about!:bigbye:

nice try

We had a very good Grouse season here in New Hampshire last fall. I pretty much hunt Pittsburg and we consistently had many flushes per day, much more the fall before. With the VERY intense hunting pressure you need to get off Indian Stream Road and all the other major logging roads and hike back a bit. If you know the country and do that you will be surprised what you will find in terms of birds.

Not the case in some areas but in many it depends on how far you’re willing to get from the “tried and true” crowd-pleasing producers that just don’t produce after the first week of bird season.





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My moms property in northwestern Connecticut abuts 700+ acres of hilly, rocky woods and I’ve been hunting that area all my life. Most of it was never suitable for farming or even dairy but it was cleared and extensively quarried up to about 100 years ago. Very few open meadows and the partridges were never very numerous in my lifetime. But selective logging of the large trees has allowed in more light and opened the way for young saplings and brambles to establish. Partridge numbers improved. But when the forest canopy returned it choked off this food source and numbers declined -at least until the next round of logging. But it’s interesting to see the huge increase in turkeys. I had never seen one until about 10 years ago and now they’re about as common as squirrels.

About 600 acres of the land I hunt in Vermont is old grown-over hardscrabble farms, some dating back to the late 1790's and early 1800's. This 600 or so acres are all owned by one person - a very good boyhood friend of mine - and there are fieldstone foundations scattered here and there in the woods, on the edges of meadows and a few along the gravel roads in the area... but he's gotta pay his taxes so some of his land is for sale. But several years before he put it up for sale he sold off a lot of stumpage that was cut and chipped into bio-mass. Year after year I told him he was cutting all the spruce and fir roosting areas that the grouse need just as badly as they need food, water and oxygen to breathe. He simply said "It'll grow back..." I said "Not in our lifetime it won't." Yeah, it will grow back someday but I've already noticed a decline in grouse numbers. But there are many more factors that contribute to the decline in grouse numbers that we are witnessing everywhere in their range - it's not just the loss of roosting trees... and it's not just the predators... and it's not just WNV... and it's not just over-hunting... and it's not just mature dense canopy forests... it's all of these things combined. What can we possibly do to slow this (these) processes?





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