Banded Grouse with a “Merkel”.
 

Today was a great day at Connecticut Hill in Central NY. 2 grouse in the bag out of 4 that we (3 of us) moved. The second was a big male that was banded by DEC. the one guy we were bunting with has grouse hunted forever and he said he had never taken a banded bird. Anyone else?

Taken with a Merkel actioned 12g finished by Paul Mossier. I decided this to be my new hunting gun for the foreseeable future.

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nice bird but them claws are huge for a grouse....charlie

I like that Merkel!

Congratulations! I’ve taken one banded grouse (Ohio) in over 30 years of chasing them. Where’s that band going? Mine is on a chain with other talismans that I wear when hunting.

I have not figured that out yet.

Brian, nice going, I have never heard of a NY banded grouse. I have shot a banded woodcock in Maine but that was over 20 years ago.

Beautiful gun Brian. My Dad had both a 16 & 12 that I wish he never let go(especially the 16). Both handled like a dream and were absolutely well finished and beautiful. Have not been able to find anything close to date.

Nice bird and band, shot with a very nice gun. I love my Merkel even if it is a OU. I am always concerned about damaging this 16 gauge so it doesn’t get out a lot.

Nice going Brian. I had no idea that grouse were ever banded. Must be a trick to catch one live and put the band on it:shock::shock:

Steve, you hold them upside down, put their head under their wing and rotate them in a counter-clockwise motion and they go to sleep. Then you can easily put a band on their leg. When you position them right-side-up they wake up and fly off never knowing what happened.





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banding
 

Maine has a program of trapping and banding grouse, i believe you can find it on the univ . of maine website. It uses the fence to a circular dead end method and there is a video also.

I heard back today from the DEC guy who was directly involved with the CT Hill Grouse project.

He gave me all of the information on the Bird. His name was Larry, he liked long walks on the beach and he had never been kissed.


But, seriously... He said that over the past 3 years they had banded and put transmitters on 15 birds in that WMU. And of those 15, 4 of the transmitters are still giving information. But he said that the transmitters do stop working after a while. The bird I shot was caught and banded in May 2020. It did have a transmitter on it too, but he said it must have fallen off because it stopped moving a month later in June. The bird was caught and banded from the same patch of cover that I shot it from. There was an old foundation next to it, so it was easy to describe and confirm. So it did not move much at all. And he said that they generally do not move much and especially in that WMU because the habitat is so sparse, they found that the birds did not move more than 10-15 acres, even seasonally.

When I cut that bird and other open taken from the same area before hand, they had been eating Hawthorne berries.

The DEC did projects in Hanging Bog as well. They tagged over 25 birds there as he said that the habitat there is much better. He said they got 4 or 5 reports of birds getting shot there. But this is the first call on a bird from CT Hill.

That's exactly how I go to sleep Dean!

Watch those Hawthorne thorns. This one was 90% embedded in my setter's paw a few weeks ago in upstate NY.

Awesome Brian, congrats on that one!

this is funny - somehow my wife and I got on the topic of bands this weekend while she went along for a ride while I was scouting an area. I said I have known of banded woodcock (never got one myself) but said I have never heard of a banded grouse. now I have :)

when I come across those foundations on Connecticut Hill (or other covers back home) and look at the ground around them I always think about the folks that tried to farm that land, if that is better than the land they had back home in Connecticut, that must have been solid rock :corn:

congratulations on a good hunt in a great area

These thorns are between 2” and 4” long.


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