Banded Grouse with a “Merkel”.

[Woodcock survey]

Originally Posted by Stephen Hodges

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

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.

[B. Dudley]

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.

[BRDHNTR]

That's exactly how I go to sleep Dean!

[Wilmurt]

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

[Andy]

Awesome Brian, congrats on that one!

[OH Osthaus]

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

congratulations on a good hunt in a great area

[Dean Romig]

Originally Posted by Tom Jay

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

These thorns are between 2” and 4” long.


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