Dead grouse

[Bowsnbucks]

J-bird - I'm not familiar with Indiana terrain at all. Here, good grouse habitat is usually thick, brushy, younger growth woods. Think clear-cut woods that are growing back with loads of saplings, briars, berries of different sorts, and having a source of water near or running thru that kind of stuff is prime. Having some older evergreens in or next to that thick crap is icing on the cake. Wild grape tangles are a favorite food source, as are hawthorns ( for the red berries they produce ). Smaller crabapples feed grouse too. Grouse love aspen buds for food as well. A cut-over area here that comes back in aspen saplings is a sure draw for grouse.

Thick, brushy cover - water - evergreens - grapes/berries/ seeds - aspens ........ is grouse cover in 1 sentence.

 

[j-bird]

J-bird - I'm not familiar with Indiana terrain at all. Here, good grouse habitat is usually thick, brushy, younger growth woods. Think clear-cut woods that are growing back with loads of saplings, briars, berries of different sorts, and having a source of water near or running thru that kind of stuff is prime. Having some older evergreens in or next to that thick crap is icing on the cake. Wild grape tangles are a favorite food source, as are hawthorns ( for the red berries they produce ). Smaller crabapples feed grouse too. Grouse love aspen buds for food as well. A cut-over area here that comes back in aspen saplings is a sure draw for grouse.

Thick, brushy cover - water - evergreens - grapes/berries/ seeds - aspens ........ is grouse cover in 1 sentence.

I thought as much. Guess what I got......flat, open, and more flat and more open! Outside of the stream bottoms where it's too wet or too steep to farm it's pretty much all row crops across most of central Indiana. I feel it's safe to say that in Indiana is it's flat enough and dry enough it is farmed with row crops. The more rolling areas then move to livestock farming (mostly cattle). Only once you get real rolling or worse do you get forested land and even then it tends to be more mature with not much conifer content.

In my area you want to find a place to hunt.....you follow the larger streams, cause that is the only way you will find enough cover to even consider holding a decent amount of game. Once you get out of those stream bottoms - it's flat enough to see a mile or more over nothing but corn and soybean field. Cover is so lacking in my county that we struggle to kill an average of 2 deer per physical square mile. Hard enough to grow deer.......

 

[Reagan]

My area is surrounded by hundreds if not a thousand acres of clear cut. Ages ranges from 3 to 15 years.

I haven't seen or heard a grouse in years. There are plenty of rabbits.

Grouse were around when I was a kid. We still have a season but I wouldn't shoot one now if I had the chance.


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[H20fwler]

I think ruffed grouse is one of the best birds on the table there is, I like it better than pheasant.
Back when we used to have enough to hunt we might flush a dozen or more in a long day with most being wild distant flushes but we considered it a good day if we shot one or two after walking miles and miles up and down southern Ohio hills. Two times in my life in Ohio I was lucky enough to shoot two in the same day, hunting them a few times a year for over twenty years when I was younger I may have killed a couple dozen of them total.

 

[JFK52]

I had a grouse fly THROUGH my front picture window mid morning years ago. I thought someone was breaking into the house. Scared the hell out of me and made a huge mess with glass shards everywhere. It was not even dead afterwards. I had to break the birds neck. Just as a note, my insurance covered it. They told me to go ahead and call for a new window and a cleaning service to do my carpet. Later they tried to back out of paying for these items. They wanted to call it an " act of God". Told me on the sly that I should have said a rock thrown from my lawn mower or other such incident caused the damage. It was $300 for a new picture window and $125 for the carpet cleaning.
I have since put up decals that supposedly keep the birds from striking the window. I still have 1-3 birds a week that hit my front window. I do feed the birds so I draw them to my area. Really a shame when they break a wing or can not fly after the window strike. I let Mother Nature take its course when that happens.

 

[pointer]

J-bird - I'm not familiar with Indiana terrain at all. Here, good grouse habitat is usually thick, brushy, younger growth woods. Think clear-cut woods that are growing back with loads of saplings, briars, berries of different sorts, and having a source of water near or running thru that kind of stuff is prime. Having some older evergreens in or next to that thick crap is icing on the cake. Wild grape tangles are a favorite food source, as are hawthorns ( for the red berries they produce ). Smaller crabapples feed grouse too. Grouse love aspen buds for food as well. A cut-over area here that comes back in aspen saplings is a sure draw for grouse.

Thick, brushy cover - water - evergreens - grapes/berries/ seeds - aspens ........ is grouse cover in 1 sentence.

Yep! Too few and too small areas are clear cut anymore in the parts of Indiana that had/have grouse. The Hoosier National Forest does have some ongoing projects geared toward generating early successional habitat. Cutting lots of trees and setting fires afterwards. I hope to check a unit out near my place this spring.