Thoughtful article

28 September 2024, 02:05

L. David Keith

Good read Bill. In east TN, Ruffed Grouse populations come and go. They are 100% different birds from those I encountered in the west. TN Grouse are very wild and quite the challenge to hunt ethically, but I never knew why they would be plentiful one year and slim pickings the next. Smokey mountain habitat wasn't of concern, plenty of wild lands remained.

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28 September 2024, 16:13

Bill/Oregon

David, we had generally stable populations of ruffed grouse in the Cascades and Coast Range of Oregon, and blue grouse higher up in the Cascades. They were not as difficult to hunt as the darned mountain quail, which could be as exasperating as chukars and very hard to find when dropped unless one had a dog. In general, we just looked for aspens to find the grouse.

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18 August 2025, 01:34

bobmn

While the Project Upland article was thought provoking the largest influence on ruffed grouse population fluctuations is the 10 year cycle which was not discussed. Gordon Guillion explains his many years of research on this phenomena in his book "Grouse of the North Shore". The cycle is also thoroughly discussed in "Ruffed Grouse" by Sally Atwater and Judith Schnell in the chapter titled The Grouse Cycle on page 210. The exact causes of this cycle may be debatable but it's existence is indisputable. Completely closing grouse seasons at the bottom of the cycle would have almost no effect on mitigating the bottom of the cycle. Having personally observed the population fluctuations for 40 years in heavily hunted States and the wilds of Ontario where there is virtually no hunting pressure, in my opinion hunter ethics are not much of a factor.

18 August 2025, 17:32

2ndAllin

quote:
Originally posted by bobmn:
While the Project Upland article was thought provoking the largest influence on ruffed grouse population fluctuations is the 10 year cycle which was not discussed. Gordon Guillion explains his many years of research on this phenomena in his book "Grouse of the North Shore". The cycle is also thoroughly discussed in "Ruffed Grouse" by Sally Atwater and Judith Schnell in the chapter titled The Grouse Cycle on page 210. The exact causes of this cycle may be debatable but it's existence is indisputable. Completely closing grouse seasons at the bottom of the cycle would have almost no effect on mitigating the bottom of the cycle. Having personally observed the population fluctuations for 40 years in heavily hunted States and the wilds of Ontario where there is virtually no hunting pressure, in my opinion hunter ethics are not much of a factor.

Spot on. I didn't read the PU piece, but the grouse cycle is not a theory, it's a long known fact. I was lucky enough to talk with Dr Gullion back in 1980 and at the time I was not only a passionate grouse hunter, but I was also a college student taking an astronomy course. In that course I learned that sun spots also go through a 10 1/2 - 11 year cycle and I mentioned this to Gullion. He was intrigued... I hope some grad student somewhere looked into it.