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RGS

Healthy Forests, Abundant Wildlife, Conservation Ethic

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Woodcock Ecology

The Importance of Alders for Grouse and Woodcock

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Exploring Our Love (and Hatred) of Alder Thickets

Maybe in your grouse hunting career, you’ve explored the edges of a tangled alder swamp while looking for birds. You’ve quite possibly shot at a grouse that flew into one, requiring you to trudge in after it. Perhaps you have even willingly adventured into one to see what secrets it keeps. No matter which of these is true, if you’ve ever had to navigate through an alder swamp or thicket, you know the misery that they can be. 

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Understanding Woodcock Migration – RGS

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Photo Credit | Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative

Researchers studying and working to understand the migration habits and tendencies of one remarkable bird.

One late afternoon last October, Alex Fish and I headed to a woodlot owned by the University of Maine, just a short drive from campus. The property is a few hundred acres, and was clearcut before being donated to the University. Now the forest holds a nice mix of aspen and other hardwoods with some scattered conifers and can be quite productive as a ruffed grouse cover. But with alder lowlands and a long stretch of river bottom that provide plenty of moist soils, this property is also a great cover for woodcock. This evening we were after woodcock.

Although it’s a cover I regularly hunt, our goal tonight was to catch birds for research. The property is relatively long and narrow with a single gated access road, which widens in a few places where logs were staged during the last harvest. We knew from experience that woodcock would often fly into these old log landings to roost at night. We set a series of mist nets in one of the old landings, and settled in to wait for dusk when woodcock would make their evening flights.

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The Road to Moosehorn | A Woodcock Story

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AWS logo

Back in the late 1970s, a young graduate student from the local state college called. It was spring and he was studying woodcock north of campus amongst the alder and popple growing wild on the edge of town. “I was told you’re affiliated with the Ruffed Grouse Society (RGS).” His name was Dan and he asked, “I’m in need of $75 for supplies for my woodcock research project and wondered if your chapter could help me out?”

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: What are “Healthy Forests”?

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            “I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land.”

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Risk and Reward for the American Woodcock

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Risk and Reward for the American Woodcock: the Energy Balance of an Early Migrant in a Late-Winter Storm

By Andy Weik, RGS & AWS Regional Wildlife Biologist

Woodcock huddle together in Central Park, New York City following March 2017 snowstorm. Food stressed woodcock are at increased risk of starvation and predation. Photo by Thomas Schuchaskie, from Facebook March 15, 2017.
Woodcock huddle together in Central Park, New York City following March 2017 snowstorm. Food stressed woodcock are at increased risk of starvation and predation. Photo by Thomas Schuchaskie, from Facebook March 15, 2017.

In the snowy North, we look forward to the arrival of woodcock and red-winged blackbirds as the first signs of spring. Woodcock are among the first – if not THE first – ground-nesting birds to begin nesting. Woodcock really push the envelope as they migrate north from southern wintering grounds, moving into open ground along spring seeps, streams and south-facing slopes in search of earthworms and grubs as snow cover recedes. In years when winter segues smoothly into spring, the early-arriving woodcock is rewarded with sufficient food and mild weather to hatch its four-egg clutch within a month of arriving on the breeding range, before most of its predators have extra mouths of their own to feed.

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THEY SAID IT! . . . Best Quotes from the Spring RGS Magazine

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THEY SAID IT! . . . Best Quotes from the Spring RGS Magazine

By Matt Soberg

Are you an upland hunter?  Bird dog owner? Shotgun lover?

Have you become afflicted by the grouse and woodcock hunting addiction? Do you care about the future of our sporting traditions?

If you answer “yes” to any of the above, the Ruffed Grouse Society magazine is a must see – a one stop shop for everything grouse and woodcock hunting and forest habitat conservation – hunting tips, bird dog info, gun reviews, book reviews, cooking recipes, classic hunting stories, habitat management information . . . the list goes on and on.

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Driftless Young Forest Symposium

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Today, the Ruffed Grouse Society brought together agency professionals from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois to focus on landscape-scale goals to enhance future young forest habitat in the Driftless Region.

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Today (August 16, 2016) the Ruffed Grouse Society launched the Driftless Young Forest Symposium in La Crosse, Wisconsin to bring together agency professionals from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois to focus on landscape-scale goals to enhance young forest habitat in the Driftless Region. Symposium goals include providing a clear understanding of the area forest use trends and wildlife impacts, to recognize challenges of forest management in this region and to identify and embrace opportunities for potential landscape-scale benefits to young forest habitat in the future.

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The Effect of Drought on Woodcock

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By Andrew P. Weik – RGS & AWS Regional Wildlife Biologist – New York, New England

After a spring seemingly favorable to ground nesting birds such as grouse and woodcock, summer thus far, into late July, has been drier than usual in my region. In fact, the lack of rainfall across many areas of the Northeast has resulted in drought conditions (see map below). The colors on the map show yellow as “abnormally dry”, beige as “moderate drought” and orange as “severe drought”.

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RGS Responds to Anti-Forest Management Message

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Earlier this spring, the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society determined at a strategic planning meeting that public resistance to scientifically sound habitat management practices was one of the top three significant and long-term impediments to the future of healthy forest habitat benefiting not only ruffed grouse and American woodcock but a wide array of forest wildlife.

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Book Review – A Grouse Hunter’s Almanac

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A GROUSE HUNTER’S ALMANAC

The Other Kind of Hunting

By Mark Parman

Published 2010 – University of Wisconsin Press

Mark Parman has been a longtime contributor of classic grouse and woodcock hunting stories to the Ruffed Grouse Society magazine. A favorite Parman articles is “What He Carried”, which was published in the fall 2013 issue and features an introspective story about the possessions and superstitions that make grouse and woodcock hunters a unique group. The story starts with, “Each possession (of a grouse hunter) brings with it reminders of special days gone by.” If you are a grouse hunter, you understand this inexplicable phenomenon. The story talks about the symbols of grouse hunting that captivate us all throughout the year. He writes, “In late winter, he notes a grouse feather floating across the wood floor of his living room or kitchen, escapees from his gamebag, or he finds one stuck to the wet nose of his dog. He doesn’t mind the feathers. He picks one up, twirls the rachis in his fingers and is carried back to October.” Has this happened to any of you during bitter cold January? I suspect it has.

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