by Emily Sliski | RGS & AWS Mid Atlantic Regional Engagement Coordinator
The weather this particular October day was a grouse hunter’s dream, but if I had to walk through 10 more feet of woody, dense mountain laurel, I was going to throw my gear into the woods and leave. Part of that was self-inflicted; the price of running flushing dogs in grouse woods. The other is discovering new covers and learning what good grouse cover even looks like. Both I gladly do season after season.
I grew up hunting – a real child of the woods. My dad taught me at a young age how to read the big woods and agriculture fields for whitetail pinch points. Give me an old brushy fence line to walk and I’ll sneak along it in hopes of jumping a rabbit or discovering a tall branchy oak full of gray squirrels. Let me slowly walk a mixed hardwood creek bottom and I’ll tell you what critters have passed through by the signs they’ve left behind.
When I fell into grouse hunting as an adult, I was perplexed that I only found my shins busted from laurel, my arms scratched from raspberry and greenbrier, the same two unfired shotgun shells in my bag and my sanity waning. No birds seen; only a few flushes heard and one very confused bird dog.
While some of the aforementioned cover and maladies are indicative of grouse spots, I knew I had to redouble my efforts as a student of the woods if I ever hoped to encounter a grouse – preferably one I could actually lay eyes on rather than hear only faint flushes of during my first season. I needed to learn what to key into while I navigated cover. What food is available? Protection? Thermal options? Escape routes?
I hail from the Ridge and Valley region of the Appalachians. The ridges here are long with similarly long valleys in between – not the hollows and hills falling on top of each other that come to mind in other parts of the Appalachian range. By the end of the 19th century, my home state was all but clearcut and not in the ways we appreciate today. Penn’s Woods became one of the largest producers in the world, resulting in reckless cutting, issues with erosion and flooding and rampant forest fires. Subsequently, it helped usher in the birth of American forestry. Since that time, cutting has waned. Many of our state forests boast a significantly uniform age class between 100 and 120 years old (an issue I’m glad that RGS & AWS is actively navigating).
The generation preceding me regales the glory days of grouse hunting in these mountains – the talk of flush numbers that make my jaw drop. My dad tells stories of walking our family farm up on the hill for small game and coming home with a mixed bag of rabbits, grouse, squirrels and pheasants. Wild pheasants are gone; they were extirpated along with bobwhite quail during the late 20th century. I don’t commonly see rabbits “on the hill,” but I fervently hope to see ruffed grouse return to the farm in my lifetime.
All this to say that it’s unlikely to simply bump into a grouse in my local woods. I have to be intentional (perhaps more so than my predecessors), know what to look for and be willing to put in some miles.
When e-scouting, I’m generally looking for 10-year-old cuts. I key into elevation, hard edges and the surrounding landscape. In other words, where’s the cut positioned? What’s nearby on the landscape in terms of cover, features and other cuts? Once I identify some points of interest, I turn to boots-on-the-ground scouting, paying close attention to what’s around me.
What’s the big picture? Initially, I’m looking for that classic high stem density. Envision the kind of cover where you know you’ll have to methodically weave through whips and some larger trees (perhaps a few inches in diameter), push through raspberry or circumnavigate some squat, scattered pines. This mixture is important. Grouse run before they fly. Without cover under which to hide, they run ahead off a dog’s nose, regardless of whether it’s the pointing or flushing variety, and will inevitably flush wild – a lesson I’ve learned all too well in my cover searches. As an example, beech can look thick, but without pockets of diverse flora to break up the monoculture, it is insufficient to hold birds. The same is true of rhododendron and mountain laurel. They’re nice in pockets, but large swaths are often devoid of birds and, as mentioned before, a real test of sanity.
The density of the hardwoods is not the end all. E-scouting is a great place to start, but locating food sources helps me key into where grouse are at the moment. I’m in awe of their ability to survive in these mountains, adapting their diets to the seasons and resources available. While they’ll eat almost anything, the presence of berry producing plants like grape, greenbrier, blueberry, hawthorn or crabapple and hard mast species like scrub oak, beech or birch always pique my cover interest.
I’ve also had to adapt to different covers of the Keystone State. The reality is that the forests here are diverse from north to south and between elevations. It’s not uncommon in more northern parts of the state to find larger pockets of birch and aspen with relatively little laurel and rhododendron. Aspen catkins are legendary as grouse food. We encounter them in more central parts of the state, but not to the same extent as the northern tier.
My insights, of course, are not universally true. Just as grouse continually adapt to their environment and seasonal changes, I’ve learned to adapt my woods knowledge in my pursuit of them. I remain a student of the woods. I learn along the way – tips from hunting buddies and keen observations while scouting. Even after several dedicated seasons now in the books, there remains much to learn.
I would challenge us all to remain students of the woods and of our home covers.
Emily Sliski is the RGS & AWS Mid Atlantic regional engagement coordinator. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Johnathan, and two Springer Spaniels, Fern and Wild.
