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EDITOR NOTE: GIVE ME A WINDOW . . . That’s all I need . . .

February 26, 2018 by Matt Soberg

By Matt Soberg, RGS & AWS Editor & Director of Communications

Now is your window to help RGS & AWS create healthy forests and increase the voice for the future of grouse and woodcock – New member drive ends April 1!

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I was flying to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home of the Ruffed Grouse Society headquarters, watching a movie on my smartphone through the GoGo entertainment app offered by Delta, when I heard a character say, “Give me a window, that’s all I need.”

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WHY WE HUNT, Member Morgan Wolfe

July 12, 2017 by Ruffed Grouse Society

” . . . and part of the reason I hunt is because I love the bonds that this sport creates. The bond between a man or woman and a dog, the bond between fellow hunters, and the bond between the hunter and the hunted. Being able to share a hobby and passion with the ones I love means everything to me.” RGS Member Morgan Wolfe

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I remember the first grouse flush I ever saw. It was in a New Hampshire cover we call “Spilled Milk”. The dairy farmer who owned the land passed away a long time ago, but before he did he left an old milk can down by the river. It’s on its side as if it spilled the milk, and it’s near a tremendous amount of Japanese knotweed. We find woodcock are in there, but further up where the feeder stream joins the river are some old apple trees. We always work the cover counter-clockwise beginning with the knotweed and woodcock and closing out with the apples and grouse.

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE – ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH TECHNOLOGY

June 28, 2017 by Ruffed Grouse Society

ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH TECHNOLOGY

Maybe it is just that I have gotten a little older, but during the last grouse season it seemed birds flushed and accelerated away from me a lot faster than ever before. Of course, if you talk to my hunting partners, they would probably say it slightly different – they would tell you that I am missing them by a wider margin now than ever before. But, after very thorough questioning, I’ve been assured by our great team of RGS and AWS biologists that the birds we are hunting today are not any faster than their ancestors.

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WHY WE HUNT, Member Payton Gunby

May 31, 2017 by Ruffed Grouse Society

I grouse hunt because it’s in my DNA. Surprisingly, it doesn’t have to be passed down through genetics. Take a stroll through the grouse woods and you might find it quickly imprinted in yours.

The story of grouse hunting for me starts somewhere in the Deep South . . . in a part of Georgia, oddly enough, where there are no grouse. I’m still a third generation bird hunter – Every winter from December to the middle of January, we hunt the bird every grouse hunter knows: woodcock.

At a young age I was always with the bird dogs in the kennels until I was old enough to go and watch, then shoot. Prior to grouse hunting, I had hunted quail, chukar, pheasant and woodcock. Most of my hunting was with my dad, so grouse was the only bird he had hunted that I hadn’t. He made his first trip to grouse country a couple years before I did. The bird dogs are my world, and when I found another game bird to hunt, I wanted to burst with excitement.

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WHY WE HUNT, Member Stephen Faust

May 24, 2017 by Ruffed Grouse Society

Our sport will die out if we’re not bringing in new hunters. In the sales world, we say if you’re not growing you’re dying. In the hunting world, the same may be true.

I was about 8 years old when I rounded the corner of a bean field in Hyde County, North Carolina, and it was there I saw what would guide me through the rest of my life. That was 40 years ago, and I can still see the combination of five English setters and pointers locked up on the edge of that field. Walking in on that first point was a blur of wings, sights, sounds and pure exhilaration. I am sure I shot in self-defense, and I don’t remember the first quail I bagged, nor the first woodcock or grouse. But I have points and birds from 40 years of upland hunting scattered throughout my memory. I cannot remember what I went to the grocery store for on a normal day, but I can see a woodcock I bagged over an old setter when I was about 12, just like it was yesterday. From the UP of Michigan to Louisiana, the “Little Russet Feller” has haunted me ever since. When my son bagged his first using the same gun on which I learned, he jumped up and down with excitement. He was hooked, and I was delighted.

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

February 27, 2017 by Ruffed Grouse Society

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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2016 RGS GROUSE CAMP TOUR – North Carolina & Georgia

November 21, 2016 by Ruffed Grouse Society

North Carolina/Georgia

RGS chapters are striving to ensure national forests are properly managed in the Southern Appalachian Region to preserve our grouse hunting traditions for future generations.

The famed conservationist Aldo Leopold once said, “We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.” The word “strive”, being the operative, is exactly what RGS chapter volunteers are doing in North Carolina and Georgia to ensure our public lands, namely national forests, are being properly managed for wildlife.

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2016 GROUSE CAMP TOUR – Virginia/Tennessee

November 15, 2016 by Ruffed Grouse Society

Virginia/Tennessee

Grouse/woodcock hunters are speaking for the wildlife that cannot speak for themselves – influencing forest management on public lands.

Only partially down the Tennessee mountain trail, Parker Street, of the Appalachian Highlands RGS Chapter, pointed to some Rhododendron sandwiched between clear old growth and a more recently managed mountainside. “Right here . . . there ought to be a bird in here, boys,” he urged.

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2016 RGS GROUSE CAMP TOUR – Monterey, Virginia

November 12, 2016 by Ruffed Grouse Society

RGS 2016 GROUSE CAMP TOUR – Monterey, Virginia

The Birthplace of the Ruffed Grouse Society

Walking down the short main street of Monterey, Virginia, a small mountain town in the northwestern part of the state, it would be difficult to assume that North America’s leading forest wildlife conservation organization was started there way back in 1961, but it was . . . welcome to the birthplace of the Ruffed Grouse Society.

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Why We Hunt, with Member Douglas B. Egenolf

September 14, 2016 by Ruffed Grouse Society

Be careful . . . ruffed grouse will burn a passion into your hunting heart from which you can’t break free.

Give me just a touch of cooler air and for some reason, I have to start roaming. If the calendar is on the right month, that means the ruffed grouse season is in full swing. I am going to spend my free time experiencing a dense woods devour me, bones and all. I could spend some time waiting in a treestand for a whitetailed deer to come by but, I must admit, I still get fidgety. That sitting in one spot doesn’t give me any relief from that feeling that I have to roam. As I study my simple reaction to cooler weather, some will call it many things. I no longer think of it as being a passed-down tradition, being taught by someone, etc., etc. It is in my blood, and this feeling comes over me much the same as breathing; so simple and natural.

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