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RGS & AWS Shares USFS Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Plan Revision Fact Sheet and Position Statements

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Act Now: Submit Comments Here

Numerous forest wildlife are at-risk in the southern Appalachians due to lack of forest diversity and an unnaturally single-aged forest (i.e., lacking very young and very old forest interspersed across the landscape). Many, including ruffed grouse and American woodcock, are listed as species of greatest conservation need in North Carolina’s State Wildlife Action Plan. Some are even considered species of concern at the federal level (golden-winged warbler and Appalachian cottontail). The conservation needs of these species center mainly on habitat restoration and management.

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Nantahala and Pisgah Draft Forest Management Plan Released – RGS

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Nantahala and Pisgah National Forest

Action Alert: Nantahala and Pisgah Draft Forest Management Plan

RGS/AWS membership response in the process so far expressing the need for Young Forest Habitat has been outstanding and has already been impactful.

Now we need your voice again to influence the direction of management on our National Forests for the next 15-20 yrs.

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C’mon President Trump . . . #FixOurForest

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By Brent A. Rudolph, Ph.D., RGS & AWS Director of Conservation Policy

A number of provisions favorable to hunters and healthy forests await the President’s signature later today…

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On December 1, we released a National Update, asking our supporters to ask Congress for a budgetary fix to help the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) deal with out of control annual fire suppression costs. On January 12, we followed up right here on the RGS/AWS blog, identifying a number of provisions that could address the “fire borrowing” problem, including passing the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (WDFA), H.R. 2862 and S. 1842.

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE – Pause to Reflect

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It won’t be long before it’s time for us to think about New Year’s resolutions. Personally, I’ve never really taken this practice very seriously, but I know a lot of people who do. I can see some value in making promises to ourselves at the beginning of every year aimed at making some change for the better or improving some aspect of our lives. To me it’s another form of goal-setting . . . so why confine that activity to just one day of the year?

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GROUSE CAMP TOUR STARTS TODAY!

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NEW YORK & NEW ENGLAND

2017 GROUSE CAMP TOUR

October 21 – 29

#grousecamptour

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“There is an old New England saying to the effect that if you give a man a shotgun, a bird dog and a violin, he won’t amount to a damn.”

 ~William Harnden Foster ~

Join the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society for the third Grouse Camp Tour, where we celebrate habitat, membership, volunteers and the grouse/woodcock hunting experience. This year’s Tour will be throughout the New York and New England region: New York Grouse & Woodcock Benefit Hunt – Malone, NY, Vermont, Western Massachusetts and Southern Maine.

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WHY WE HUNT, Member Drew Phipps

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” . . . it is disturbing to me that there are so few grouse left in the woods here. I often wonder if I will be the last person to walk some of the coverts I hunt. I wonder how many before me have had the same thought? I take hope in the fact that there are still a few folks with dogs fighting the laurel and would like to see more of those people in the future.”

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I was asked by a friend a few weeks ago if I enjoyed failure. This was shortly after I recounted the highlights of last year’s West Virginia grouse season. I laughed it off at the time, but it does make me wonder, after a season of several hundred miles of walking and no birds taken . . .  was it worth it? My answer now and I hope always is: absolutely. The reason I hunt grouse has nothing to do with birds in hand. I hunt grouse because I’m an adrenaline junkie. I have yet to find a sensation that can match the electric moment just before a flush. The moment when dog, man and bird are all awaiting the same release.

[Read more…] about WHY WE HUNT, Member Drew Phipps

WHY WE HUNT, Member Jim Gray

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I might have arrived late to the grouse hunting scene, but I am determined to do everything I can to “pay it forward” and leave it in better shape than I found it.

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Why do I hunt? I really didn’t have any choice, and I have been eternally grateful. My dad was a quail hunter. He started taking me when I was four or five years old. When I got too tired, he carried me on his shoulders. We hunted the sand hill scrub and pine/palmetto woods of Florida. I got my first shotgun, a JC Higgins .410 single shot for Christmas when I was 10. About that time, quail hunting lands began getting scarce as the hills and pine woods of Central Florida were bulldozed for orange groves. So, we shifted to dove and duck hunting.

[Read more…] about WHY WE HUNT, Member Jim Gray

WHY WE HUNT, Member Payton Gunby

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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.

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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.

[Read more…] about WHY WE HUNT, Member Payton Gunby

WHY WE HUNT, Member Noah Smith

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The sun was making its way across a high top in the Nantahala Mountains, and the first rays of light hit the frozen windshield of my truck. The thoughts of previous hunts high in the Carolina hills fought for a piece of time in my memories. The memories make grouse hunting so unique . . . no two are ever the same. Every dog has its own slot, every bird too, and the covers, well they reside down the deepest passage in the rooms of the brain, only visible to me and those in which I choose to share them.

[Read more…] about WHY WE HUNT, Member Noah Smith