Field Reports

By Bill Cochran

Grouse season holds little promise

This isn’t an easy time to be a grouse hunter. The population of this popular game bird is on the skids.
There has been a 3.1-percent annual decline in the breeding population the past 10 years, according to analyses of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. That amounts to more than a 30-percent decline in a decade.
Last year, hunters flushed a measly 0.85 grouse per hour of hunting, the worst flush rate in 17 years, and the third worst since records have been kept starting with the 1973-74 season. In the Southern Appalachians, hunters report a return of one grouse for every 10 hours of hunting.
With the new season opening just five days ago, it is too early to determine if flushes will go up or down this time, but the prospects for a recovery aren’t there. The breeding population remains low, according to Gary Norman, a DGIF biologist.
Just what is behind the downward trend is debatable, but Norman has a pretty good idea. Early successional habitat, the kind grouse need for food and cover, has declined on most public lands, particularly on the national forests in Virginia. That’s because logging has declined. The result is that while the national forest once was the place to pursue grouse, flush rates now are better on private land--1.08 compared to 0.73.
Add to the problem, mast conditions have been poor during three of the last five years. Recent research reveals that grouse reproduction is closely tied to the wellbeing of the females, and the females are in the best conditions when the acorn crop hits, as it has this year.
It should come as no surprise that hunters using dogs flush and kill more grouse than non-dog hunters. But the DGIF annual grouse survey reveals that hunter satisfaction last season was slightly higher among sportsmen who did not use dogs.
Maybe there simply aren’t enough grouse nowadays to train a dog to become the kind of grouse hunting companion it has potential of being, thus the result is frustration.
So why bother with grouse hunting?
“It nevertheless can be very enjoyable, particularly on those days when the dogs work well, the birds hold tight and your aim is true,” said Norman.

TURKEYS ABUNDANT
Five hunting days into the fall turkey season indicates that hunter success is high. Flocks are plentiful. The weather, apart from the raining/windy opening day, has been cooperative.
“There are more turkeys that I’ve seen in my entire life,” said Ellen Horn, who operates Hunter’s Den gun/hunting shop near New Castle.
“Brood reports were up this year, throughout the state” said Gary Norman, turkey biologist for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Up also is the acorn crop. “The good mast crop tends to depress hunting success rates,” Norman said.
But the big birds are there for hunters who want to work for them.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reported that cost-cutting efforts will require it to reduce its wildlife refuge staff by 10 percent. That means 90 positions in the South region where it manages 128 national refuges and employs 748 workers.

Research by the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows that the average lifetime outlay for firearms, ammunition and other gear totals $20,219 per hunter/shooter. Add licenses, lodging, food, fuel, magazines, meat processing, dues, contributions and other associated items, the average lifetime grand total rises to $109,568 per person. Multiply that by 20 million hunters and 20 million shooters and you get $4.3 trillion.