Look for ruffed grouse in the clear when things are dry and calm, they may also be found along gravel forest roads and logging trails. Simonson Photo.
By Nick Simonson
This year’s ruffed grouse spring drumming counts unexpectedly rose in Minnesota, providing the fifth highest spring total since 1996, and a spike in what should have been the declining stretch in the birds’ decadal population cycles in that state. Additionally, North Dakota’s spring ruffed grouse drumming results showed a 52 percent increase in the Turtle Mountain region from 2021 tallies, while drums herd in the Pembina Hills area were off slightly compared to 2021. Ruffies can also be found in limited numbers in the timbered areas of South Dakota’s Black Hills. With these tailwinds giving hunters a boost into the forest this fallthe following tips should help make things even better.
Practice
The ruffed grouse presents a shot unlike any other bird. Generally, old logging roads and forest trails where they are encountered are rarely wider than 10 yards across with birds usually zipping from one side and into the other, or just off the path in the trees, providing a fraction of a second for a good shot, if any.
To overcome the bird’s home-field advantage, it is important to get some practice in before hitting the trail. Learn to take reaction shots at your local trap range, limit your window of shooting by using shooting frames which restrict your movement. Better yet, visit a sporting clays facility which has a “grouse alley” type of shot, where a clay target is flung quickly across an opening in a wooded area. Any type of shooting will help your aim, but these specific shots will hone your skills for the quick, instinctive shots required for ruffies.
Open Up
Along with an accurate reaction shot, the delivery of a wide cloud of pellets will increase the odds of connecting with your quarry. Utilize improved cylinder and skeet chokes if available on your shotgun. Recognize that birds can flush very close – particularly in the early season – requiring a quick dispersal of shot to cover an effective area. The faster the shot spreads out over the first ten to twenty yards, the better the chances of connecting through the brushy cover at close range. All it takes is one or two well-placed size 7½ pellets to connect and the more one can get out there into the bird’s path, the better.
Go Off Road
Too many times I’ve watched hunters roll down a gravel road in their pickups just before sundown, tossing beer cans out the windows with their shotgun at the ready, despite the illegality and unsavoriness of the whole situation. A couple times, I’ve walked just a few minutes behind an individual on an ATV with his firearm in the plastic scabbard at his side, only to flush the birds he breezed by in his hunting efforts. A noble bird such as the ruffed grouse deserves to be met on its terrain in honorable fashion, not unceremoniously jump-shot from a truck or four-wheeler. But beyond the fairness aspect of it, foot travel for thunderbirds helps access those places they love the most.
The key to great grouse hunting is to put in some extra leg work and visit those trails where trucks and ORVs can’t go. The winding one-person trail can lead to the promised land when it comes to ruffed grouse, and the only way to get there is on foot. Those boggy areas that would prevent motorized travel generally can be skirted on foot in the late season, providing you access to a whole new stretch of edge habitat. Be ready to walk a few extra miles, and do it slowly, pausing often in order to bag a few extra birds each season. Under a canopy of red, orange and gold, there are few other afternoon walks as beautiful or as exciting when the autumn leaves are scattered by a flushing grouse.
Get an Edge
Key in on places where old growth meets new, where clearings occur and where water winds its way through the woods. Look for distinct areas of forest management, maybe where pine meets aspen, or where mature stands bump up against young trees just establishing themselves. These spaces, along with water sources and breaks in the terrain can provide a pattern to an area that at first glance might just seem like continuous forest. Use a GPS to mark flushes on each trail and revisit them on your next walk; that way you’ll be a step ahead of the game later in the season.
Dog It
Watching a dog twisting and turning around and through bushes, trunks and leaf litter before sending a bird booming up through the trees is one of the great sights to behold each fall. Get your hunting buddy in on the action and introduce his nose to a new quarry. They are invaluable in flushing this bird which is fond of staying put until long after the dogless hunter has walked on by, and in finding a wounded one that might otherwise be lost after the shot in the browns and grays of the forest floor.
While the opportunity presents itself, take advantage of thousands of acres of public forest land filled with good numbers of birds this season. Be ready with these tips and learn a few new tricks of your own chasing the thunderous flush of the ruffed grouse…in our outdoors.
The ruffed grouse season starts on Sat. Sept. 10 in North Dakota, and Sat. Sept. 17 in Minnesota and South Dakota.
