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On the Trail for Ruffed Grouse
Source: www.startribune.com
Article by: Doug Smith, Star Tribune
(Released October 4, 2011)
In a blur, the ruffed grouse flushed from the side of the wooded trail and banked around a corner. I shouldered my 12 gauge and fired a 40-yard desperation shot through the brush.
After almost three days of scouring the woods of northern Minnesota, it was the first grouse I had shot at -- and I had no illusions that I had connected.
Then my 2-year-old yellow Lab raced back with the downed bird in her mouth. Call it a great shot -- or a lucky one. I was just happy to have finally flushed a ruffie in shooting range.
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Grouse hunters wonder about season's slow start
Source: www.startribune.com
Article by: Doug Smith, Star Tribune
(Released September 25, 2011)
It's way too early to call this year's ruffed grouse season a bust -- the best hunting always occurs after the leaves have fallen.
But many reports from opening weekend were less than encouraging.
"You could call it spotty,'' said Ted Dick, grouse specialist with the Department of Natural Resources. "We have had some good reports, but we've also had our share of pretty bad reports.''
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Minnesota grouse opener: Grouse territory isn't what it used to be
Source: www.startribune.com
Article by: Bill Marchel, Star Tribune
(Released September 18, 2011)
CENTRAL MINNESOTA - Since the early 1970s, I've hunted grouse in this part of the state. Three dogs have come and gone, and a fourth dog, now riding with me in his kennel in the back of the truck, is 11 years old. Axel, a Deutsch Drahthaar, is gray in the face. His right rear hip causes him pain. Let's face it; his hunting days are numbered.
I thought about this at dawn on Saturday morning, opening day of the 2011 Minnesota ruffed grouse season. I was driving along familiar roads toward celebrated grouse haunts. A lot more than just dogs has changed during the almost 40 years I've tromped these woods hoping to flush a grouse or two.
The habitat has changed. So have the inhabitants.
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Young Forest Management in the News
Editor's Note: The recent news of the Pagami Creek fire in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness has spawned some good commentary about the role and value of young forest management.
Nature as human theater
Source: www.startribune.com
Article by: Greg Breining, Star Tribune
(Released September 25, 2011)
When lightning sparked the forest fire near Pagami Creek on Aug. 18, U.S. Forest Service officials took a wait-and-see attitude. Because the fire was burning inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and didn't threaten private property, allowing the blaze to grow was consistent with the "let-burn" policy in the designated wilderness.
Oops. Bad call. Unexpected warm temperatures and high winds fanned the flames. The fire front raced 16 miles in a single day. By mid-September, it had burned nearly 150 square miles and was advancing toward settled areas outside the wilderness.
More than 500 firefighters, including elite hotshot crews, struggled to subdue it. Smoke choked residents in Milwaukee and Chicago. And -- imagine this -- rural citizens with age-old resentment of the federal government grew furious that the Forest Service didn't snuff the fire when it was small.
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Why forest fires are good -- and amazing
Source: www.minnpost.com
Article by: Jeff Severns Guntzel
(Released September 23, 2011)
By now most of us get it, or have at least heard it: fires are good for the forest. But what does that mean? University of Minnesota forest ecologist Lee Frelich can help. He explains what the Boundary Waters Canoe Area would look like if fire were somehow completely controlled for the last century. The short answer: a sea of half-dead Christmas trees.
"You would get essentially a sea of Balsam Fir, then the budworm would come, and it goes out and kind of kills half the trees," Frelich explains. "So you'd have this kind of crappy, half-dead forest which is full of brush and branches and which is not very attractive for people or wildlife."
There are are actually patches of the BWCA forest that are like this, and best anybody can tell, it would just stay like that indefinitely, or until lightning strikes, as it did in the Pagami Creek Fire.
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