doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Ruff Grouse being considered an in danger species

I ran across an article mentioning placing the ruff grouse on the in danger species list. I believe it was the Indiana division of wildlife or maybe Illinois? Has anyone seen or heard any more on this subject? It�s been a couple of months ago, when I saw the tickler article.
I know it�s been years since I heard a grouse drum in the state of Ohio.

Perhaps you mean endangered? You were probably looking at a proposal for a state endangered list which is not to be confused with federally declared endangered species. Totally different thing and common for species on the fringes of their ranges - especially southern fringes.

It may have been Indiana. We used to have Ruffed Grouse, but there are none to speak of now. The hunting season for them was closed a couple or more years back.

Sure hope that does not happen . I also worry about quail in the southeast being endangered

Most of our southeast quail come from incubators and flight pens nowadays anyhow...Geo

I should have said "wild quail" in the Southeast. Sadly, George is right that quail in the Southeast nowadays means released quail

Don't know about grouse but here in PA the pheasant should be on the endangered species, the state cares nothing about fixing it. The used to release 6 week out pheasants on non posted farms and they stopped doing this. Now all if not most are pen raised. In 1971 PA harvested 1.3 million and beat out South Dakota.

Has anyone mentioned this to the Accipitridae family ?

O.M

Back in about 1978 or 1979, when I was Iowa editor of the old Fins & Feathers magazine, I ran a quiz in one of my monthly columns. One of the questions: Name the only two states to record a harvest of over one million pheasants last season. The correct answer was Iowa and PA. South Dakota didn't top a million in any of the seasons from 1975-79. Iowa was over a million every year from 1963 (when the DNR started reporting numbers) to 1981. Then hit a few down years in the mid-80's until CRP took hold. By that time, PA was into a pretty steep decline. South Dakota didn't get much of a CRP bounce in numbers until the 90's. Iowa's decline didn't really start until the current century. But pheasants aren't anywhere close to being endangered in Iowa now, even though numbers aren't anywhere close to what we experienced from 1987-2000.

Grouse numbers in Iowa were excellent when I first started hunting them back in 1973 (within a fairly small geographic area). They could likely pass for endangered in Iowa now, sad to say.

"Beat out S.D.??"" is there a contest between the various States that still have pheasants and an open season on them. Many many years ago, 1970's, when MI had a fairly substantial ruffed grouse season, a local chapter of the RGS held a annual contest for most grouse killed in the generous 75 day Fall seasons. A former hunting pal one the jackpot one year with 25-- how did they verify the count- you turned in a pair of dead grouse legs, tied together-- 50 legs, 25 dead birds- He also told me that he and his dog lost about 11 sail-offs and possible cripples the year he and his GSP bagged that total. That, amigoes, is one solid reason we don't have many Sir Ruffs now-a-days around Central MI.

Talk about pheasants (my favorite upland game bird)-- go see the current Harrison Ford movie--based on Jack London's story- "Call Of The Wild" apparently the Yukon had pheasants (all cocks) back around 1900--huumm!! RWTF