doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com No Grousmas in PA this year?

We all can have our pet theories about why game bird numbers are down. The one I put the most stock in is decline due to lack of habitat. Too many areas are being managed both farm and woods as a mono crop system. Entire farms one or two crops, entire blocks of woodland being converted from a mixed species of trees to all one or at most two types. Worse they cut large blocks all at once instead of multiple smaller blocks in a yearly rotation. It's feast or famine from the birds viewpoint. No cutover for a decade then a hundred acres for a year or two to enjoy instead of smaller cutover areas every year in the same basic area.

I have little use for the Game Managment department in most states. They focus on deer and turkey instead of other small game. And as far as I am concerned deer are like rats and will breed and thrive without mans help. And turkeys are so far down on my list I'd get rid of them off my land in a heartbeat if I could. Two plagues that mostly expand in numbers in spite of state management efforts which they gleefully point to as their major successes.

What I can't understand is North of Interstate 80 everything is overgrown and overgrowing. There is plenty of thick woods and thick cover up here for grouse. There is no development up here, everyone is leaving.

Seems like those New York boys are doing good.

If you shoot what you eat and want to bother with plucking and gutting young wild turkey is heather to eat what you can buy in typical store unless you buy exclusive "free-range raised stuff" where chicken is about $15. I would say nice jake is worth $4 shell of Hevi-Shot Naturally if one wants to spare teeth or dentures and avoid toxic lead Bismuth or Tungsten-Matrix is the way to go. If you don't mind what you eat Amazon is staging all out assault on grocery stores by lowering prices on certain items at While Foods Market. It helps me every time someone buys from Amazon or one of it's companies so please don't hesitate to shop there. The prices are darn good too so is it's a win-win situation. A nice setup like fine Canadian apple pie.

Habitat is important but if you want game you must become game keeper like wonderful bro Englishman at fine estate in East Anglia. That means shooting or catching: corvidae, coyotes, foxes, turkey, rakoons and .....cats. That last one is controversial and I would not do it, but if you do be sure NO ONE is looking as people get very upset over stuff like that. If you seen pics on Misfires you know how adore small cuddle animals, but if you want little game birds you must shoot the cats. Remember in America when can gets diabetes they buy insulin and needles in Europe when cat gets it they get another cat or better yet dog that can bite as a replacement!

Grouse numbers in Maine are on the rise, we had two years of wet cold springs and increased avian predators, things are starting to level out, this year bird numbers are up, it's cyclic. Not sure where Ed is getting his info, but its not doom and gloom up here.

Guys: There seems to be ever-increasing numbers of turkey up around my in-laws place, might they be the cause for the decline? I know folks who hunt quail are suspicious of them.

Dude, where do you come up with this stuff? I'm not in the habit of shooting someone's cat.

Might be. Wild turkeys are everywhere.

The state of Pennsylvania has failed miserably in their game bird management for quite a few years now. Back in the last 1960 to mid 1970's there were pheasants in most of the central eastern counties. I remember hunting all day on properties that adjoined each other just to the north of Allentown. Towns of Egypt, Ironton, Coplay, there were wild pheasants all over. You could hunt from daybreak to sunset and put up birds. Granted most were hens, but I remember one day putting up 13 cocks. Those were the days. The state released pheasants at 6 weeks of age on farms that they knew would not post their grounds, by the time the season started these birds were like wild birds. The state does not do that anymore. They stock full grown birds and from what I had read cut the stocking list in half from a few years ago.
There were also wild quail south of Harrisburg, around Carlisle mixed with pheasants. No more, you see a pheasant or quail now report it as seeing an endangered species.
The grouse, if it wasn't for the Ruffed Grouse Society, a lot of the habitat would be lost and a lot fewer birds.
A few years ago PA traded some wild turkeys for pheasants from South Dakota. The birds were released in two areas, one south eastern and the other north central (I believe). They had notices in general stores asking if you saw any pheasants. A few replies. There was no hunting allowed in these areas and maybe there still isn't. The south central area did well in propagation of young, whereas the north central part did not. The reason, that area never had pheasants before, why would it support them now. (this observation was a few years ago and I doubt if anything has changed.

This applies to the trout fishing as well, now most are federal fish and average about 10".
This once was a great state to bird hunt and trout fish in, but that was then.

I agree with most of what David Williamson has said. Pheasant hunting in Pa. was very good until the Game Commission decided to allow the shooting of hens north of I-80 in the early 1980's. The decline after that was very predictable, and very quick. Hunters couldn't stop themselves from killing hens even as they complained about declining bird numbers... much as they did when Pa. Game Commission decided to greatly increase doe tag allotments. The Game Commission never admitted to their stupidity, and instead blamed herbicides and habitat loss. According to them, killing all the mama birds had nothing to do with it, even though stocked birds were never more than a fraction of the total populations.

As much as I hate to agree with Jagermeister, his point about predators is 100% correct. When I was a small boy, Pa. actually had a bounty on hawks and owls. When shooting of hawks and owls stopped, we began seeing a lot more piles of feathers and fur where they had killed grouse, pheasants, and other small game. When I brush-hog my field, I have flocks of hawks circling to feed on the newly exposed small critters. Then fur prices declined, and those predator populations increased. Habitat loss in Pa. is not nearly the problem it is in other states. Logging of pines and hardwoods is still a major industry with everything from clear-cutting to selective cuts on private lands. Active farms are cleaner than the 1970's due to herbicide use, but there are still plenty of fence rows, abandoned farms, abandoned strip mines, overgrown clear-cuts, and fallow fields. The last big explosion in grouse numbers I witnessed was during the mass clear-cutting of oaks during the Gypsy Moth infestation of the early 1990's. But that unfortunately coincided with the INTRODUCTION of the Eastern Coyote, a 24/7/365 killing and eating machine. Yes, I am one of those who believes the Game Commission brought in coyotes to help thin the deer herd to placate the insurance companies. Grouse populations have been in decline ever since coyotes became widespread. I've been out several times in North Central counties, and have killed exactly one grouse, missed one, and flushed one other that I couldn't see for the leaves. The pheasant situation is far worse unless you want to hunt stocked birds on SGL's and pay the Game Commission for the new Pheasant Tag after they thoroughly screwed it up. I'm hoping to hit a couple other spots Friday or Saturday, but expect it will be mostly scouting for deer.

I too will miss the late season of grouse hunting in the snow after Christmas, but most of my time then has always been spent flintlock deer hunting.