This is going to do little or nothing for the problem. I do all of my bird hunting in northern Wisconsin, and there not much bird hunting going on between Nov 30 and Jan 6 to start with. I don't have the numbers in front of me but I would imagine the peak of the grouse harvest would be somewhere around early to mid October.
Two years ago was the best grouse season of my entire life, the birds were everywhere in the area we hunt. Talked to other people who hunt bordering counties, and they had average to poor seasons. One of my theories (which is probably worthless) is that habitat is becoming so broken up and separated by development and/or logging practices, the traditional annual peaks and valleys in the grouse population are becoming very localized which makes it more difficult to accurately study and predict.
We'll see where the West Nile study goes as well.
