doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Report from the Northern Tier

Spring is in full swing up here on the Canadian border and I have some anecdotal evidence of a good Fall approaching.

Last year at this time we had endless rain, so much so that I saw very few birds of the year while grouse hunting in September/October, but this last week here has been thankfully cool but quite bright and sunny. Lots of rain swung down just below this part of Minnesota (out of Canada) all last week but...the northern portions of the State have remained mostly dry (Minneapolis got soaked, but we didn't). From my conversations with the local forrest manager, this next 10 days is critical for nesting Ruffed Grouse. If we can keep things on the drier side here, he's been seeing good numbers of birds that wintered over successfully. Even a little rain is evidently still fine, just no deluges please!

On the fishing front here at LOTW....wow, just wow! Lots of fish and of good size this spring. My cup runneth over! Fresh walleye is incredibly good fare on the dinner table here these days.

Lloyd,
Ahhhh, "lake of the woods"! Be safe and enjoy yourself, walleye are indeed great table fare!
Karl

No rain in the 10-day forecast here and the boys are drumming like the ghost of Keith Moon.

Turkeys are everywhere that I cannot shoot one, but absent everywhere else. I do not imagine they have arrived in your area yet, Lloyd.

Brent: I do occasionally see a jake running thru here (more west of us normally), but even here once in a while. I've been told I'm wrong (by educated folks) but...I think turkey are bad news for grouse. They coincided with the grouse crash where I grew up.

I'm not happy to see them here.

Another good fishing day today, but pork chops for dinner tonight, plus peas and red taters. Done cleaning fish and having a pre-dinner drink. Life is good here tonight.

Put some.new rubber on my old Ford truck. It sits 4 -inches higher now. Big improvement..

Going home Tuesday.

I have heard the same about turkeys in several other places, and even about their being the cause of continental-wide declines in quail, but only from arm-chair biologists. I have not looked into the literature to see what it says, but the public is always quick to condemn by correlation. Turkeys have the reputation of avian wolves I suppose. Anyway, there are lots of both around my place.

I am surprised the turkeys are as far north as you. But I guess climate change is doing its thing. I thought they stopped at Duluth, here in the east, but now I have seen a few just north of Duluth and have heard they are pretty common at least a little ways north of Duluth. I suppose wild pigs will be next. Meanwhile there are stunning numbers of deer around here even though wolves killed one in my backyard on Tuesday afternoon.

I look forward fishing, but probably not until this winter. Too much to do with moving in and the shooting season this summer.

About as armchair, as armchair gets. Dissertation time.

It seemed to me that grouse and turkeys were co-existing pretty well when the turkey population peaked in Northwest PA. For a while, we had decent numbers of both. But after the coyotes became established, I started seeing more and more piles of feathers and bones of both turkeys and grouse (and rabbits, etc..) But it seemed like the grouse must have been easier prey, because I saw more dead grouse than turkeys... even though the turkeys were more numerous. And their population decline was more pronounced.

We were much better off without the coyotes than with them. I will continue to shoot every coyote I see.

Okay. Tell us about your dissertation on turkey predation on grouse. Hurry up. Let's have the publication list too (Authors and DOIs will suffice).

Maybe he knows more about turkeys and grouse than he does about coyotes.

Yeah, climate change is doing it's thing, is it Brent? That's why turkeys can now live as far north as the 49th parallel?

That would explain why my grandfather shot them in Manitoba in the 1930s and 1940s. Of which we have photographic evidence.

What horseshit! Does climate change explain every mystery of the universe?