Endangered or MIA, the ruffed grouse is on shaky ground

John Grantham and Troy Conley live is extreme opposite ends of the state: Grantham in Northeast Ohio’s Snow Belt and Conley in Southwest Ohio’s “Banana Belt.”

They do not know each other but they do share a common thread; that being, they both love to hunt ruffed grouse. Or more accurately, they did like to hunt Ohio ruffed grouse – a game bird species that has fallen on very hard times in Ohio and elsewhere.

“I think the last time I shot a grouse in Ohio was 15 years ago,” Grantham said reflectively. “We were rabbit hunting and kept jumping this grouse until I finally was able to shoot it. I felt pretty badly, too, like I had just killed the last passenger pigeon.”

Much the same for Conley who at one time did not need to travel a long distance from his Brown County home to find grouse.

“I started grouse hunting in the late 70’s and early 80’s and back then I didn’t have to drive far to get into birds,” Conley said. “But eventually land access became an issue and the solution became to just drive east to public and Meade Paper land. The long drive was worth it to find birds.”

In recent years the grouse number on these holdings “have plummeted, too,” Conley said.

“Over the past two seasons I haven’t been able to find a bird on multiple trips,” Conley said.

Ohio is not alone is seeing its ruffed grouse numbers tumble into the abyss. Eighteen states list ruffed grouse as a species of concern across a wide geographic area that encompasses New England, the upper Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and the Appalachians, says Ben Jones, President and CEO of the Ruffed Grouse Society.

Indeed, the situation is so dire that in neighboring Indiana it is estimated that state has lost 99 percent of its grouse population over the past 40 years, forcing Indiana to close grouse hunting there four years ago.

And by the time you read this story, Indiana may have all ready moved the ruffed grouse from the state’s Species Of Special Concern List to its Endangered Species List.

Ohio’s clock is ticking as well as the Ohio Division of Wildlife ponders the ruffed grouse’s current status along with its future. To that end the agency’s forest game biologist Mark Wiley addressed several topics related to the ruffed grouse’s status in the state.

Habitat, or the lack of suitable habitat, says Wiley, is the principal driver of Ohio’s ruffed grouse population trends.

“Over the past few centuries the ebb and flow in Ohio’s grouse population have been linked to the amount of suitable young forest habitat in the state,” Wiley says.

Most recently, Wiley says, farm abandonment and subsequent reforestation in the first half of the Twentieth Century created a surge of young forests. From 1941 to 1968, Ohio’s estimated total forest area increased from 3.2 million to 6.3 million acres, of which 3.7 million acres were categorized as young forest, Wiley says.

Since that peak, reforestation slowed, and much of the existing young forest habitat in the state matured beyond stages suitable for grouse. From 1968 to 2017, estimates of young forest decreased by more than 2.7 million acres in Ohio, says Wiley.

Not surprisingly, Wiley says also, at the same time grouse abundance steadily declined, reaching historic lows in recent years. Statewide grouse harvest - which was 22,000 birds in 1950 - peaked at 292,000 birds in 1982, Wiley says.

“Without widespread increases in forest management activities or large-scale disturbances creating young forest habitat in Ohio, grouse populations are likely to remain low,” Wiley says.

Even so, question do remain as to whether the current extensive private property forest harvesting methods employing both selective and clear-cutting methodologies are – or will – influence a ruffed grouse rebound.

“The majority of Ohio’s forested land – 85 percent p is privately owned, which presents challenges to broad-scale forest habitat management,” Wiley says. “Other challenges, particularly to creation of young forest, include public misconceptions about forest disturbance, poor oak regeneration, and increasing threat from invasive plant species.”

So, too, it seems the influence of both avian and ground predators. Grantham and Conley are willing to cast suspicious eyes on egg-stealing raccoons, skunks, and possums as being serious culprits in robbing grouse nests.

“In my opinion the problem is a mix: Loss of habitat and ground predators,” Grantham says.

Conley agrees, adding that “since we no longer have the number of folks trapping, that has led to an explosion the number of ground nest predators.”

Wiley also is willing to say predation is an issue.

“Hawks and owls are the primary predators of adult and juvenile grouse, (with) mammals playing a lesser role in adult grouse predation, but are common nest predators,” he said.

Forget, coyotes, however, as a major consumer of ruffed grouse, Wiley says also.

“Although coyotes will prey upon grouse if given the opportunity, studies suggest this happens infrequently,” Wiley says.

The same goes for the wild turkey. While grouse numbers began to tank about the same time that Ohio’s wild turkey flock made its accession, it wrong to draw a connect-the-dots link, Wiley says.

“I am not aware of any evidence that wild turkeys have significant negative impact on ruffed grouse populations. Predation, nest destruction, and even nest parasitism by turkeys are possible, but occur so infrequently they are rarely documented and have no measurable impact,” Wiley says.

The scientific nail to the blame-the-turkey conspiracy was a late-1990’s regional research study. This study determined the fate of 376 grouse nests and monitored 50 grouse broods via radio telemetry.

“Appalachian Cooperative Grouse Research Project researchers identified many nest and brood predators, but turkeys were not among them,” Wiley said.

And though habitat loss appears to be the ruffed grouse’s Public Enemy Number One it is not the only member on the Most Wanted list. Point the finger at West Nile Virus, Wiley says.

“We are currently cooperating several other state wildlife agencies in the Appalachian region on a West Nile Virus study,” Wiley says. “To the best of our knowledge, West Nile Virus may exacerbate grouse population declines already occurring as a result of habitat loss in Ohio.”

Obviously then neither Wiley, Jones, Conley, or Grantham ever want to see Ohio’s ruffed grouse go the way of the last passenger pigeon. It will be an uphill struggle.

For Grantham that means joining siblings and friends in purchasing a bird- and deer-hunting retreat in the far western end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula just so they can enjoy bird dog work and a few flushes.

And here, Granham’s and Conley’s grouse-hunting lives again may merge in a fashion.

“I don’t think the grouse will ever come back in Ohio,” Conley says. “But I still have a bird dog, and future grouse hunts are being planned though they’ll take place in northern Michigan.”

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net