16ga.com ~ View topic - Missouri Restocking Ruffed Grouse

Gentlemen,

The short article in the SSM by Joe Healy on the restocking of Ruffed Grouse in Missouri caught my attention as a RGS member and former RGS Sponsor. The Quail and Upland Wild Life Federation restocked the Boone Conservation area in Warren County with 100 Ruffed Grouse. I believe they transplanted the Grouse form Wisconsin to Missouri per the article.

Opinions on relocating wild Grouse, can it really be done? According to Nick Prough, QUWF's Chief Wild Life Biologist they have over $2 million in timber harvest and getting lands ready completed on about 100,000 acres.

One heck of an undertaking by QUWF a disabled Veteran founded and managed conservation group that put professional Biologists and individual members together to accomplish the restocking program, that will last at least 25 years. They plan to bring another 100 Ruffed Grouse to the area in the near future.

Great Project I truly hope it works! Unlike Ohio, Missouri does have the forest area to accomplish the project, if the forest habitat and food base are correct and the predators are controlled until the Grouse can set up their coverts and reproduce, this program just might work. I figure they have a 50/50 chance with proper forest management.

If this Missouri restocking program works, it means Pa could cut their southern tier forests on both the SFL & SGL and reintroduce Grouse to the Pa Southern tier from our own Northern tier forests. Definitely something to think about due to our Southern tier forest mismanagement thru the years.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2125 Location: Hudson,Wy

The way I see it, the chief factors that will determine success or failure (provided there is proper habitat management) are weather, parasites/ disease, and brood recruitment. If the birds hatch out chicks and there is sufficient insect life for them to grow and survive to adulthood, then this should work.

WyoChukar,

Good points, I am not sure of the Missouri bug life in their forests, if it's anything like WI, MI, NH or Pa the Grouse chicks should double and triple their size in no time at all. I really do hope this Grouse project works in Missouri, would love to see it develop into a giant Grouse saving project for RGS to use thru out the USA. Forest management will be critical for sure.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

A similar project was tried at Fort Riley, KS about 20 years ago. It did not result in a sustaining population unfortunately..

*Last edited by tramroad28 on Sat Jul 13, 2019 3:53 pm; edited 1 time in total*

Ruffed grouse stuck on Fort Riley in KS?...I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in that initial meeting. Shocked

History would not easily support yet another trap & transfer stab in MO but, one never knows.
I assume Johnny Morris is in the background somewhere.
The real problem, imo, will be the maintenance of sufficient early successional over Time, otherwise this sounds like somewhat of a large scale photo op.

At the least tho, some critters will benefit from a forest made more healthy re timber age class diversity than is the sad norm these days.

Joined: 01 Oct 2007 Posts: 962 Location: Minnesota

Was Ft Riley ever a grouse holding property? Would not think ruff grouse was native to that area. Went to KSU eons ago so somewhat familiar with that area.

Member Joined: 16 Dec 2007 Posts: 592 Location: Minnesota

By Joe Healy
After many years of population declines, Missouri’s ruffed grouse finally may be seeing a turnaround. This past year, in a collaborative effort between the Quail and Upland Wildlife Federation (QUWF), of Buffalo, Missouri, and the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), 100 ruffed grouse were relocated from Wisconsin to Missouri’s Daniel Boone Conservation Area, in Warren County.

QUWF credits more than a decade of hard work, constant fundraising, generous sponsors, cooperative landowners and MDC personnel with the success of the effort. Craig Alderman, a research biologist and the founder and executive director of QUWF, cites in particular support from Ruger Firearms and personal interest from Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris.

According to Alderman: “Our plan this year is to capture another 100 grouse and bring them down to Missouri and release them. We have a grouse coop right now of about 110 to 112 members that encompasses about 100,000 acres, and we’ve been doing extremely intensive timber-improvement work to prepare for a minimum of a 25-year plan for the grouse to stay, adapt and grow . . . . Between the chapters and the private landowners, I’d say we’ve seen an investment of well over $2 million in timber harvest and getting lands ready.”

QUWF is the only disabled American veteran founded and managed conservation organization in the US. “This is what we formed QUWF for—to put professional biologists and staff together with local, passionate members and enthusiasts willing to put their shoulder to the task and solve it with their raised money,” said Nick Prough, QUWF’s chief wildlife biologist.

Member Joined: 16 Dec 2007 Posts: 592 Location: Minnesota

Looks like this is another attempt....4000 transplant grouse in the previous efforts...no reference about that in the SSM article.

MDC TO SEEK ELUSIVE ANSWERS ABOUT RUFFED GROUSE
News from the region: Statewide
Jim LowOct 18, 2011
JEFFERSON CITY–Jason Isabelle wants to know if the ruffed grouse has a future in Missouri. The Quail and Upland Wildlife Federation (QUWF) wants to help Isabelle answer that question, and other states are watching.

Isabelle’s duties as a resource scientist for the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) include studying ruffed grouse, handsome, forest-dwelling birds three or four times the size of a bobwhite quail. He inherited the duty from a line of biologists going back to the early 1940s, when MDC launched its first grouse-restoration effort.

Those efforts, which ended in the mid-1990s, transplanted more than 4,000 grouse from other Midwestern states to the best available habitat in Missouri. Most of the birds went to the central Ozarks, north-central and east-central Missouri.

Ruffed grouse persist in very small numbers in a few of the original restoration areas, including an area known as the River Hills Conservation Opportunity Area in Callaway, Montgomery and Warren counties. However, grouse numbers have dwindled to the point where the Conservation Commission closed the ruffed-grouse hunting season last year based on a recommendation from MDC biologists. The most likely cause of their decline is inadequate habitat.

“Ruffed grouse need a mosaic of old and young forests to prosper,” said Isabelle. “They need areas where timber harvests or storms have removed or killed all the trees, creating early-successional forest habitat. They just can’t survive without scattered areas of disturbance in a larger forest setting. Over the course of the last several decades, the amount of young forest habitat has declined substantially throughout the southern portion of the ruffed grouse’s range.”

That accounts for the relative abundance of grouse that existed in Missouri in the early 1800s. Although Missouri is at the southwestern edge of the species’ natural range, early settlers cut down trees for fuel and building material, creating a patchwork of clear cuts, young forest and mature timber that was made to order for ruffed grouse. Missouri’s grouse boom was short-lived, however. It went bust from a one-two punch of relentless market hunting and large-scale logging that denuded vast areas of Missouri’s timberlands.

Conservationists are optimists by nature, so when QUWF approached MDC about giving ruffed-grouse restoration another try, Isabelle set aside earlier discouragements and considered the possibilities.

“Over the past decade, there has been an ongoing effort to increase the amount of early-successional forest habitat in the River Hills region of east-central Missouri,” said Isabelle. “This effort has involved a number of partners conducting habitat work on both public and private lands.”

Working cooperatively with the Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership and the USDA Forest Service, MDC plans to conduct a systematic evaluation of potential grouse habitat within the River Hills Conservation Opportunity Area. With that information, said Isabelle, MDC will be in a position to decide whether another attempt at grouse restoration makes sense.

Missouri is not the only state examining its ruffed-grouse management options. Other states on the southern edge of the ruffed grouse’s range have documented declines similar to the one seen here. Isabelle said other states in the southern portion of grouse range will be watching closely to see what comes of studies in the Show-Me State.

Goals of Missouri’s ruffed-grouse studies will include determining:

• The quality and quantity of available habitat in the River Hills Conservation Opportunity Area.

• The likelihood of establishing a self-sustaining grouse population.

• What it will take to manage for and sustain a grouse population in the future.

“We need answers to these questions to make wise choices about grouse management in Missouri,” said Isabelle. “Once we have answers, we will work with QUWF to explore ways that we might be able to help grouse rebound, including the possibility of restocking grouse in an area where they once seemed to thrive.”

MDC Director Bob Ziehmer said he views cooperation with QUWF as the first step in what could be a significant restoration effort in the future.

“Grouse are a special, unique part of Missouri’s natural heritage,” said Ziehmer. “We don’t want to lose them if we can help it, but we face some big challenges. Missouri’s landscape has changed dramatically over the course of the last several decades, and grouse population declines elsewhere show this is a widespread and complicated issue with lots of uncertainty.”

QUWF Director Craig Alderman said Missouri’s grouse population is near a tipping point.

“Without continued cooperation between MDC and QUWF members to scientifically evaluate and restore these wonderful birds, our grandchildren may never have the opportunity see a ruffed grouse in Missouri,” said Alderman, “and that would be tragic.”

PatrickB,

Thanks for the post and the additional information! Great job.

One of the things we have learned here in Pa is that edges that run for miles thru the forest help produce a good Grouse population, proper forest management is essential.
Habitat with proper food base is the key.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

PC/D
Opinions--I would sum up mine as "They have a long row to hoe. . . . "

From about 1980 through 2000, I actually had a lot of experience with grouse reintroduction attempts in Arkansas, and a lot of interaction with folks in Missouri tied to their reintroduction program. In Arkansas, we released about 1500 grouse over a 15 year period on 9 sites in the Ozarks. During the 1980s and early into the 1990s, reintroductions seemed to be doing OK. In the late 1980s as many as 75 grouse were heard drumming on the 5 or 6 sites where they had been released in AR. Some nests were found and broods observed also. This was a few years after Missouri had opened a season in about 8 counties, and grouse in MO seemed to be doing well also, including in the River Hills areas.

In the mid-1990s, someone or something pulled the plug, however. Numbers of grouse in both states started a downward trend. Arkansas continued to stock grouse until 1995 (a lot of them coming from near Williamsport and State College, PA--we stayed in a cabin on PINE CREEK!) but numbers fell so that very few sightings or drumming grouse were heard after 2000. I heard my last drumming grouse in AR in 2003, on the last release site.

What happened? Wild turkeys were booming in the state in the late 1990s (as well as in MO and most of the SE), so the lack of predator control from the loss of trapping/coon hunting due to the crash in fur prices at that time did not seem to be a proximate cause.

(However, the widespread use of baiting wildlife with corn/grain proliferated in AR starting about 2000, and is extremely common now; has the extremely high raccoon population which has resulted from feeding been a cause for the dramatic decline we have seen in turkeys since about 2005? That's another discussion for another time.)

My take then, and my take now is that the amount of suitable habitat was very limited when reintroduction efforts started (several of our reintroduction sites were large areas of tornado damage/salvage timbering, about 10 years afterward), and that good habitat decreased substantially afterward. In the late 1990s, personnel with the Ozark NF did an inventory, and determined that only 3% of ONF was in the 0-10 age class, despite a forest plan calling for a 100 year rotation and 10% in this age class. ("A walk in the forest in the late 1980s by a US Senator and the Forest Supervisors resulted in the elimination of clear-cutting as a management tool.)

So, were right back to my original opinion, about a long row to hoe. Unless the folks in MO want to put the River Hills area on a 40-50 year rotation with 25% of the area in young successional forest, its my belief that they may simply be repeating history.

4setters,

Good write up sir, thanks for your input, I have to agree with your thinking and nobody knows just why the bottom started falling out numbers wise, in that particular era. Everything seemed to be going along quite well until the our predator/trapping took a nose dive. We were lucky in the Potter & Tioga area and our Grouse population remained decently stable, clear into today. Over around Williamsport the Grouse population did fade, and quickly. Some say it was the beginning of WNV in that area. In reality nobody really knows what happened. Lots of guessing however.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

A big word might sum it all up- “multifactorial”.
It was thought, given the right habitat, that most species of gamebirds could out-produce any predatory pressure, but that theory was somewhat turned on its ear with the crash of quail populations in West Texas. There are other factors. All game birds are sacred, and any effort to increase them is worthy. I’d love to see prairie chickens in the Grand Prairie of Arkansas again, too, but I’d settle for a decent sustaining bobwhite population for starters.

Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1308 Location: Western WA

We devoted many a fine autumn afternoon in Missouri to the pursuit of Ruffed Grouse, of which we flushed precious few and bagged maybe one. Their population waxed and waned and one authority blamed their scarcity on mites or chiggers. We likely won’t ever make it back to enjoy those lovely sunlit fall afternoons in the white oak hillsides of Henpeck Hollow and Possum Trot Creek, but I hope this latest attempt succeeds and the sound of grouse drumming will be heard there.

B.

Member Joined: 27 Jun 2012 Posts: 1113

I don't have a lot of faith in MDC managing a program such as this. They seem to have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on just about every occasion. The only two successes that I can remember was the re-introduction of whitetail deer to the Ozarks and getting the turkey back to a decent population. They finally pulled the plug on their prairie chicken program, that was doomed from the start due to insufficient suitable habitat. I would settle for a viable program of getting the bobwhite back to anywhere near the mid 1900's numbers, but I suppose that is fantasy too. I hope this program works, but I'm taking a wait and see attitude in the finest traditions of the "Show Me" state.

Riflemeister,

I believe there are many people that have taken the same wait and see opinion. A similar restocking program pretty much failed in the past, we will see if Missouri has the correct habitat and whether they can manage it correctly to have a nice wild Grouse population. In about 5 years we should see the results, just restocking Grouse will not get the job done, habitat and food base along with predator control are essential to re-establishing a good Grouse population. I have to agree with you about the Quail, it maybe easier to re-establish the Missouri Quail population or at least save what is left of it, than trying to reintroduce a stable Grouse population.

It's great they are trying this again, I hope it actually works.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man