Wildlife responds to the presence of quality habitat. Examples are all around us.
Populations of temperature nesting (resident) Canada geese have soared throughout Central Kentucky because of the region’s many ponds, small lakes and manicured pastures. Quail numbers in western Kentucky increased where fescue was eradicated and warm season grasses were planted. White-tailed deer flourished in northern Kentucky where hilly pastures reverted to brushy fields, forming an edge along forests.
But not all changes to habitat are beneficial.
Case in point is the ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a medium-sized, non-migratory bird found in more than 50 Kentucky counties, mostly east of Interstate-75.
This fast-flying, prized game bird, hunted over dogs in rugged terrain, has been severely impacted by aging forests.
“Historically, grouse populations have gone up and down with forest condition,” said Dan Figert, a wildlife biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and former small game program coordinator. “In mature forests, grouse survive, but they don’t thrive. They are really an early successional species. They do best in forests with several different age classes of trees.”
According to the 2012 Forest Inventory and Analysis, conducted by the Kentucky Division of Forestry and the U.S. Forest Service:
* There are 12.4 million acres of forest in Kentucky.
* Forty-nine percent of the state is forested.
* Both forest acreage and acres of sawtimber (mature trees of harvestable size) has increased in recent inventories.
* The Cumberland Plateau and Appalachia are the most heavily forested, with more than 15 counties in the region being 80 to 94 percent forested.
Range of the ruffed grouse
No one knows for sure how widely distributed grouse were in Kentucky during the pre-settlement times when old-growth forests covered an estimated 90 percent of the state.
But, it’s well-documented that as Kentucky’s big timber was cut, grouse sightings increased. By the late 1930s most of the Cumberland Plateau had been timbered, ushering in several decades of good hunting.
In the March 1950 issue of Happy Hunting Ground magazine, Frederick C. Hardy, Federal Aid Project Leader, reported that “cutting the climax forest, which helped spell doom for deer and turkey, actually improved grouse habitat. Grouse populations are being studied by drumming counts and flushing counts. Drumming sites were almost without exception located on uplands, in second-growth hardwoods, as are a majority of nests.”
The range of the ruffed grouse extends from the Atlantic to Pacific throughout Canada and the United States. Ruffed Grouse are found as far north as Alaska, as far west as coastal Washington and Oregon and into the northern Rockies. Their range extends throughout the upper Midwest and Great Lakes states, as far east as New England, and down the Appalachians as far south as Georgia.
At the southern reaches of its range, in Georgia, ruffed grouse are only found in mountainous areas above 1,000 feet in elevation, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Ruffed grouse typically inhabit remote areas, often hard to reach and hunt.
Throughout Appalachia, grouse populations are low, compared to populations in the northern states, but are much more stable. In the north woods of the U.S. and Canada, grouse experience regular population cycles (highs and lows) every 10 to 12 years.
Description and life history
Ruffed grouse are medium-sized birds with a triangular crest of feathers on their head, and a long, fan-shaped tail. They have short legs and are rather slim, but appear much larger when they puff up their feathers while displaying and drumming.
Birds are intricately patterned with dark bars and spots on either a reddish-brown or grayish background. Dark bars down the side of the neck continue and widen on the belly. The tail is finely barred, with one wide, black band near the tip.
Ruffed grouse are omnivorous, and spend most of their time on the ground, eating buds, leaves, berries, seeds and insects. They depend on thick, brushy habitat in woodlands for feeding and nesting.
Males have a home range of about 50 acres, which is considerably less that females.
Males attract females in the spring by drumming — rapidly flapping their wings. Hens typically lay 10 to 14 eggs, which hatch in 23 days. Chicks, which stay with hens until late September, are fully grown in 16 weeks.
Grouse have a high natural mortality rate and predators take 50 to 60 percent of the adult population annually, so reproductive success is important to maintain population levels. In the southern Appalachians, poor habitat and low food quality, make grouse more susceptible to predation.
Trap and relocation efforts in Kentucky
Several decades ago, when biologists first noticed that grouse populations were declining throughout Kentucky’s mountain counties, an attempt was made to to expand their range in the state, to areas outside Appalachia.
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In a labor intensive effort, birds were live trapped and stocked at several sites, including Land Between the Lakes beginning in the early 1980s. During the 1990s, the trap and relocation efforts extended to a handful of Ohio River counties in north central Kentucky, Pennyrile State Forest and Ft. Knox Military Reservation.
There were some initial successes, but over time populations largely disappeared.
Daniel Boone National Forest, the state’s largest area open to public hunting, has had no significant timber harvest in the past 20 years. The lack of early successional forest habitat has impacted grouse populations and hunter harvest on the more than 706,000 acres of land in public ownership in 21 eastern Kentucky counties.
While timber harvest on private lands have benefitted local populations of ruffed grouse, the maturation of forests in Appalachia continues to be the driving force behind long-term population declines.
Clear-cutting forests, in a patchwork of 5 to 20-acre plots, has a positive effect on grouse populations. Ideal habitat is greatest 6 to 15 years following timber harvests.
More than 50 counties in north central and eastern Kentucky are open to grouse hunting. The split season is 119 days long, and continues through Feb. 29, 2016. The daily bag limit is four grouse.
Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.