With unemployment about 15 percent, Michigan is feeling the effects of the bad economy more than other states.
This leads a Michigan bird hunter to ponder what kind of impact the economy is having on the state's ruffed grouse.
Besides the mysterious 10-year cycle that causes the numbers of ruffed grouse across its range to peak, crash and repeat, the ruffed grouses' fortune more than anything rides on the availability of prime habitat, which consists of young aspen forests.
The best way to get young aspen forests is to cut old aspen forests. It takes only about four years for an aspen clear cut to regenerate and attract and help build populations of ruffed grouse and woodcock.
You can't open a newspaper, turn on a news broadcast in Michigan or have a conversation and avoid hearing a report about budget cuts taking place at the state level, city level, township level, school level, or personal wallet level.
So far, I haven't heard one reporter discuss the economic impact on my favorite game bird the ruffed grouse.
The economy, of course, could have a huge impact on the future of the birds. Could the state be cutting aspen like there's no tomorrow to increase revenue from forest products? That would help ruffed grouse populations explode like, well, a ruffed grouse in front of a pointing dog's nose.
On the other hand, could demand for forest products be so suppressed by the slow economy that the price being paid for aspen trees isn't enough to cover the cost to fuel up the logging equipment? I don't have to say this scenario would not bode well for Michigan's ruffed grouse or grouse hunters' success rate/enjoyment from exciting grouse encounters in the field.
Turns out, neither my boom nor my bust theory is correct, according to a forestry supervisor with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
"Our level of aspen harvesting has not been modified significantly due to the conditions of the economy," said Larry Pedersen, a forest planning and operations supervisor in the forest resource management section, in an e-mail response to my e-mailed questions. "We are fortunate in Michigan to have a relatively diverse wood products industry and we have weathered the overall economic downturn without much of a downturn in our timber harvests, including those for aspen."
The math seems to check out. I found average timber or "stumpage" prices online.
The maximum sold price of mixed aspen in Michigan averaged $130 from Oct. 1, 2008 to Sept. 30, 2009.
The average maximum sold price of mixed aspen in Michigan from Jan. 1, 2006 to Dec. 31, 2006? That year, it was $127.
Looks as if I can't expect the bad economy to dramatically increase ruffed grouse hunting opportunities in the next few years.
On a positive note, I did see quite a bit of good looking aspen stands on the east and west sides of the state this past fall, and it looks like the opportunities won't get worse either.
Showing posts with label bird hunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bird hunting. Show all posts
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Running Out of Pheasant Shot, or The Story of the Snipe in my Twitter Photograph
When I mention snipe hunting to friends, even fellow bird hunters, most look as if they're anticipating a punch line.
Even though I don't know one person who has ever been duped into going into the deep woods and trying to call fictitious critters into a burlap bag, everyone seems to have that exact image in their head of snipe hunting.
Just so we're clear, snipe, or common snipe is a bird that looks a lot like a woodcock. The best way to tell them apart in the hand is by looking at the stripes on the head. The stripes on a snipe go front to back; the stripes on the head of a woodcock go from "ear" to "ear." In the air, the snipe's wings have a bent shape that remind one of the flight of a killdeer.
I look at the Michigan hunting regulations every year and see the daily bag limit of eight birds and think "I'd like to get a piece of that action." I spent several days with Andy Ammann, a man who came as close to achieving rock star status as any wildlife biologist, when he was in his 80s in the early 1990s. We were trying to locate broods of snipe so he could band the chicks. Since passed to happier hunting grounds, no doubt filled with young aspen coverts, Dr. Ammann is credited with getting a December grouse hunting season in Michigan, and for developing the technique to locate and band woodcock chicks using pointing dogs as a way of gathering important life cycle information to help in regulating the hunting of the secretive birds. I believe there is a Ruffed Grouse Society chapter named after Dr. Ammann. (I should check online to see if any of his books titled A Guide to Capturing and Banding American Woodcock Using Pointing Dogs are available.) We never found any chicks together, but he did assure me the birds are sporty hunting and plentiful in Michigan, especially along certain shorelines of the Great Lakes.
Finally, last season, approximately 18 years after my conversations with Dr. Ammann, I bagged my first snipe. Regrettably I never have targeted the species, or even tried to find those shorelines where they are plentiful. (It's still my intention to do so some year.) However, I couldn't have been happier than that fortuitousness moment last season when pheasant hunting a farm near my home when my dogs bumped a snipe that flew in front of me.
Normally when pheasant hunting you can't pull the trigger on a snipe. They are a migratory bird and you cannot hunt them with a gun capable of holding more than three shells. No problem for me, as I usually tote an over/under on pheasant hunts. Like ducks, snipe require the use of non-tox shot loads. Luckily, I had run out of my normal lead pheasant shells. On this tromp through the small farm marsh, I happened to be loaded up with steel shot duck loads which I have found to be effective on the big, long-tailed upland birds. The loads were No. 4 steel shot, which would not be recommended for the diminutive snipe, but legal nonetheless.
So my first snipe got posed with one of my dogs and a rooster pheasant I also took on that hunt. It's the photo posted on my Bird Country Reports blog and Twitter account. In order to see it you would need to click to view the larger version of the photo, and even then you would be doing great if you spotted the little bird in the photo next to the gaudy ring-neck. If you look closely at the photo I put below here you may notice part of the bill missing and hole about the size of a No. 4 steel shot pellet on the remaining portion of the bill.
Close up photo of common snipe:
Here are woodcock in a photo for comparison to the snipe:
Even though I don't know one person who has ever been duped into going into the deep woods and trying to call fictitious critters into a burlap bag, everyone seems to have that exact image in their head of snipe hunting.
Just so we're clear, snipe, or common snipe is a bird that looks a lot like a woodcock. The best way to tell them apart in the hand is by looking at the stripes on the head. The stripes on a snipe go front to back; the stripes on the head of a woodcock go from "ear" to "ear." In the air, the snipe's wings have a bent shape that remind one of the flight of a killdeer.
I look at the Michigan hunting regulations every year and see the daily bag limit of eight birds and think "I'd like to get a piece of that action." I spent several days with Andy Ammann, a man who came as close to achieving rock star status as any wildlife biologist, when he was in his 80s in the early 1990s. We were trying to locate broods of snipe so he could band the chicks. Since passed to happier hunting grounds, no doubt filled with young aspen coverts, Dr. Ammann is credited with getting a December grouse hunting season in Michigan, and for developing the technique to locate and band woodcock chicks using pointing dogs as a way of gathering important life cycle information to help in regulating the hunting of the secretive birds. I believe there is a Ruffed Grouse Society chapter named after Dr. Ammann. (I should check online to see if any of his books titled A Guide to Capturing and Banding American Woodcock Using Pointing Dogs are available.) We never found any chicks together, but he did assure me the birds are sporty hunting and plentiful in Michigan, especially along certain shorelines of the Great Lakes.
Finally, last season, approximately 18 years after my conversations with Dr. Ammann, I bagged my first snipe. Regrettably I never have targeted the species, or even tried to find those shorelines where they are plentiful. (It's still my intention to do so some year.) However, I couldn't have been happier than that fortuitousness moment last season when pheasant hunting a farm near my home when my dogs bumped a snipe that flew in front of me.
Normally when pheasant hunting you can't pull the trigger on a snipe. They are a migratory bird and you cannot hunt them with a gun capable of holding more than three shells. No problem for me, as I usually tote an over/under on pheasant hunts. Like ducks, snipe require the use of non-tox shot loads. Luckily, I had run out of my normal lead pheasant shells. On this tromp through the small farm marsh, I happened to be loaded up with steel shot duck loads which I have found to be effective on the big, long-tailed upland birds. The loads were No. 4 steel shot, which would not be recommended for the diminutive snipe, but legal nonetheless.
So my first snipe got posed with one of my dogs and a rooster pheasant I also took on that hunt. It's the photo posted on my Bird Country Reports blog and Twitter account. In order to see it you would need to click to view the larger version of the photo, and even then you would be doing great if you spotted the little bird in the photo next to the gaudy ring-neck. If you look closely at the photo I put below here you may notice part of the bill missing and hole about the size of a No. 4 steel shot pellet on the remaining portion of the bill.
Close up photo of common snipe:
Here are woodcock in a photo for comparison to the snipe:
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
We're Going to Kansas!
My Brittany, Scoop, never made it from Michigan out to one of the pheasant-rich states of Iowa, Kansas or South Dakota. Despite many good intentions and the fact she lived 16 years -- through my final college year, getting married, the birth of my two sons, and even the name of her breed changing from Brittany Spaniel -- our fantasy road trip never materialized.
We did enjoy bagging our share of ring-necks in a state where old timers swore there were none left. "I guess it'd be ok if you want to hunt pheasants if you want," would say the farmer in stained coveralls when I would inquire about hunting privileges where I'd find him working in the barn across a dirt drive from a sagging, paint chipped house. "But don't expect much."
Oh, I wondered how good it would be to follow that tenacious orange dog as she quartered a field where we could expect much.
I've heard stories from hunters who have gone to the promised land of pheasant hunting. "Just drive up and knock on doors where the cover looks good -- it's easy to get permission to hunt," they've told me. Pheasant and quail, limits on both if you want to walk that much.
Sage, my 9-year-old German Wirehaired Pointer, has seen far fewer wild pheasants than her predecessor. Sparty her two-year old "little brother," they're from the same kennel but not siblings, has had more experience with woodcock and ruffed grouse during trips to the large tracts of public woodlands in northern Michigan than with wild pheasants around his southern Michigan home.
That's all about to change: Next fall, we're going to Kansas!
We did enjoy bagging our share of ring-necks in a state where old timers swore there were none left. "I guess it'd be ok if you want to hunt pheasants if you want," would say the farmer in stained coveralls when I would inquire about hunting privileges where I'd find him working in the barn across a dirt drive from a sagging, paint chipped house. "But don't expect much."
Oh, I wondered how good it would be to follow that tenacious orange dog as she quartered a field where we could expect much.
I've heard stories from hunters who have gone to the promised land of pheasant hunting. "Just drive up and knock on doors where the cover looks good -- it's easy to get permission to hunt," they've told me. Pheasant and quail, limits on both if you want to walk that much.
Sage, my 9-year-old German Wirehaired Pointer, has seen far fewer wild pheasants than her predecessor. Sparty her two-year old "little brother," they're from the same kennel but not siblings, has had more experience with woodcock and ruffed grouse during trips to the large tracts of public woodlands in northern Michigan than with wild pheasants around his southern Michigan home.
That's all about to change: Next fall, we're going to Kansas!
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