2020 MN Grouse reports

Anyone been hunting Baudette / Warroad area this year?

My first outing today. Central MN north of Mille Lacs. Walked about 2 hrs, flushed 4 different birds . This one was like a chess match, it was the 3rd flush I finally got a shot. Had circled around his backside hoping I guessed the location correctly and knocked him down on the first shot. Still 3/4 of leaves up I would estimate, but falling quick.

Thanks for the report, can’t wait to get out. Leaving Friday for a week. Will post when we return.

Good look’n dog, sure miss our Brittanys.

I’m headed to crane lake in 2 days. Really hoping to come home with a good report. It will be my son ( 9 years old ) first time tagging with

Good luck Vagabond and Bearcat. I’ll be back out on Thursday with my son (8 yrs old) he’ll just be carrying a BB gun but he is stoked

Got a buddy who lives in Baudette. He limited in 11 minutes, twice this year.
Others are working for their birds.

I have been hunting all most every weekend anywhere from Duluth to Orr with my son. We have been dogless as he has been with the trainer for the last month. We are seeing lots of bird and working for our shots.

We get Dash back on Thursday and plan to hunt fri-sun. Not expecting much out of him as he is not even 6 months old but he is holding point and getting shot over. The one thing my trainer jokes about is that Dash will retrieve and give you the bird but he has a slight low grow as he does, so he is slightly not to happy about giving up his hard work treat. He will learn we are in this as a team soon enough..

Good Luck guys

lindyrig79 wrote:

I’ll be back out on Thursday with my son (8 yrs old) he’ll just be carrying a BB gun but he is stoked

Shot my first mallard with a bb gun.
It was slow and I asked my dad if we could walk to a small puddle that was on the point they were hunting, he said sure. We walked up and there was 3 hens and 1 drake. They just sat there as we walked to the water, I looked at my dad and he smiled and nodded. One, very lucky, shot to the drakes head was all it took. Dad whistled for his lab, King, and a short retrieve and I was holding my first waterfowl.
Just out with my dad and his buddies, thinking I was one of the guys…

Maybe you will see a stupid grouse

Thanks, I’ll be in Baudette this weekend for a week and will let you know how it goes.

May have to try Orr the following week as it’s closer to home.

Will be up chasing grouse/woodcock for the next few days in the Duluth/Carlton area.

Picture I got on my grouse cam earlier this week at our family property. The cam is set up on a magnet spot.

We were up hiking on the Gunflint Trail this week and saw grouse on just about every trail. They didn’t seem to spook at all, just running along the trails.

I would think it would be good. I hunted Tuesday and Wednesday around Red Lake and encountered 10 one afternoon and 9 the next morning. Most are still there,…ugh. Fair amount of road hunting going on in the afternoon.

Great pic Tegg! I did have two encounters with birds with my son. One was sitting on a log and I let him sneak up on him with his BB gun. To his credit he did get within 10 yards of the grouse but then it flushed he said he couldn’t really see him it blended in pretty good. And being he is only 8 yrs we kept the outings very short. Was happy he at least got to see a couple….

Over the weekend we had a tail of two sides of the coin. On private, non pressured property we had 30+ flushes for an afternoon hunt of grouse/woodcock. I’ve hunted this property since 1980 so inside information has its advantages. On public it was tough going. We hunted a RGMA for a couple hours and had one woodcock flush. We got off the beaten path and a lot of cover looked good but no dice. Our best public spot was a tiny piece that was an old dump site surrounded by tamarack bog. The kind of spot that had two derelict chest freezers and a rusted out car body with a tag alder muskeg edge. Thick balsam cover, however, limited shot opportunities. I was encouraged, however, by the numbers I was seeing in our neighborhood.

A cousin of mine commented he and a buddy flushed 6-7 grouse and a woodcock east of our location for an afternoon hunt. I’m thinking nesting survival was pretty good for the area.

Just got back from the Baudette area.

The first day we only hunted the last three hours and we saw nineteen got five. We thought this would be a great hunt, not so much it was down hill from there. The next day only one for 8 seen. Total after 5 days hunting was 15 birds for two hunters.

The weather was very warm with high winds which made for poor and difficult hunting.

Being gone that long what did you do with the original birds? Eat, freeze, etc?

Kind of an odd question, isn’t it Suzuki? Pretty easy to put them in a cooler on ice too….

lindyrig79 wrote:

Kind of an odd question, isn’t it Suzuki? Pretty easy to put them in a cooler on ice too….

I generally don’t hold meat that long just refrigerated and am especially careful with meat that’s so hard to come by. More so with fish and fowl. Maybe overly careful but works for me.

We forest camp with an RV…so we have a freezer etc

Vacuum seal those suckers and they’ll last for months.

We’ve been vacuum bagging since the late 1980’s, fish and meat last for many many months as long as they do not lose seal. I miss placed a walleye in the freezer for three years and it was still perfect, but I don’t recommend keeping them that long!

If the seal is gone and freezer burn started I do not use it. This does not happen often.

Hunting has been good for me the last 3-4 weekends in east-central MN. Lots of grouse flushed(not so many hit) and tons of woodcock flushed with a fair number put to the bag. I’m hanging it up for the year now, and going to focus on pheasants, particularly the Iowegian variety. Anybody else have any updates or new reports? Thread has been dead for a while. Actually this whole sub-forum has. Let’s hear em, guys!

P.S. the amount of porcupines I am seeing in the area is like nothing I’ve seen before. Anybody else?

Sorry, I’ve not been able to get out as I came down with kidney stones and had to cancel all trips for the year.

Should be a good year from what we’ve seen… get out and hunt!

Had a brief opportunity to get out in NW Wisconsin woods over the weekend and saw decent numbers of birds, including one woodcock.
This summer we had a porcupine hanging around the neighborhood here in Hudson.

I have not hunted grouse this year. But I can tell you this. The population northeast of Ely, MN seemed crazy high when I was up there fishing from 09-12-20 through 09-19-20. We saw birds everywhere we went and every time we ventured out. And near public ground. I can also tell you this, I just got back from a week in the U.P., in an area that is known for good grouse hunting. Saw very, very few. There are some, but not like I’ve seen other years. Good luck. If you end up with too many, I would be happy to pay for shipping if you would send to me.

I flushed 3 and got 1 this morning in nw sconny. It was really neat hunting with snow in October. Crisp and cold. Felt like deer season. My dog didn’t like the crusty snow though. It must have hurt her feet. I took the pup along too. She didn’t have much purpose but seemed to be having one long orgasm.lol she did steal the bird fom the older dog. Little poop.

Ps-got another this afternoon. Perfect for a meal for my wife and I.(2) That wraps up Grouse for at least a month.

Covered about 5 miles this weekend in between other chores and didn’t see one grouse in the Bunyan State Forest. Did see one woodcock.

Two from this morning. A nice bonus red phase bird. Flushed 4 in some state land.