It's been a pretty disapointing grouse season for me. Very low grouse numbers in Langlade and Vilas Counties. 5 hours in the woods with the pup this weekend and only 1 grouse fluish. We did manage to come home with a couple of woodcock, as the pup pointed a couple birds. A friend has been seeing a lot of birds west of Tomahawk, so maybe the thing to do would be exploring up around Park Falls.
As someone else said, try the County Forests. The National Forests are becoming biological deserts due to the lack of management, resulting in overmatured and dying forest stands. They are years behind in harvesting overmature Aspen and even if they started achieving the goals of their forest plans, they will not catch up. Annual growth on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is 365 million board feet per year. However, they allow timber harvesting on only 850,000 of the 1.4 million acres, on which annual growth is about 225 million board feet per year. The forest plan calls for an annual allowable sales quotient [ASQ] of 130 MMBF, but they're only cutting 60-70 MBF, or only 1/4 of annual growth. Even achieving their plan ASQ, more trees will die instead of being utilized and in Aspen, that translates to a shrinking grouse/woodcock habitat. The State Forests are just as bad.
Counties, however, utilize their forests and make significant contributions to their annual budgets, thereby keeping resident property taxes down. Thank God the tree huggers haven't started suing the Counties as they have the National Forests.
