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May 17, 2012
The Traveling Wingshooter Online
2007
Hunting for a Place to Hunt
Hunting ruffed grouse on public land in Minnesota
by Cliff Bentley
emidji!”
“What?” I asked.
“Bemidji! That’s a silly word. What’s a Bemidji?”
“What?” I asked again, wondering why I was even wondering, and beginning to wonder about my judgment in choosing friends.
Chuckles were the response this time. “Bemidji. That word is funny. It’s making me laugh!” More chuckling. The irony of a man from Issaquah, Washington, of all places -- and who had once spelled his own name wrong on a school assignment -- judging a town’s name as silly crossed my mind, but I thought better than to point it out. Maybe my judgment was improving. What started this giggle-fest was a road sign indicating the mileage to the city of Bemidji as we headed north on Highway 71 toward Grand Rapids, Minnesota, for a few days of grouse hunting.
Paul Russell, my good friend of many years, had traveled from his home in Washington to visit me in Minnesota for some pheasant hunting. At that time I lived in southwestern Minnesota where the pheasant hunting is very good, and we had done well. After several successful days finding roosters, we decided a change of pace was in order. Paul had never shot a ruffed grouse before, and I had a new springer spaniel that was dynamite on pheasants and I was curious to see how she would do on grouse. So we arranged a short road trip to northern Minnesota where grouse reportedly lived.
I say “reportedly” because I had never hunted in northern Minnesota. While I had hunted grouse off and on for many years in east-central Minnesota, I had done so mostly as a guest of somebody else, usually on private property owned by my companions. The few times I hunted grouse alone, I went to places I knew from hunting with my father when I was younger. Hunting public land in northern Minnesota was new to me. My pride in being an experienced grouse hunter was beginning to evaporate, though, as I realized I had no idea where to go. It dried up completely when he asked, “Where should we go?”
“Grand Rapids.” I said with false confidence, trying to hide the expanding crack in my “grouse expert” façade
“Sounds good,” he replied, not having any way of knowing whether it really was good or not. “Why there?”
“Because that’s where the grouse live,” I said, as if it were obvious. That was the end of my false pride: I realized I was fooling myself as much as I was trying to fool my friend. The area around Grand Rapids, Minnesota, has a reputation as one of the premier grouse hunting areas in the country and in fact is where the Ruffed Grouse Society holds its annual National Grouse and Woodcock Hunt whose goal is to generate both money and data for improving grouse habitat management around the country. But that was all I really knew. We were about to make a trip to the North Woods based purely on faith in a reputation.
That reputation was, and still is, deserved because Minnesota is arguably the top grouse-producing state in the country. Combine the sheer number of grouse with the fact that Minnesota also has more publicly available hunting land than other grouse states, most of it coinciding with the bird’s primary range in the north,, and the result is that even a couple of dummies like us could stumble around blindly and still find birds. In fact, the amount of land is so vast, a greater concern than finding birds is not getting lost.
The land available for hunting consists of two national forests, 58 state forests, countless acres of county-owned land, and privately owned industrial forest land, all managed for timber production, nearly all of it in the grouse range.
Back when Paul and I made that trip, there was enough information readily available about the public and private-but-open-to-the-public land that there was no excuse for how unprepared we were. Now that the Internet is available, the resources that exist for planning and scouting a hunting trip are so numerous that there’s even less excuse. When you and your buddy plan a grouse-hunting trip to Minnesota, I know you will be much better prepared than we were. Here’s what can help you get there.
Federal Land
The two National Forests in Minnesota -- the Chippewa and Superior -- are both completely within ruffed grouse territory, and they combine to offer more than 4 1/2-million acres of land. The Chippewa, located in the heart of Minnesota’s grouse territory between Cass Lake and Grand Rapids, is 666,542 acres in size and offers roughly 88 miles of non-motorized trails, in addition to the countless miles of federal, state, and county logging roads that are at least of some use to keep from getting lost in the immense forest. The Chippewa National Forest makes 11 hunter walking trail maps available, which can be obtained by visiting any of their offices, calling the information line, or by downloading them from their website.
The Superior is roughly 3.9 million acres of rugged boreal forest in what is known as the arrowhead region of Minnesota, between Canada and Lake Superior. Just over one-quarter of the Superior National Forest is contained in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA), a roadless tract accessible only by canoe. The forest land outside of the BWCA is the better grouse habitat because it is managed for timber rather than wilderness recreation, and there are roads and trails; but wilderness grouse hunting is also fun, especially if you can find your way out when you’re done.
Hunting is allowed on all federally owned land within both forests, including the BWCA, except for developed recreation sites such as campgrounds and water-access sites. But both forests also contain private land within their boundaries, and that land is subject to the same trespass laws as private land anywhere in the state – so be aware of the boundaries. Both forests have high-quality, detailed maps that you can buy for $9 each through the mail or directly from any of the forest office locations.
State Land
There are a few Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in grouse range, but the majority of state-owned lands worth hunting for grouse are the 58 state forests totaling four million acres. These forests are managed for multiple use as well as for timber production, so many of them contain snowmobile, OHV, and/or non-motorized walking/cross-country ski trails that can be used to penetrate the huge areas while looking for grouse. While not all of the forests have detailed maps available, many of them do, and those maps show the trails quite well.
For all the techies out there, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) offers a wonderful product through their Division of Forestry called ForestView that allows those with Internet access to view a variety of interactive map-based DNR Forestry geographic datasets. From the ForestView website, you can choose among background maps consisting of Farm Service Agency (FSA) or USGS aerial photos, USGS topographical maps, and other maps and photos to use as a background for overlaying state forest information such as general forest types, hardwood forest types, and age class. What this means is you can, for example, view an aerial photo of a section of the Crow Wing State Forest and, using the “hardwood forest types” data layer, identify where the aspen stands are. Then you can toggle to the “age class” layer to see which aspen stands are in the preferred 10-20-year age range. You can practically scout for ideal grouse-hunting areas without leaving your desk.
The DNR also publishes a set of maps called Public Recreation Information Maps (PRIM) that provide mostly up-to-date information on federal, state, and county lands and their recreational facilities. I say “mostly” because the maps are updated periodically but not always in time to reflect changes in land ownership, newly created or abandoned water accesses, etc. PRIM maps are perfect tools for showing the public lands in an area and for navigation to broad areas, but their scale is a little too large for use in navigating through the woods.
If you are a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) user, the DNR offers two more products that can be invaluable in scouting, mapping, and navigating good grouse spots using Garmin GPS products and GIS software, such as ESRIs Arc products, and Google Earth. The first is called DNR Garmin and allows the transfer of waypoints, tracks, and routes from a Garmin GPS to the GIS software. DNR Garmin also goes the other direction, allowing information to be uploaded from GIS software to the GPS and used as tracks or waypoints. The other product is the DNR Data Deli, which is an Internet-based spatial data-acquisition site that allows users to download raw computer-readable data for use in their GIS software. Some examples of the data available are national and state forest boundaries, state forest roads, various aerial photos, and USGS maps. Instruction in the use of DNR Garmin and the DNR Data Deli is beyond the scope of this article, but the websites listed in the sidebar will give you most of the answers you need.
Industrial Forest Land
Potlatch, Blandin, Boise-Cascade, and several other large forest-products companies own and manage lands that are open to public hunting. If the forested land is not posted, it is open to public hunting. These companies are beginning to lease some of their land to individuals or groups, however, which usually means that land will be posted against public hunting. While the leaseholders are not supposed to block either non-leased paper company land or public land accessed by roads or trails that cross the lease, you’ll occasionally find locked gates anyway.
County Land
Many northern counties manage state tax-forfeited lands. Mainly forested, these lands provide some excellent hunting opportunities. Check with the local county land department to see if it has a map of county lands open to hunting. Some have maps, others don’t. County plat maps and the DNR PRIM maps show the locations of all thecounty land, though.
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s it turned out on that trip I made with Paul, we did find birds and we did it without getting lost. My springer did well for a young dog hunting grouse and woodcock for the first time, and Paul not only shot his first ruffed grouse, and more, he also managed to shoot his first woodcock, including a limit on one of the days. We had a copy of the Chippewa National Forest map before we began the expedition that we used for navigation, but we spent too much of our valuable hunting time driving around looking for ideal grouse cover.
With the resources now available, you can plan ahead of time and make sure you are much better prepared for a wonderful trip to Minnesota’s North Woods grouse hunting heaven than Paul and I were. And if you happen to pass through Bemidji on your way there, I hope you get as big a kick out of the city’s name as Paul did. 