In Pennsylvania and Berks, the ruffed grouse rules
11/23/11« Back
RGS in the News
by Bruce Posten
Originally Published: 11/14/2011 on http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=345708
As Thanksgiving approaches, people always seem to talk turkey. But maybe a few words should be written in praise of the Bonasa umbellus, or ruffed grouse...
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While Ben Franklin never got the nation to accept the turkey as its national bird (it bowed to the majestic bald eagle), Pennsylvanians have long loved the ruffed grouse.
That's particularly true of Berks County's roughly 200-member Charles E. Bechtel Chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society, which has 15,000 members nationwide.
Hunting of the bird is particularly good in northwest and north-central Pennsylvania.
And the society is committed to keeping it that way by working with state public agencies in land-management projects, through regulated tree cutting, for example, to secure early succession forests where the grouse thrive, said John Cave, chairman of the Berks chapter and manager at Blue Marsh Recreation Area.
He credited a strong committee of about 15 for making the local chapter successful.
The Ruffed Grouse Society celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and the Berks chapter is deemed among the oldest for conducting fundraising banquets to restore and maintain ruffed grouse and woodcock habitat.
At spring and fall 2011 banquets, the chapter raised about $22,000, said Dave Hansroth, 61, Gaithersburg, Md., regional director of the Mid-Atlantic Ruffed Grouse Society, which includes southeast Pennsylvania.
Dubbed "King of the Game Birds," the ruffed grouse was a staple in the larder of American colonialists.
It has a highly respected pedigree, is not threatened or endangered and survives despite being hunted by man, red-tailed and Cooper's hawks and mammals such as foxes, raccoons and skunks.
"It's the best-tasting bird and it doesn't taste like chicken," Hansroth said.
Ruffed grouse are hunted with shotgun and a pointer or flushing dog from mid-October to the beginning of deer season in November. Generally, the season resumes from the end of December to the end of January.
"But they are a challenge to hunt; not easy at all," Hansroth said of a bird once praised to the hilt by no less a personage that John James Audubon.
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