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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 138: Ruffed Grouse Habitat Basics
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A grouse doesn’t need a “perfect wilderness” to thrive. It needs the right kind of forest, at the right stage, with the right cover in the right places. From the Toronto Sportsman Show, we sit down with Derek from the Rough Grouse Society of Canada to talk about what ruffed grouse habitat really is, why early successional forest is disappearing in parts of Ontario, and how practical habitat restoration can bring it back on public land.
We get into the on-the-ground details that hunters, birders, and landowners care about: how logging can mimic natural disturbance, why regenerating mixed woods beat “aging tree museums,” and what volunteer projects look like when you’re working with chainsaws, pruners, seedlings, and sweat. Derek breaks down food and cover plantings, brush piles for nesting security, and the surprising importance of a drumming log for spring breeding. We also unpack predator pressure, West Nile concerns, and the real cost of missing wildlife monitoring data like drumming counts.
Along the way, we swap field stories about grouse behavior, including fall drumming and “crazy flight,” the short window when young males disperse and can end up smashing into windows. We also share chaga tea testimonials from a listener, plus a simple way to try chaga products with a discount code.
If you care about ruffed grouse conservation, forest habitat management, biodiversity, and hands-on outdoor stewardship in Ontario, this conversation is a roadmap. Subscribe, share the show with a friend who loves the woods, and leave a review so more people can find it.
Outdoor Journal Radio Preview
SPEAKER_09Hi everybody, I'm Angelo Viola. And I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast.
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Listener Shoutouts And Show Setup
Meet The Rough Grouse Society
SPEAKER_04As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Olette, and I was honored to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as Chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials, and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession. And I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy Podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. All right, so well, first of all, I want to thank uh as usual all the listeners across Canada, the States, uh Switzerland, uh again, and all through the Caribbean as usual. And of course, you got any questions, ask them, let us know. Any suggestions for shows. And I want to thank uh a lot of people that you know. A couple weeks ago I had the crew from Halliburton show up in Peterborough. It was like an hour and a half drive one way, well, on a good day. And I got to tell you, the fog was so bad that I couldn't see the houses across the road, and they drove down from Peterborough to meet up with us. And great listeners to the podcast. We really appreciate that. Now, we've also done a number of shows, and we had lots of people show up from the uh listening to the podcast. We really appreciate that. And congratulations to all the winners who won for showing up. And not only that, but we also want to thank Alden who came and I said I'd mention Alden. He's a great listener to the uh podcast, as well as many of the other ones that showed up here at a lot of the shows that we did in the past bit. But as usual, uh it's it's kind of surprising. The the I have to tell you, I thought the fire, the fireplace insert was done, but it's not. It's still out there that it's it's cold enough that uh I get the fire going. Mind you, I'm burning mostly cedar now instead of the uh a lot of the ash and maple that I was burning before some of the birch. But the cedar seems to just dry out the weather because it's kind of humid all around, and that's good. And Gunner, he's upset with me. He comes in and he looks at me, and I look at him and go, Gun, I gotta tell you, buddy. Uh for those that don't know, Gunner's my chocolate lab. Then I'm looking up and I go, I haven't got any toothpaste, buddy. I gotta go get some toothpaste, and and we'll get back to cleaning your teeth. And here's a dog that loves getting his teeth clean, but we appreciate that. Now, I gotta tell you, some of the shows, and I'm recording at uh the Toronto Sportsman Show right now. We got a great organization that I used to be a member of for the longest time, helped him out with uh dinners and things like that, Rough Growth Society, and they're back in action in Ontario. And we have Derek here from the Rough Growth Society. Welcome to the program, Derek. Pleasure to be here, Jerry. Thanks. Now, uh, how long have you been with RGS, Rough Growth Society?
SPEAKER_03Uh I've been an RGS member probably about four years now. Yeah. And uh we're into entering our third year as a brand new Central Ontario chapter for the organization.
SPEAKER_04Now, I was going through some of my old books, and RGS had some great books on habitat development because it's basically um a lot they do a lot of work in habitat development. Kind of give us some of the background, uh Derek. First of all, where are you from yourself? Like where do you live and where do you go home?
SPEAKER_03Uh my family and I are based in Simcoe County in the in the Horseshoe Valley area, and that's where we do a lot of our uh our upland hunting and other hunting. And it's also uh a perfect spot to be in terms of um where there's a real opportunity to do meaningful habitat work, um, where there's uh you know a great resident grouse population, um, but they can use some help, and uh we're into some real exciting projects that I think uh that are gonna make a difference.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and it's not just um grouse that uh the uh that benefit from a lot of the habitat developments that you I know that woodcock and timidloodle um very much uh utilize the same a lot of the the same habitat that you develop. So um what other kind of species benefit from a lot of the habitat development that you use?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean we're the Rough Grouse Society, but you know, rough grouse are emblematic. Um our membership who are are hunters, hunters who want to give back, right? Right. So every they can all relate to grouse. Um but we're really we're an organization and we're about healthy forest habitat and cultivating habitat for forest birds and all the other species. So whether it's woodcock or whipperwill or barred owl, anything that benefits from an early successional forest, which is something that we're lacking in our part of the province where Central Ontario chapter works, that's what we're trying to uh uh support and enhance.
SPEAKER_04Well, I'm glad you mentioned Bard Owl, because I have to tell you, one of the shows that we did, we had a uh bit of an expert, well, an expert um from um one of the uh U.S. universities on bird calls. And uh we were talking, uh I was talking about how on um there were some postings on a Oshawa site uh where people were complaining about somebody was killing all these rabbits and decapitating them, and there was just these dead bodies around. And anyway, she came on afterwards and she said, You know, all those rabbits, it was owls that were doing that. And the reason they do that is because a rabbit is so lean that most of the cholesterol and fat is located in the brain, so they take the heads off and consume the heads. Well, for those that wondered, guess what I found in the backyard? A decapitated rabbit, and there is all kinds of barred owls in the area. So guess what's doing the rabbits in in my area? Same thing. But these are the sorts of um habitat development that you work with, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and you know, the the relationship to habitat and and predation. So 60 to 75 percent of rough gross predation occurs um by way of aerial predators, owl, owls and hawks, right? Right. And uh, you know, we we talk about about a lot of coyotes on the landscape and in areas historically where they weren't uh before, and they certainly everything wants to eat a gross. Right, yeah. Everything loves grouse, including coyotes. But it's the aerial predators and uh quality habitat, among other things, provides protection from aerial predators. Right. Right? So uh there's a difference between a drumming log that's out in the open and a drumming log that's in the middle of a dogwood thicket.
SPEAKER_04So for those that don't know, I know what a drumming log is, but kind of explain what a drumming log is.
SPEAKER_03Uh uh a drumming log is the center of a male ruff's grouse world. It's the center of his um of his uh core habitat, and it's incredibly important um in terms of the spring mating ritual. So a male ruffed grouse will dig his his uh talons into uh talons? Is that what you term a rough sure? Let's call them. He digs into the log and he starts flapping his wings and he starts beating his wings. And if you're in the forest in the spring and you hear what sounds like somebody trying to start a two-stroke engine, that's a roughed grouse drumming. That's the term for the mating ritual. So he's beating his ring wings in increasingly rapid succession, creating, and that sound is created not by his wings hitting his chest, as some people may think, but they're actually mini sonic booms. But that's that's a sound that attracts females, saying, I'm a dominant male here. But he needs that drumming log, um, and it's mostly a log, but it can also be a boulder, right? But it provides a bit of an elevated perch. Um, it also has to have some cover around it to protect him so that while he's drumming and making all this noise, he's not vulnerable to aerial predators. Yep. And it's essential for the mating ritual.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So um and when I had the the bird expert on from uh the states, uh we briefly uh I asked her about drumming and how come gruzz drum in the fall? Yes. And she she said she didn't specialize in it, but I don't know if there's been any studies that I'm aware of that indicate as to why I thought it was a territorial thing, but we're not too sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I'll tell you what I know, um, both from what what I've heard from the experts and and from personal experience. And uh I I too uh believe that fall drumming, do know believe and understand that fall drumming is a territorial thing. And um, so when you hear fall drumming, um, that's one male grouse telling another male grouse, get out. Um so as a hunter, when you hear fall drumming, it's worth investigating because it usually means there's two grouse in the area.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Now it's like it's like um the piliated woodpecker. I recall when I was minister, the signing a letter as to why this pileated woodpecker was pecking at the metal on their antenna. And so the answer was was because it gave a good sound, and piliated woodpeckers used pecking to let other males know that this is my area. And the sound in the antenna um actually uh gave a farther outreach than wood, and that's why it was pecking there.
SPEAKER_03Well, thanks for that. I'm gonna walk away from this uh smarter than I was, because you know, now I can uh help give someone insight when they wonder why uh woodpeckers pecking on their aluminum siding.
SPEAKER_04So something else, so um, I I take a lot of people out in the springtime and I show them something and they look at me like I'm nuts. And I'm gonna do it right now, which is which is essentially the sound of a drumming of a rough grouse. Yeah. And I said, now when we come back down the trail, you watch there'll be a grouse here, and they look at me like, Are you nuts? And every single time a grouse flushes right in that area, just by tapping on your chest and beating like a and it sounds like that, and it works perfectly.
SPEAKER_03It does, and it's a it's a very um low frequency sound, right? And and not everyone can actually hear it that well. Yeah. Um, but it's a very low sound, and again, it sounds like someone's trying to start up a motor. Yeah. Love it.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so when RGS gets involved in something, Rough Growth Society, um, what uh like how do you do habitat development? Is it on private land? Is it on is it on public land? Is it in conservation areas, or where do you do your work and what kind of work do you do you do when you're doing uh habitat development?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, our our focus is primarily on public land, right? Um so we want to do habitat development that provides uh habitat enhancement that's accessible to everyone. Right. Um so something we're really excited about as a Central Ontario chapter right now is a partnership we're working on with Simcoe County Forests, which manages about 40,000 acres of public land, actively logged land. But the wonderful thing about what they're doing, um, and much of that land is plantation pine, right? It's 80 years old. It was it was put there um to combat soil erosion, right, you know, back in the day. And and as those pine stands are thinned and logged, um, once they're logged out, what's happening in Simcoe County's forest management plan is they're gonna allow those stands to revert back to mixed deciduous forests through natural succession.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_03And and that, you know, logging mimics or creates the disturbances on the landscape that create early successional forests that were lacking that used to be created by fire. Right? We we we we prevent forest fires for very good reasons in in Ontario, you know, protect persons' property and resources. Yeah. And now we need logging to uh to mimic those uh disturbances in the forests. Right. So as uh Simcoe County Forest has done logging, we as Rough Grouse Society now can go in, and in addition to the natural forest succession that's going to occur, but that's where we can get in and do enhancement plantings. And whether it's food sources like high bush cranberry or nannyberry or white oak, which something like white oak aligns with you know forestry objectives as well, or we can get in and um cluster plant white spruce, which provides thermal cover and protection against uh predators for ruffed grouse. And in the meantime, while there, you know, and this is where we can engage um the kids and stuff and and uh youth groups, we can build brush piles. Um brush piles provide great nesting habitat for ruffed uh grouse hens. Right. They won't they won't nest in the brush pile, but they'll nest beside it. Um and you can actually create drumming logs. Oh, yeah. Um it's a little known fact that um grouse prefer to face east when they're drumming, catching the morning sun as it's rising. Yeah. So if you take a log um from a maybe a tree that you've cut down because it's an undesirable non-native species like um Scots pine or something, lay that log in a north-south orientation in a thicket, right? So there's some overhead cover like a dogwood thicket or something else, and that grouse um he will face east on that log, right? Because he faces the sides of the logs, not the ends of the log. So if you lay a grouse uh log in a north-south orientation, that grouse is gonna drum, you know, facing east in the morning. And you can create a drumming log. And and uh, you know, I've heard anecdotal stuff where people have done this and put a trail cam on that log, and they're getting footage of rough grouse drumming.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I didn't know that. That's something I didn't know. Because I've certainly seen uh grouse drumming and and heard many a times with the spring and the fall, but I did not know they faced east. I wonder. Sounds interesting, I know, because um deer have a similar uh where the deer will always uh they will bed high at night and come down in the morning because of the way the thermals, the the the the wind rises up a hill and they walk into the wind. So um obviously they're looking into the east if they're drumming and uh interesting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, and it's like I said, it's not always a log. It could be a boulder, it could be you know something else, but uh it's mostly logs.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and I guess though that um from what I recall, there used to be a book that came out with RGS and it was a grouse on it, um, that did talked about habitat development. If I remember correctly, there was kind of tiered from kind of like a field to uh primary, secondary, and mature growth forests is is kind of the best habitat. So you've got, you know, like a field and then younger trees and then a little bit older and a little bit older and a little bit older. And those are some of the best habitats for grouse?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, because roughed grouse use all parts of the forest, right? So a healthy forest has a mix of forest types and ages.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03Right. And but grouse particularly rely on early successional forests. Um, one, it has most of the food sources that they like. Right. There aren't as many um food sources as in an older forest for grouse. Grouse are also more vulnerable to predators, including aerial predators. If you can imagine um a mature closed canopy forest with not a whole lot of understory, that's dangerous territory for rough grouse, right? Um the other thing early successional forest provides is uh what's called brooding habitat. So when this those chicks are hatched, they can make their way under those ferns and under those raspberries, and they can feed and they're picking up insects and all those sorts of things. Again, with the protection against aerial predators because that that vegetation uh provides it. So um, you know, you want you want early young forest, you want diversity in in tree and and plant um and insect species in that forest, um, and you want structural complexity. So you want different layers of ver cover vertically um through a forest.
Nest Predators And Human Scent
SPEAKER_04Right. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I recall uh way back when um probably be the early 80s when I was working with um the Lindsay, the MR Natural Resources Ministry of Natural Resources District, and there was a great CO in there, a conservation officer, and I would reach out to him, he's retired now, and hopefully he's still around. I haven't heard from him for a long time. But anyways, I recall flushing, I was doing a spring walkthrough in an area and happened to flush a hand off a nest. And I saw where she came from and I looked, and I and so I thought this is kind of interesting. And I happened to be doing some work at a pheasant farm and I wondered what would happen. So I caught talked to him and I said, Look, what would happen if I uh first of all, is it legal? I'm talking to CEO, I figured he'd know. Um if I put pheasant eggs in the rough gross nest, because uh um we've tried other I've tried other things with guinea fowl and things like that for uh pheasants to see if we can get them to naturalize a lot better. Anyways, uh he said, Well, you know something? That might be very interesting, it might work, but he said, That won't matter anyways. I said, What do you mean? He said, Well, did you walk over to the nest? I said, Well, I walk over. I said, Well and then he said something that quite surprised me, which shocked me. He said, No, what'll happen is a fox or a raccoon will follow your scent trail to find out where you were going and will find that nest now. And I had no idea, and I thought, come on, I'm just walking through the woods. And sure enough, I went back and uh all the eggs were uh eaten and open there. I had no idea that a fox or a raccoon would do that, and this could be hours after I'd walked through where my scent trail would go through, but I had no idea. So that was something I learned there, but that was dealing with um some of the really good people, a lot of good people in Ammon uh natural resources, and and SEO happened to be uh a good source of information. Yeah. Yeah, but we did we did other work. I worked with um South Central Ontario Big Game Association, which was a habitat development organization as well. We used to go into deer yards working in conjunction with uh natural resources, and I remember doing the Bexley Deer Yard up on um French Settlement Road, as well as uh up in the non-quan, and it was habitat development as well, where we would go in and and they actually had brush cutters that took down the young tree to open the area up to make it good habitat for that sort of thing. So do you just go in with brush cutters or or how do you do uh how do you do a development or just plantings?
SPEAKER_03No, we're we're we're we're uh whatever volunteers can operate by hand. So we go in with with chainsaws and pruners, and uh and really we're doing work at that level, right? So what we're able to do is, you know, for that hunter who wants to give back as an organization, um, you know, not only can hunters certainly, you know, support our efforts through becoming members and donating or buying merchandise from us, but we what we actually offer our members is if you want to get your hands dirty and put on some work gloves and be able to complete a project and point at that, you know, years later and say, I had a hand in that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um that's what we can offer. Yeah.
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Chaga Stories On Blood Pressure
SPEAKER_04Okay, we're with Bev here in Lindsay. And Bev, you've got some experience with Chaga that you'd like to share with some people. Tell us uh two stories. Start with your father's story.
SPEAKER_00Hi, Jerry. Um well, um, my dad had mentioned Me that he was struggling with his blood pressure and he'd gone on meds and it wasn't bringing it down. He was running around 180, 185, and wasn't enjoying that at all. And um, and so I suggested that he try the chocolate tea because I knew some other people that had had good experience with it, and I knew my own experience with it. He started doing the chocolate tea every day. Um, he stuck it in with his coffee, so he only had to drink one thing a day, and within three weeks he had dropped from 180 to 140, which he was really excited about. But what it was he was even more excited about was that about three to four weeks after that, he had gone down to 125. So we're really grateful for the difference the chaga has made with his blood pressure.
SPEAKER_04Good. And he wasn't doing there wasn't any other medications or changes. This is the only change?
SPEAKER_00No, this was the actually the only shift. He didn't shift anything diet-wise, physical exercise-wise at all. The only thing he added in that he hadn't been doing before was chaga.
SPEAKER_04And put it in his coffee, I believe. I heard it in his coffee.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very good.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and you have your own story now. I have my own story.
SPEAKER_00So I I started on chaga when I um I met Jerry just as I realized that I was going into a relapse of multiple cirrhosis, that I I had not relapsed for approximately 25 years. So I was a little startled about it and wanted to get on it. And um, so I was in the process of changing a lot of things so that I could um go back into relapse rather than dealing with the MS symptoms. And so I did change diet and I stopped physical exercise so that my body would have more rest, and I added the chaga in. And within a within a I mean within five days, I noticed that the nerve sensory issues I was having in my legs was already settling down, and within about three weeks I had the strength to walk unassisted again, and I am about three months in now, and um I have um taken a 10-day break from it a couple of times just to, you know, you know, just so that my body, you know, can stay balanced, you know, without it. Sure. But every time I go back on it, I um I can feel the difference in mental clarity and in the way my nerves are communicating, and I'm I'm walking very, very well now.
SPEAKER_04Very good. Well, thank you very much for sharing your story with us.
SPEAKER_00No, thanks for thanks for hollering me and asking me to try a free cup that one farmer's market morning.
Chaga Discount Code Offer
How To Join And Volunteer
SPEAKER_04Well, I'm glad it's working out for you. Thanks, Jerry. Okay. We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, Chaga Health and Wellness.com, place a few items in the cart, and check out with the code CANAPY, C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package, and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening. Back to the episode. Well, when you talk about um getting involved, I know South Central Ontario Fishing Game, and I used to be there wasn't any work parties that I recall with RGS when they had uh because we used to have a dinner. Or was that uh at the Kinsman Club in Oshawa, and then at the Holiday Inn in Oshawa when it was the holiday inn, and we went to all the dinners and we went to quite a few. We did a lot of the dinners uh at the time, long before I was minister, or because it was it was my passion to be involved in the outdoors. But uh South Central had a real problem that it was losing memberships because it was designed as a habitat development organization and they had no projects. It got to be a point where natural resources didn't want to do partnerships, it was the government of the day, and they wanted to step away from that. So a lot of their memberships stepped off and they lost huge numbers of memberships. So what I did was I worked with uh with them and working on the second marsh and a lot of other groups and and areas, so it brought back membership and gave them some value. Uh what kind of members like what kind of numbers and how do people get involved? And is there work groups or is there days and where do they find out information?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the the the place to start is uh our website, which is simply rgs.ca. Okay. And um that'll uh link you to our chapters, it'll have contact information, and really it's at the chapter level where you can make the most difference. Right. So join the national organization. It doesn't cost you anything more to become a member of a chapter. Right. Um and it's really just where you're located in your geography, and if there's a chapter near you, um, we'll get you involved in in projects. And and our chapters, um, you know, they play on their on their strengths, right? So in central Ontario, and because of some of the part partnerships we're cultivating, as I mentioned, we're gonna be able to do hands-on habitat work. Right. Um, um, other chapters, for example, our North Shore Tilsonburg chapter in South Southern Ontario, um, where their strength lies is they raise a tremendous amount of money and they donate it to worthy causes in the area. Most recently uh being they donated funds to the Long Point Region Conservation Authority um to do cutting, um, brush piles, those grouse drumming logs that I mentioned, right? So that's that's what their strength is in raising funds and and and supporting uh the expertise in doing those projects.
SPEAKER_04North Shore is a reference to North Shore of Lake Erie, right? That's right. Right, because uh uh could be a lot of people think North Shore is superior. For sure, yeah. Other areas as well. So how many chapters are there in Ontario or Canada wide or around?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh currently there are two chapters in Ontario. Okay. The uh the North Shore Tilsonburg, Lake Erie chapter that you mentioned.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_03Um our newest chapter is the Central Ontario chapter.
SPEAKER_04And when say you say Central Ontario, where's Central Ontario?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, our membership ranges from the Greater Toronto area, um, north to include all of Muskoka, um west to include Grey Bruce, and east sort of Halliburton. Oh, okay. So we cover a broad area and we're um you know trying to move around the area and do different projects. Right. Like I said, our immediate uh project coming up is going to be centered in Simcoe County, just because the opportunity that that's uh come up there. Um there's also a Fredericton, New Brunswick chapter. So there's three active chapters in Canada.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um what we anticipate in the very new near future is an Ottawa Valley chapter.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of interest uh down there, and there's a lot of good people doing good work already. Um and um we also anticipate a Nova Scotia chapter as well.
Grouse Populations Across Ontario
SPEAKER_04Oh very good. So, how's the gross population doing in Ontario or Canada wide?
SPEAKER_03So it depends where where you are. So in Canada, we're in great shape if we compare ourselves to what's happening um, for example, in the United States, right? So there's places like um Indiana where grouse have been pretty much extirpated. Um Ohio may be nearing that as well. Uh Pennsylvania is is suffering. Uh, New York State seems to be going doing okay. Um so that so they're struggling. Um Southern Ontario is also struggling. Um, I grew up in Niagara and uh as a kid and as a teenager we did a lot of cottontail hunting. Right. Um but uh believe it or not, there are grouse in the Niagara region. And um we we harvested grouse and they're still there, right? But um the fragmented agricultural landscape with isolated woodlots poses a challenge. Um these woodlots that we have on the landscape in our agricultural areas, um uh I call them aging tree museums.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_03Um so we do a good job from a land use policy planning perspective to protect existing woodlots, right? Um, but those woodlots are growing up. And unless that landowner is interested in forest management, um, they age out and they become less valuable to all sorts of species, not just rough grouse, because uh an early successional forest has far more diversity than biodiversity in always than a mature closed canopy uh forest. But as we move further north in Ontario, um one, we you know, we start getting into larger chunks of contiguous forest, right? So I think of Muskoka North. Um, and uh we also have more active logging. And logging, you know, creates those forest disturbances that used to be created by fires.
SPEAKER_04Forest fires, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right. So so in in northern Ontario, grouse are doing fine. They're not without threats, right? West Nile um is an issue everywhere. Um, and there's always obviously predators and that sort of thing. But wherever you have good quality habitat, it buffers roughed grouse against all of those threats, whether they're threats posed by climate change, by disease like West Nile, um, they're more resilient to predators, right? It's it's the difference between us as humans having a nice, warm, secure home with nutritious food in the refrigerator and a steady flow of resources versus you know being a homeless person and suddenly the risk factors increase in on all sides. And and that's what happens to rought grouse. So where the habitat is marginal and suboptical, suboptimal, sorry, right, that's where they become more vulnerable to things like West Nile, which has you know not impacted our our northern grouse the same way.
Invasives And Missing Wildlife Data
SPEAKER_04So do you get involved uh with things like Phragmites uh uh extraction and things like that?
SPEAKER_03Uh so personally, yes. Um uh in addition to uh um being uh a director of the Rough Gross Society and the chair of the Central Ontario chapter, um I'm also a director um at Tiny Marsh. Oh, yeah. Um, where we've had a tremendously successful Phragmites control program. Oh, good. Yeah, it's been very active over the course of about five years. Um we've wrestled Phragmite and pinned it to the ground, Phragmites and pinned it to the ground. And now we're really just in the maintenance period where if we can keep on top of it, we can keep Phragmites from spreading through the marsh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because it's everywhere. I look all over the place. And for those that don't remember, we did a show on Phragmites with the Invasive Species Ontario group. And when you're driving down uh the any of the roads or highways, you'll see uh like a kind of um wet areas that used to be a lot of cattails, bull rushes in there. Now they've got this tall kind of grass thing with this like fluffy, leafy kind of thing at the top. That's phragmites, and it's taken over huge tracts of uh uh land all over the Ontario and destroying a lot of habitat for a lot of animals. So there is um some extraction programs and funding available for groups to to to deal with that. But so but what kind of now food sources and so predators? I recall as well that uh when we tried to do when I tried when as minister to try to reintroduce um pheasants, ringneck pheasants into Ontario, it was the predation and uh opossums coming in had a huge impact because they were killing a lot of the pheasants' nests, so they weren't able to get hold. Is it the same sort of thing? You're finding opossums having big impacts on and raccoons and obviously fox and birds and we we can only speculate, right?
SPEAKER_03Um in Ontario, we don't we don't measure or study these things, unfortunately, at least not um at the provincial level. Right. Right. And uh as as a rough grouse society chapter, you know, um I I'm envious when I hear um the Ruffed Gross Society out of the USA interviewing the Ruffed Gross biologist um for central New York or somebody with a title like that. Yep. And uh and referencing studies and uh drumming counts and um um um hunter harvest rates, and this is just data we we don't collect in Ontario anymore, and we don't have that those sort of um people in our resource management agencies dedicated um um to undertake that kind of work. We're we're just not staffed up for it, right? It's a I'm sure it's a budgetary issue, but uh so we don't know, but we can only speculate it's it's a threat.
Brush Piles And Crazy Flight
SPEAKER_04So when um Rough Crows have a nest, how many eggs are they? How much in a clutch and is it only one clutch a year, or how does that work, or do you know?
SPEAKER_03Um the they don't they don't um have multiple clutches. Okay. A clutch can be eight to twelve eggs typically. Yeah, and they nest once a year. Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So in normally how many would survive of the young from that?
SPEAKER_03Oh to uh to adulthood, and by adulthood I mean surviving um to the fall of the year that they were born, 10%.
SPEAKER_04That's it, 10%. Yeah. So if you got eight, you have like one. Yeah. So one out of uh an entire clutch on average of only 10 to 12. That's right. Eight to twelve. That's right. Really? So what can because I know um up at uh the camp I have up and halfway between Halliburton and Bancroft, what can I do? Because I see young hatchlings there every year. What can I do to help ensure that they survive?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mentioned brush piles earlier. Yeah, so you know, if you're doing some some trail clearing or you you've you've cut down a tree and you got the tops, right? Yeah, don't just leave those those tops um spread around just to decompose. Pile them up. Right. Pile them up. You know, obviously, brush piles, a lot of things use brush piles, right? Rabbits and squirrels and that sort of thing. And and as I mentioned earlier, a ruffed grouse, they're not gonna burrow into the brush pile to nest, but they will nest beside it. They like that security that it that it provides.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and one of the other things that I have to mention though is just about every year for the first several years when we built this place, you would see where a grouse flew into the glass in the window on the door. Yeah. And would be lying there. So we had to put things on the glass in order so it realized that you can't fly through there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so we don't find them anymore. No, and and and the interesting thing about that, and uh um someone um at the sportsman show said something similar to me. You know, they found a grouse, it hit their front window and it was laying on their on their front deck. And I said, I said, what time of year was that? And I knew what the answer was going to be. And they said, Oh, I think it was early October. And I said, Yeah. And um that refers to a grouse behavior that's um termed crazy flight. Crazy flight? Yeah. So what happens, as I mentioned, those grouse broods, those surviving grouse broods, um, they live as a family group, right? With the mother hen straight into the early fall. Right. But then early fall comes, and depending where you are, it could be late September, um, and it could be early or even mid-October. At some point, those male grouse in that brood have to disperse. They're gonna go out on the landscape and uh and make their way in the world.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03But as we talked about earlier, male grouse are also territorial. Right. So this dispersion of young male grouse is called crazy flight because it seems to happen within a one-week period in the fall, really, where all of a sudden grouse are going everywhere, and that's when they're smacking into windows. Really? During crazy flight. So those grouse they spread out on the landscape, and we talked about fall drumming. That's when that uh that young male grouse went out, and now he's he's he's uh inadvertently landed in the territory of a of an older drummer, an older male grouse who who starts drumming and saying, Hey, get out. Yeah, right? So they're looking for territory, and that's when typically when grouse hit the window, it's gonna be the early fall.
Fundraisers That Fund Real Habitat
SPEAKER_04You're probably right about that, uh, the time of year that we would find it. And yeah, I'm I'm I'm crazy flighted. Never heard of that before. Yeah, that's interesting. So tell us, have you got any events coming up in the future that people can come out and participate? Uh like a is it like a fundraiser where they have auction, silent auction, live auction, like a lot of the game dinners uh used to attend and things like that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so the Tilsonburg chapter is having their annual dinner in May. Okay. Um and uh you can look that up, but it's a it's a it's a great dinner. I've attended it, um, and uh it's a great fundra fundraiser. And like I said, they take that money and they turn it around and they put it right back into local conservation projects and and projects um that engage youth in the outdoors. So like youth pheasant hunts and that sort of thing. I know that's not gross, but it's all about hunter retention and recruitment, right?
SPEAKER_04Getting people involved. So one of the things then, um, now I know some organizations, a considerable amount of the money from fundraisers go to administration fees. What kind of amount uh volume of the fundraising dinner actually goes to projects? Yeah, almost all of it.
SPEAKER_03And what I mean by that is so while uh the Ruffed Gross Society in the USA, Rough Gross Society, American Woodcock Society, is a sister organization to us, Rough Gross Society of Canada is corporately entirely separate.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
Where To Find RGS Online
SPEAKER_03So a hundred percent of the funds raised that we raise in Canada stay in Canada. Okay. Um those funds, most of them are raised at the chapter level. Right. And I'm gonna say 90% of those funds stay at the chapter level. Right. Um, we certainly um support our national organization. Um and as chapters, um, we do that. But the great thing is when someone, you know, when we're at the sportsman show and uh we sell somebody uh um a a cap, you know, a blaze orange cap emblazoned with Rough Grouse Society, I can honestly look that person in the eye and say, hey, that 20 bucks is gonna help buy a white oak seedling to put it in the ground.
SPEAKER_04Oh, very good. Yep. Very good. So tell us how can people find out more information? Where can they get in touch with you and where are your uh information uh that people can find out more details about it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, certainly our website, which is simply rgs.ca. Um you can look us up on social media, Facebook and Instagram, um, both Roughed Gross Society of Canada, um Central Ontario chapter of the Rough Grouse Society, the Fredericton chapter of the Rough Grouse Society, and the North Shore Tilsonburg Chapter. We all have a social media presence and we promote our different events and activities. Um, as a Central Ontario chapter, you know, not only um we talked about the Tilsonburg Dinner, but in Central Ontario, a lot of our members, being uh grouse hunting enthusiasts, are also bird dog enthusiasts. So we hold dog training events, oh yeah, uh trainer clinics and seminars, and we also hold an annual grouse camp in the North Bay area.
SPEAKER_04Oh well, thank you very much for informing us about RGS Rough Grout Society. I know it was an organization that in the past I attended a lot of dinners and helped out where we could, and it sounds like we're going to be actively doing that again. And just an appreciate you taking the time to be here, Eric. Yeah, I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03You could probably tell by the excitement in my voice I could talk about this forever.
SPEAKER_04Thanks very much. Just something a little bit different for people out there wanting to get actively involved out there under the canopy.
SPEAKER_06How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, Steve Nedzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, Diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people. Share their stories of our trials, tribulations, and inspirations. Learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
SPEAKER_07Meanwhile, we're sitting there bobbing along, trying to figure out how to catch a bass. And we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
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