 are most popular game birds and a delight to birdwatchers, hunters, and other recreationists. They can be found throughout Canada and the northern forested regions of the United States. To people living in this area, a tough winter is long and cold with lots of snow, but it's just right for roughed grouse. A good winter for roughed grouse is a winter that lasts about 120, 130 days, unbroken, soft snow about 10 inches to 20 inches of snow and temperatures under 20 degrees Fahrenheit. When there are at least 10 inches of loose snow, grouse make snow burrows to escape cold temperatures and predators. Well here is a snow burrow here as you see now and the bird came in here from the tree that he was roosting in, they're feeding in, dived into the snow, and then in this case turned and came back and actually roosted here and you can see quite an accumulation of droppings there where he spent the night and then when it came time to leave he took a couple of steps and there the marks from his wings as he flew off into some place else. Grouse need an adequate food supply to survive winter and breed effectively in the spring. Without it, hens may not lay good quality eggs or stay on the nest long enough to hatch them. Chicks that do hatch may be too weak to survive. Here and across the major portion of their range, I think the stamina flower buds of the aspen is the most important and I consider it the basic food resource for grouse. The aspen flower bud is a rich nugget of food. It runs anywhere from 14 to as high as 20% protein which is about the equivalent, pretty close to the equivalent of the protein level of yellow-shelled corn I believe. Across most of their range, the northern part of their range, you're not likely to find very many grouse in the forest floor unless there's aspen in the forest canopy. So they're almost always associated with aspen, though the aspen may be mixed with other forest types. When grouse are not able to find good food and shelter their health may deteriorate. Then they are more likely to be taken by predators. The most important predators through most of their range are the avian predators or what we call the raptor which includes the hawks and the owls. I think across most of their range is probably the great horned owl is the number one predator because it occurs in just about any wood lot that you're likely to find rough grouse in. The most efficient predator in terms of being very likely to take a grouse if it gets after it's a grouse hawk. For protective cover the ideal timber stands have from 3,000 to 8,000 trees per acre. Such stands are too dense for hawks and owls to fly through but trees are far enough apart that grouse can fly away to escape ground predators. Young conifers can also provide good grouse cover however as the trees grow older and taller they can become death traps. Raptors can sit hidden in the conifer crown and grouse will move into the cover on the forest floor unaware of the presence of the raptor until too late. Gullion speculates that frequent disturbance of grouse in winter may increase natural predation. For example late season hunting for grouse or other game may push grouse out of ideal cover into poor cover where they are more exposed to natural predators. Snowmobilers and cross country skiers are less likely to disturb grouse because they don't usually enter the dense timber stands preferred by grouse. Harsh winter weather and hungry predators can stack the tables against rough grouse. Good habitat however can help even the odds. I look at a forest as a as an aggregation of 10 acre activity centers and each activity center is capable of supporting one pair of grouse and so you can apply the same management to a 10 acre wood lot or 10,000 acre wood lot. In each 10 acre activity center there should be four cutting blocks of two and a half acres each. Cutting blocks are usually harvested at 10 year intervals to produce the variety of age classes of timber that are needed by grouse for food cover and nesting space. This 10 year cutting interval may vary for different timber types. A professional forester or wildlife biologist can help you with specific grouse management plans.