Grouse, Pheasant Numbers Strong in Wisconsin’s Top Gamebird Range

   Even the most casual upland-bird hunters figure out where to focus their efforts when reviewing DNR surveys on Wisconsin’s springtime pheasant and ruffed-grouse populations.

   For grouse, generally speaking, just draw a jagged line from Green Bay to St. Croix Falls and hunt north of it.

   For pheasants, start by finding Eau Claire County on your map. Next, draw a northwesterly arc from there to cover Polk and Barron counties to the northwest, and Pierce and Pepin counties to the west, and include Dunn and St. Croix counties in between. You’ve now marked the state’s top pheasant range.

   When the Department of Natural Resources issues an annual press release each July to share these surveys’ results, it focuses on statewide averages, of course. This spring’s in-person field surveys estimated drumming activity by grouse declined 6% statewide while pheasant observations averaged 0.81 birds per stop on designated routes, up from 0.62 birds in 2024. Put another way, that’s an average of 81 pheasants for every 100 stops.

   But realistically, you’ll rarely see a grouse or pheasant in at least half of Wisconsin. The DNR’s 2025 grouse survey, for example, notes that the agency no longer monitors much of southeastern Wisconsin for drumming grouse.

Pheasant numbers in Wisconsin, as well as grouse numbers, are looking strong, based on spring surveys by the Department of Natural Resources. — Patrick Durkin photo

   Roughly speaking, the state’s grouse-free zone is a huge triangle extending from Green Bay southwesterly to Lafayette County and eastward to Lake Michigan. Although scattered grouse populations exist there, their numbers and habitats are so small that in-person surveys are futile. “Grouse would need to be monitored by another method to be detected,” the report said.

   Things aren’t much better across southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. Although field surveys there reported a 250% increase in drumming activity from 2024, a closer look at the data cools your coals. Out of 15 survey routes in 2024, monitors heard three drums for every 100 stops on the routes. This spring, they heard nine drums per 100 stops.

   Grouse drumming was better in Wisconsin’s Central Forest, where monitors traveling 24 routes heard 41 drums per 100 stops in 2024 and 46 drums per 100 stops this spring. In other words, they averaged no drumming during 59 stops in 2024 and nothing in 54 stops this spring.

   To hear grouse drumming regularly in spring, you must be in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, where DNR monitors traveling 52 routes in 2024 heard an average of 2.42 grouse drumming at each stop. This year, while covering 51 routes, the monitors heard an average of 2.13 drums per stop. Though that’s an 8.3% decline from last year, it’s 4.6 times more drumming than was heard in the Central Forest this spring and nearly 24 times more drumming than heard in the Driftless region.

   DNR monitors, of course, gather these data while following scientifically designed routes to systematically cover gamebird regions. Therefore, you can be sure someone with or without scientific training or understanding will question the process. Still others will even question the monitors’ listening and identification skills, and whether they’re legally deaf in one or both ears.

   Taylor Finger, the DNR’s gamebird specialist, assures skeptics the agency thought of all that. That’s why monitors work in pairs, listening to verify what the other hears. Finger said the DNR doesn’t require monitors to pass a hearing exam, but they take the job seriously and remove themselves from survey work when their hearing fades.

   Ruffed grouse, especially, instill respect among their admirers. These birds are every wildlife manager’s dream because most hunters realize grouse management means habitat management. In contrast, deer management is more about managing people’s assumptions and expectations.

   Most folks accept that grouse – or partridge as some call them – are the morel mushroom of game birds. That is, we can’t domesticate and duplicate them, no matter how lovingly we hover and monitor. Their numbers boom and bust for reasons we think we understand, but can’t state with certainty.

   Therefore, we cannot mass-produce ruffed grouse as we do fish or pheasants. We don’t grow them under nets and release them when the mood strikes to hunt. We concede that we can only provide them places to live, and accept their population swings much as we do the weather.

   That doesn’t mean grouse hunters don’t pay attention. They watch and wait hopefully this time each year. May 25 to June 15 is usually the critical period for hatching new grouse. And now hunters are wondering how fledglings are faring. Will summer broods endure and provide more flushes and good shooting when hunting season opens in September?

   Meanwhile, DNR pheasant monitors this spring saw and heard more ringnecks along their designated survey routes than in 2024. In fact, monitors recorded their best pheasant numbers since the DNR reconfigured its survey work in 2013. The mean number of pheasants detected during each 6-minute stop was 0.81 statewide, but the mean number for Region 1 in northwestern Wisconsin hit a record 2.7 per stop, while Region 2 (east-central counties) recorded a 0.24 mean and Region 3 (extreme southern Wisconsin) recorded a 0.22 mean.

   Even though you’ll see more pheasant hunters in Wisconsin’s southern half, and even though all DNR-raised pheasants get released across that region, the state’s best pheasant range and ringneck numbers live between Eau Claire, Polk and Pierce counties.

   “Region 1 is still our hidden gem,” Finger said. “If you want to hunt truly wild birds, the kind most similar to pheasants in the Dakotas that spook when truck doors start slamming, you hunt the lands between Eau Claire and Minnesota. But if you want to do all your pheasant hunting within 300 yards of your truck, that’s not where you go.”

   Finger said these northwestern counties hold good pheasant numbers because their landscapes feature some of the state’s best remnant grasslands and huntable wetlands. Likewise, these resident pheasants are 100% self-sustaining. The DNR doesn’t release pheasants in Region 1, so there’s no influx of inferior birds to taint the resident pheasants’ wild genetics.

   Not all of the area is privately owned, either. Finger suggests hunters go online and study the DNR’s “Public Access Lands” maps at https://dnrmaps.wi.gov/H5/?Viewer=Public_Access_Lands to find places to hunt. Another DNR web page, “PDF Maps by County,” https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/fl/RealEstate/PALMaps, offers pdf files of regional maps showing public lands.