Duluth, Minn. ? Dean Fries can’t wait for the grouse opener. While a lot of hunters wait for the leaves to fall, Fries will be out there with his Gordon setters on opening day and the next four days.

Ruffed grouse season opens Saturday in the Great Lakes region.

“Most people really miss the boat,” says Fries, who lives in Culver, Minn. “That’s one of the best weekends of the year. You see lots of birds and get lots of points (from dogs).”

Birds are usually still clustered in family units early in the season.

“You walk in on points and you can get a brood of five, six, seven birds. That’s fun,” Fries says. “I usually miss them all.”

A man of numbers, Fries has figured the odds. He expects to flush 30 to 45 birds on opening day. Not different birds, but that many flushes, or “opportunities.” He counts them on a small “clicker” he carries. A senior commercial lender for Pioneer National Bank in Duluth, Fries is analytical about his grouse hunting.

“On opening weekend, I need to see 28 to 35 birds to shoot my five birds. That’s because of the leaf factor,” says Fries, 45.

With so many leaves remaining on trees, it’s tough to see a bird for very long, as any early season grouse hunter knows.

Better expectations

Grouse populations seem to be on the upswing in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Spring drumming counts were up 37 percent in Northeastern Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. In Northwestern Wisconsin, drumming counts were up 58 percent, according to the Wisconsin DNR.

The past two to three years, grouse populations in both states hovered at the low end of their 10-year cycles. The population should now climb, peaking sometime at the end of the decade.

“I think we’re going to have more birds than they predict,” Fries says. “We had rain in the spring, but the birds were still on the nest.”

That’s better than rainy weather after the chicks are hatched, when they’re vulnerable to cool, wet conditions. Fries thinks broods fared well in the warm, dry summer.

“I think we’re in for a noticeable improvement,” he says.

High on Setters

Fries grew up in Blaine, Minn., but tagged along with his dad on grouse hunts in the Pengilly area. In college, he began researching grouse dogs and settled on Gordon setters, a pointing breed. He owned nine Gordons before he found one he really liked and began breeding.

Now his Clearcut Kennel line of pups fetches $700 apiece. Fries says much of the credit for his kennel operation must go to his wife, Jill, who maintains the kennels and handles vaccinations. This year, she has raised 1,500 quail that Fries uses in training.

Fries has one litter of pups on the ground, all of them spoken for. He ships his pups to hunters all over the country. They’re marketed specifically as grouse dogs.

“I’ll always have Gordon setters,” Fries says. “A Gordon has all the pointing instinct that an English setter has, but they tend to want to work with you more as a team player.”

He trains his dogs to stop if a bird is accidentally flushed and to avoid flushing birds prematurely.

“Grouse are the toughest bird for a pointing dog to handle,” Fries says.

Woodcock will almost always sit tight for a point. A pheasant will run, but a pointer can trail the bird and finally point it when the bird holds in heavy cover. But grouse tend to run away from a point and then flush just out of range – or out of sight.