|
 Hunters
staying at McArdle's Resort on Lake Winnie find a
great Minnesota hunting resort located in the heart
of prime public hunting ground.
Contact McArdle's
today to plan for your next trip north for
duck hunting, black bear hunting or
grouse hunting.
With
more than 1,300 lakes, 923 miles of rivers and
streams and 400,000 acres of wetlands within its
borders, the Chippewa National Forest offers
waterfowl hunters a plethora of opportunities for a
great Minnesota duck hunt or goose hunt. According
to the DNR, Minnesota has 23 species of ducks and
geese. The ducks are typically divided into two
groups: puddle ducks and diving ducks. Puddle ducks
are those that live in puddles and rivers and feed
by dabbling. You will often see their bottoms tipped
up as they feed in the shallows. This variety of
duck is able to launch itself directly off of the
surface of the water and can land immediately.
Minnesota ducks that fall into
 this classification
are the mallard, green-winged teal, blue-winged
teal, cinnamon teal, pintail, gadwall, wigeon,
shoveler, wood duck, and black duck.
Diving ducks spend most of their time in large, deep
lakes and rivers. They find food by diving beneath
the water's surface and can swim long distances
underwater by kicking their large paddle feet. While
submerged they forage for fish, shellfish, mollusks,
and aquatic plants. Unlike puddle ducks, these
diving ducks cannot launch from water straight into
the air. Instead, they patter along the water
surface for several yards before becoming airborne.
Minnesota diving ducks are the canvasback, redhead,
ringneck (ringbill), scaup (bluebill), goldeneye,
bufflehead, and ruddy duck.
 A Minnesota bear hunt is
an exciting adventure for the avid outdoorsman.
Originally, the black bear was found throughout
Minnesota but now only occurs in the northern
woodlands. Common throughout northern Minnesota the
black bear lives primarily in forested areas such as
the Chippewa National Forest.
According to the DNR, black bears tend to lead
solitary lives except when females are rearing their
young, or when concentrations of food bring bears
together. Typically, an adult black bear weighs
somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds and stands two
to three feet at the shoulders. Their coat color may
vary from light brown to deep black. Before European
settlement, grizzly bears also roamed the land that
today is Minnesota. However, it is safe to say that
grizzlies have been locally extinct from Minnesota
for more than 150 years.
A bear will take advantage of any food source
available and will attempt to eat anything that
looks, smells or tastes like food. Less than ten
percent of a bear's food is animal matter and, in
fact, they more often seek out natural foods such as
nuts, meat berries, insects and tender vegetation.
When those food sources are scarce, bears
search actively for others. That is typically the
occasion when bears come in contact with people.
However, most bears are wary of people and will
usually leave when they encounter man. If bears find
a source of food they will usually return regularly
until it is exhausted..
During hibernation, a female will give birth to one
to four young. At birth, cubs weigh eight to ten
ounces and are hairless. But they grow rapidly and
usually weigh about five pounds by the time they
leave their den. By their first birthday a
cub's weight is usually 60 to 100 pounds.
 Minnesota is the top
ruffed grouse-producing state in the U.S. No
other state harvests as many ruffed grouse each fall
or provides as much public hunting land.
Ruffed grouse are a native woodland bird about the
size of a small chicken. The bird is noted for its
fan-shaped tail marked by a broad, dark band. Some
ruffed grouse (called red-phased birds) have
chestnut-colored tails, and the gray-phased birds
have gray or slate-colored tails. The bird also has
a concealed neck ruff that the male puffs out during
courtship displays.
Male ruffed grouse make a well-known drumming noise
that sounds similar to a distant lawnmower engine.
He drums by beating his wings in the air, starting
slowly as a series of thumps, and then, as beating
speeds up, the sound resembles a drum or engine. The
drumming occurs on logs, boulders, tree roots, or
other elevated sites known as “drumming logs.”
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