2024 -2025 New England Upland Game Season

[Wildlif]

Vermont’s Ruffed Grouse season opens the last Saturday in September, and every year for the last 12 years I’ve taken advantage of this to get an early start bird hunting. Conditions aren’t the best for harvesting birds with the leaves still on the trees, but you can’t beat being in the woods with mild temperatures and a good dog finding decent numbers of birds.

I make 8 to 10 trips to Vermont every year to visit with my daughter, son-in-law and grand kids. In the fall and winter when I’m up there I take advantage of hunting on their 1,200-acre Dairy Farm located in the Champlain Valley Region. The Winoski River runs through the farm and it gets good numbers of Woodcock when they’re migrating. The farm has about 300 acres of woodland with enough Grouse that make it interesting. However, each October I rent a cabin about 70 miles from the farm in the North-East Kingdom about 2 miles from the Canadian border where the Ruff Grouse numbers are much higher. If you have never been in the North-East Kingdom, it’s about the combined size of Hunterdon and Warren Counties together with a population of about 5,000 people with tens of thousands of Timber Company owned acres cris crossed with logging and snowmobile trails that you can hunt on. It’s more likely with a population of 1 moose per square mile in the North-East Kingdom that you will see one before you see another hunter in the woods.

Anyone on here planning to travel north to either Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine this upcoming season to hunt Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock?

[JimC1965]

Sounds like an interesting trip. Do you rent a cabin on land owned by the State Forest or from a VRBO type rental service? I have not done it before but have been researching a hunting trip up there. 

[sxs]

been hunting up in Oleans county Vt for 30+ years

 

[Wildlif]

On 5/19/2024 at 9:21 AM, JimC1965 said:

Sounds like an interesting trip. Do you rent a cabin on land owned by the State Forest or from a VRBO type rental service? I have not done it before but have been researching a hunting trip up there. 

I rent a cabin at "Quimby Country" in Averill, VT. It's a summer vacation spot with 19 cabins. They end their season every year with a Cast & Blast weekend over the Columbus Day weekend which starts on Friday with dinner in their lodge and ends on Monday. This year that is October 11th through the 14th. For the past several years, I've tacked on several days in advance of the Weekend event for a total stay of 7 to 10 days of hunting.