Our Plan to Create More Grouse Habitat
We’ve been kicking around ideas for years to create more ruffed grouse habitat – quickly. The Ruffed Grouse Society does a great job and we heartily support it, but we kept thinking there had to be a faster way. Well, we found one, and today we’re proud to announce what that is.
Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost of technology – in this case, robotic technology – we have a solution to the habitat problem:
Seriously.
We prototyped the robot with the MIT Robotics Lab and Matsushita of Japan, and it actually works. Quick, thorough and a bonus: It scares the crap out of the anti-tree-cutting greenie weenie crowd.
Check out the results of one of our tests:
Best $3.5 million we ever spent.
Next Steps
We’re now applying for grants from the U.S. Forest Service, the RGS, Plum Creek Timber Co., Weyerhauser Co. and MeadWestvaco Corp. with the goal of having five units up and running by 2015.
The only changes to the design we’re contemplating are substituting wheels or tracks for the legs, depending on ground composition/density and cost.
The proto’s nickname is the Green Knight, “green” because what we’re doing is “green” (and because it makes sense, a la King Arthur, with “knight”) and “knight” in honor of John Alden Knight, who we call the godfather of grouse hunting information.
We need a proper name, so let’s hear some ideas fellas….
With these Knights in the woods, the gold ol’ days are only a few years away:
More
We did briefly consider using this as a starting point, but it was too slow and frankly was not intimidating enough:
Category: Ruffed Grouse, Ruffed Grouse Society, SBH
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Very clever and a good practical joke; seemingly not unlike my grouse hunting on occasion.