With encouraging ruffed grouse hunting reports flowing in since the season opened last month, I headed north over the weekend to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

Despite summerlike temperatures that left me drenched in sweat, hunting ruffed grouse in Aitkin and St. Louis counties proved fun, if not fruitful. Hunting in T-shirts, a friend and I with our three Labs flushed just seven birds north of Duluth, bagging one.

"We should be fishing," my buddy said after we hunted a nice section of woods and failed to flush a bird.

Undeterred, the next day we headed to our old grouse hunting haunts near McGregor and flushed 12 birds in about four hours, bagging two. The action wasn't bad, we figured, considering we never really found choice ruffed grouse cover. We found lots of hunters, hoards of ticks and a forest blanketed with crisp, dry leaves.

Meanwhile, the glowing reports continued from many areas: "Nearly every hunter checked had birds in the bag," reported DNR conservation officer Dan Thomasen of Two Harbors.

Duck hunting doldrums The unseasonably warm weather hasn't been conducive to duck hunting, of course, and hunting has been slow, though hunters in some areas, including just west of the Twin Cities, continued to do well. Hunting near New Ulm also improved, with ducks in flooded fields along the area rivers. And some hunters bagged limits near Fergus Falls.

Moose hunting down Hunters registered 91 moose for the first 10 days of Minnesota's northeastern moose season, down from last year likely because warm weather prevented moose from traveling, and the DNR issued a dozen fewer permits than last year. Hunter success last season was 57 percent; so far this year it's 42 percent.

The season closes Sunday.