Connecticut · UplandRuffed grouse

Connecticut's ruffed grouse is a genuine wild population (not stocked), and DEEP's own fact sheet gives a direct, quotable regional claim: “Connecticut's ruffed grouse population exists at a low abundance, primarily across the northern third of the state.” DEEP attributes the concentration and the species' broader decline to habitat: Connecticut is nearly 60% forested but less than 5% of that is young-forest habitat, the successional stage grouse require, so the surviving population sits wherever young forest/shrubland persists, concentrated in the state's northern third.