West Virginia · UplandRuffed grouse

West Virginia's ruffed grouse population concentrates in the state's eastern highlands -- the Allegheny Mountains and their foothills -- rather than being distributed evenly across the state's roughly 90%-forested landscape. A WVDNR wildlife biologist's own published case study on the Monongahela National Forest's dedicated Ruffed Grouse Management Area (Foster, in a Northeast-region grouse-management compendium) locates the core range directly: a 1,739-acre GMA established in 1983 within the Potomac Ranger District, 'located along the eastern highlands region of West Virginia,' at 3,500-4,120 ft elevation, where drumming-count surveys since 1989 have consistently found more grouse in the accelerated-harvest treatment area than in an adjacent control plot under standard rotation -- direct evidence that early-successional habitat management, not just geography, drives density within this core range. The Monongahela National Forest itself spans roughly 1 million acres across 10 counties in the state's eastern highlands (Grant, Tucker, Randolph, Pocahontas, Webster, Pendleton, Nicholas, Greenbrier, Preston, and a sliver of Barbour). WVDNR's own habitat-restoration messaging (via the state's outdoor magazine) separately prioritizes 'the eastern part of the state' for young-forest restoration work benefiting grouse. Hunting-focused outdoor press corroborates this same eastern-highlands framing at finer grain, naming Tucker County's young-forest regrowth stands and Randolph County's Kumbrabrow State Forest as notable within-region hotspots, alongside the Monongahela National Forest generally.