Steve Grossman and The Grouse Lodge at Little Moran: Keeper of the Covers

Steve Grossman and the timeless covenant between bird, dog, and hunter.

The Keeper of a Legacy

There are men in the uplands whose names echo beyond the tangled aspen and alder thickets, whose devotion to the pursuit of wild birds becomes not just a career but a calling. Steve Grossman, founder of The Grouse Lodge at Little Moran in Minnesota, is one such man. His life’s work—nearly four decades dedicated to the ruffed grouse, woodcock, and the pointing dogs that make them huntable—has become both a personal legacy and a gift to those who follow behind him.

Grossman’s story begins on the soil of his family’s farm near Staples, Minnesota. It was there, in 1984, that he opened the Little Moran Hunt Club, a pheasant preserve and dog-training kennel built on land first homesteaded by his great-grandfather in 1902. Within a year, Grossman was training setters from the Burnt Creek line, discovering in them the very essence of a bird dog made for the “King of Gamebirds.” By the late 1980s, wild bird hunting—rather than released birds—had become the heartbeat of the operation. Thus was born what would eventually grow into The Grouse Lodge at Little Moran, a place synonymous with authenticity, excellence, and tradition.