Rich Landers: Grouse hunter ponders break in opening week tradition

This is a good year to ease into the grouse hunting season.

I love heading to the mountains and hunting grouse, but I’m not champing at the bit to bag clueless fool hens standing along a national forest road on opening day, Sept. 1, or even the opening week. My rationale ranges from personal preference to a high regard for professional wildlife science.

I realize that some hunters will disagree with my reasoning and I’m happy to hash it out over a beer – if you buy.

Driving along a road looking for grouse tempts some hunters to shoot from the road, which is illegal. Road hunting also tempts some hunters to have a loaded gun ready in their vehicle, which is illegal and one of the most common factors in hunting-related shooting accidents.

Road hunting also tempts people to shoot grouse on the ground or in a tree, which is not illegal but it’s not especially sporting, either.

My dad let me shoot my first “blue” grouse out of a tree. After we basked in the proud moment of my sure kill, he told me the next step was to grow up and take them on the wing.

Some hunters will shoot holes in my personal preferences. Indeed, I don’t wait for an elk to start running before I shoot so why would I pass up a sure shot at a grouse hunkered on a tree limb?

The best answer I can muster is that the best and most respectable grouse hunters I know, including my dad, would not ground-sluice a grouse. They’d pass up a tree shot for the challenge of swinging on one flying out of the branches, and the chance of having nothing to eat but crow.

I choose to emulate my heroes, not road hunters.

My main reason for holding off on grouse hunting owes to what’s best for grouse. Some would argue that a load of No. 6 shot isn’t in a grouse’s best interests. I’m talking about the big picture.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists have tried to nudge grouse hunters into a season starting around Sept. 15 for about eight years. But a large portion of hunters are locked into their traditions and don’t want to give up hunting over Labor Day weekend.

“Our wing-barrel data on duskies shows that chicks and females are hardest hit in the first two weeks of September,” Mike Schroeder, department grouse biologist told me years ago.

“The males tend to move up from the low breeding areas to the high wintering areas before Sept. 1 while the females stay down lower with their broods. So the hunters cruising the roads are primarily hitting these broods.”

Chicks make up most of the harvest in early September, but about two-thirds of the adult duskies bagged are females. These are the successful breeding females.

“The ratio for spruce grouse is closer to three-quarters females,” Schroeder said.

“I’ve recommended that if we go ahead and stay with the four-bird limit, we should change the season-opening date to Sept. 15. That way we’d take some of the pressure off the females.”

A season that was so heavily skewed toward taking females would never be tolerated for pheasants. “We kind of get away with it for grouse because some of them live in such remote areas,” Schroeder said. “But we still could be overharvesting them in some local areas.”

That season recommendation from Washington’s lead grouse expert didn’t fly with hunters.

But it made sense to me.

Dusky grouse stand out as the largest mountain grouse species. Males have slate-colored under parts, white based neck feathers around the air sacs, yellow-orange eye combs and they weight up to 3 pounds. Females tend to be browner and slightly smaller.

At the end of summer, the females bring their broods up from lower elevations to join the males in the high country.

Hunting early in the morning can be pleasant in the mountains even when the temperatures will soar in the afternoon, especially at the high elevations where the male duskies are hanging out. The dryness of late summer tends to congregate grouse closer to water sources.

Ruffs and spruce grouse as well as duskies are more likely to be on the ground feeding early in the morning and late in the afternoon, which just happens to be the best times of day for working a dog.

Rarely are dusky grouse seen more than a mile from tree cover. Once flushed, they almost always land in trees, making them difficult to relocate even with a dog. But it can be done.

Novice hunters try to plot and predict which direction a grouse will flush when they approach the tree. Veteran hunters just barge in, knowing that half the time, regardless of what they do, the grouse will fly so the tree blocks a clear shot.

Dusky grouse like to pitch off a ridge or down a slope with a furious rocking beat of wings before gliding out of sight. Sometimes I loathe blues as much as I love them.

State biologists don’t have much in the way of forecasts for dusky grouse hunters, except to say you won’t find many in areas that burned out by forest fires in the past few years.

They’re not like pheasants, which crow regularly enough during mating season to be counted. Duskies don’t sit on a log and drum like ruffed grouse. There are ways duskies can be counted, but they’re too labor-intensive to be practical.

Consequently, the dusky grouse hunter is on his own. No guarantees. After miles of driving and more miles of walking, the big birds may or may not be in the neighborhood.

One strategy is to head for a national forest, state forest or open timber company land; look for timbered edges on high open ridges close to a spring or some other source of water.

It’s hard to narrow it down much more than that. But if you’re easing into the season, there’s no hurry.