Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Montana Grouse ID

Fellers. What kind of grouse is this? I believe Spruce or blue. Shot in the Gravellys SW Montana at at 7400ft

High altitude blue grouse, the best fall has to offer…

Those Big Game in Montana?

Looking good! Archery elk and deer almost turned into a grouse hunt, but we left the area soon after and didn’t find any more at the next place. We flushed another grouse nearby the next morning but didn’t get a great look at it

I'll bite, what kind of shotgun is that? Looks like a Stevens but don't recognize the hammer.

It is a Burgess, wrist slide action shotgun made in the 1890's by Andrew Burgess. A prolific gun inventor, second only to John Browning, with hundreds of patents, which some are still in use today. You can see the triggergroup slides backward to work the action. A very simple and effective shotgun action...

Thats a new one to me. If you stay away from the riff-raff on here you can sometimes learn something.

Initially, my comment was going to be, “Hunting birds with a rifle is a no-no in Texas.”
One of my favorite motto's is, “Not all things are as they appear to be.”
So, cut me a big ole slice of Humble Pie. New one to me too. Guess I should pay attention to the details.

"They" have decided there are two species formerly known as blue grouse. The ones you show are 'dusky grouse" while our SE AK birds are "sooty grouse."

Just an FYI.

Around here the spruce grouse and blue grouse hang out in the same locations or habitat. Those spruce grouse are smaller and have an red eyeliner on top eyelid that stands out. They're also smaller and spruce grouse meat is very very dark in comparison to other grouse.

Absolutely no experience with Montana grouse. But it looks like a sharp-tail to me.

Turkey?

Back in the years before children and right after we were married my wife and I did a lot of bird hunting. One day I got multiple “grand slams” with blue, spruce and ruffed grouse….a rooster pheasant, several Huns, several Chuckar, 2 California quail and a a Drake mallard. I think I killed at least 1 bird from every category except Turkey. I cooked everything 1 day and we had a side by side comparison of the various game birds available here.

I think it was back around 2008 when I was moose hunting outside of Delta Junction. We’d spend some afternoons hunting hare and grouse for fun and food. That year was an explosion of grouse and hare numbers with a crazy amount of both everywhere….I’d never seen anything approaching those numbers. Coincidentally on that trip I saw a half dozen lynx in the course of a week, since the hare numbers were high so too were the Lynx. 👍🏼

interesting...what do the undersides of the birds look like?

Sitka;
Good afternoon to you sir, I trust that you and your fine family are all having a decent day and are well.

Thanks for the chuckle this afternoon, as I was about to post something similar but yet again had to look up what we're supposed to have here.

As you know, I've taught the BC Hunter Safety Course for 34 odd years and somewhere a few years back, how many I can't begin to guess now Sitka, low and behold the new manual has two kinds of Blue Grouse!!!

Now being entirely honest, I was still getting over the fact they'd finally added turkeys to the manual after years of us assuring them there were in fact turkeys here and that the MOE had even put in a hunting season.

Oh and there used to be a question regarding whether there were Grizzly on Vancouver Island or not and the answer back when was no, but apparently some grizzly took that as a challenge and at latest count the MOE says there's somewhere north of a couple dozen now.

Anyways all that to say that "they" say our Blues here in the southern Interior of BC are "Dusky" and some magic line west of us they turn into "Sooty".

If I was guessing, I'd guess about Hope, BC where they filmed the first Rambo movie back in the dinosaur days. That's about where the mulies become blacktails so that's why the guess, but again it's only my guess.

All the best and thanks for making me look a few things up and the chuckle.

Dwayne

100% correct-
The breast feather plumage ,head plumage & tail feathers tell the correct tale.

huntinaz;
Good afternoon to you sir, I trust all is as it should be in your world today.

As has been established that's what we'd call a Blue Grouse here in BC.

They're typically the biggest grouse we've got down in the southern mountains, but going off of foggy old guy memory, I want to say a big male Blue would seesaw pretty well with the biggest Sharptail I ever killed in Saskatchewan.

Our eldest daughter shot one of the biggest male Blues I've ever seen and we really should have put that beast on a scale. It looked the size of a rotisserie chicken that one sees in the grocery store.

It was not however, as I recall, as tender as a rotisserie chicken.

Blues have darker colored meat than a Ruffer but not quite as dark as a Spruce, though young early season Spruce flesh will be pretty close in color, texture and flavor in our experience.

When our girls first started hunting they brought as many grouse home as they could, all taken with head or neck shots with a Brno No 5 .22 which gave them great rifle practice.

Later season Blues and Spruce will start eating pine needles and the meat gets darker and takes on more of a camphorous sort of flavor.

When mating season is on the males have this strange low "Whoop" sort of sound that reminds me of a big diesel trying to start on a cold morning with not quite enough battery to crank it fast.



Hope that was useful and made sense.

All the best and good luck on your season.

Dwayne

You can kind of see the bellies on these…

I was elk hunting a few years back and a grouse hopped up on a log about 40 yds away, just sat up there. I knocked my bird arrow with a Judo point and let it fly. I center punched the grouse and it disappeared in a cloud of feathers on the opposite side of the log. I could see a commotion and my arrow flopping around. That grouse flopped up onto it’s feet, and took off catching the wind and sailing down the mountain through the timber. My arrow was sticking halfway out both sides of the bird. Never found it. There was a quarter-sized chunk of meat on the other side of the log that the Judo ripped out of that grouse.

Shrap, How do you do that? I have never seen one that close with head still attached.

Mine were all guillotined with a Win 670 in 30-06 and a 165 gr BT. Nothing eats better!