Home Forums Birds & Dogs Upland Game There are supposed to be 578 threads

But I only see 4? What gives? Looking for some dusky grouse insight.

RB trims them down I think monthly.

What you looking for with the renamed Blue Grouse?

Just tips and best practices . I'll be hunting area 15 in advance of elk season. I've hunted sage grouse, but that's a different game out in the sagebrush.

At the bottom of the forum page, the one before this one that shows the topics, there's an option "Show topics - active in the last month." You can change this to "active in the last year" or whatever to see more posts.

At the beginning of the season, most of the hens with broods will be on their way uphill to the winter range from the places along creeks and rivers and shrub/aspen patches they spent the summer in. Males will have been on the winter range since July, and lots of hens that nested unsuccessfully or lost broods and didn't re-nest will be up there with them. Other hens will be traveling with successful hens and their broods, like old aunts. They are a moving target until about the first of October, and sometimes later, depending on the fall. I researched them for five years, and nobody knows even now what triggers movement from lower elevations to higher elevations, but maybe the vegetation drying up lower down.
Blue grouse move to timber around older clear-cuts, and meadows up near timberline, eating all sorts of flower buds, berries, and leaves, then switch to pine, fir, and Douglas-fir needles when snow covers the ground. Early in the season hens with broods can be found everywhere from the edge of the forest to midway up to timberline. Driving roads the first two or three hours of the morning and last two hours before dark will help locate them. Walking the upper ends of drainages and the semi-open timber/meadow habitat of places like Battle Pass and Bridger Peak works, as does hunting the aspen patches high up on the mountain where there is still succulent vegetation. Blackhall Mountain has also been good, along with the country around Battle Lake. Blue Grouse do not like thick timber, it has to be open timber. Since the beetle kill, more blue grouse are spending time in the younger lodgepole timber between middle-aged clear-cuts, because it was not killed by beetles. They will be found anywhere there is Douglas-fir, even those big old trees scattered on south slopes with sagebrush and aspen patches.
Last year harvest of blue grouse declined by 40% in the Sierra Madre and Snowy Range because the hatch was lousy, although the Sierras were better than the Snowies. Let's hope the snow in early June when the young grouse were hatching didn't do the same this year.

You're making me homesick. I grew up hunting elk on Blackhall and the Sierra Madre.

I'll be 150 miles or so south of there. Thanks for the tips.