Information on hunting the Texas upland game bird

Blue Grouse Pursuit

The first month of fall is the time to hunt blue grouse. The weather across the western mountains is dry and warm with only a hint of morning frost on the shaded grass. Even better the grouse have gathered in flocks of 3 to 30, plump from a summer of feeding on grasshoppers and rose hips, just one step from the oven.

One Labor Day my wife and I climbed above the Clark Fork River of the Columbia into foothills covered with mountain bunch grass and sage, stopping beneath one of the few ponderosa pines to catch our breath in the cool shade. We continued on to the lower timberline at the base of the mountains. From there we started hunting. Gail kept climbing, up into the grass parks. I started around the belly of the mountain, peering into the draws of Douglas fir for the silhouette of a roosting blue grouse.

Gail fired, then fired again. A blue grouse glided on set wings down between the tops of the firs. I swung my shotgun, tracing the arc of the grouse, and shot when the bird met the outer edge of my vision. The grouse tumbled.

Gail stood on a cow trail as I climbed back with the grouse. Clods of mud stuck to her boots. “You got the one?” she asked, looking down at me. “I got two,” she said, holding up the grouse by their feet.

The birds in Gail’s hand were young of the year. The mottled brown of their backs and necks faded to dusty white on their flanks. Mine was a mature male, the gray of a dead, weathered fir. The bird was every ounce as large as a pheasant. Gail opened the craw of one of the grouse to see what it had been eating. Green clovers and bleeding red whortleberries spilled out of the crop.

FINDING BLUE GROUSE

Studies have found about one blue grouse for every three acres of habitat. Because grouse live in flocks, a hunter could spend all season looking behind brush for absent grouse.

However, the mud on Gail’s boots gave away the secret to her success. At the last of summer, the little water remaining in the mountains hides in green veins. Gail knew if she found a seep, spring or dribble of a creek the grouse would be nearby for the food of berries and moist leaves.

Blue grouse are also birds of the forest edge. The trees on one side provide cover for the grouse and also retain moisture during the fall to grow green leaf plants such as dandelions and clover. On the open side of grass are the insects, like grasshoppers.

Blue grouse huddle on their roost until the rising sun has evaporated the dew on the grass. Then they hop down from the branches of a fallen tree to peck around the edges of grass parks for insects or beneath the thin timber for snowberries and clover. By midmorning the grouse have filled their craws and waddled uphill to nap.

I like to hike in the cool and quiet of morning with my Browning in the crook of my arm. Often mule deer stand with ears cocked toward the noise of my footsteps, then bound away at first sight. Mule deer and blue grouse share the same zones in the mountains. So with deer in the neighborhood I know the grouse are near.

One Sunday morning I hiked an easy ridge. Mule deer tracks lay deep in the black dirt mounds churned up by moles. The periscope heads of three grouse rose above the grass 30 yards into a park, then sank to hide in the cover. Only when I turned and made a direct approach did their heads poke back above the grass. One bird flew and pitched off the ridge. My shotgun wasn’t even up to my shoulder when I yanked off the shot. The second bird, then the third followed. I stood with an empty gun, watching the last grouse cut beneath the firs and disappear around the side of the hill. I wondered why I had ruined the stillness with my bellowing shotgun.

A few years ago I started hunting grouse with a dog. Sandy is a pointer born in Texas. Her hunting instinct was there from the start. It took one day hunting grouse for her to ignore the wide open and thickets and concentrate on springs and along the edge of the forest, even though none of her ancestors had ever been within 1,000 miles of a blue grouse mountain. She tends to swing out 200 yards and farther like she’s hunting bobwhite quail, but all I have to do is whistle once for her to stop and a second time to bring her in closer so I can hear her bell and keep a running tab on her as she hunts the trees. The amount of ground I cover while hunting with Sandy has increased 10 times, maybe 50 times.

Grouse scent holds well on damp days or mornings with dew. On those days I pretty much give Sandy her head and follow along. The first fall with Sandy I hiked up a ridge of short Douglas firs with an understory of snowberries. Sandy quartered ahead. She stopped, jerked around like she had dropped something, then went on point. I walked up to her side, and she glanced at me then stared straight ahead again. A single blue grouse flushed out of the brush, and I shot it before it reached the trees. Sandy overran the bird in her excitement and rolled down the hill trying to stop. She turned the bird over on its breast with her nose, picked it up by the back and brought it up the hill. I poured her a drink of water in my hat, and when she was done she licked the salt off the sweatband.

Grouse scent evaporates quickly on dry and warm days, and Sandy runs in frustration. She desperately dashes back and forth, then ends up running right past a covey. The grouse think she’s a coyote and flush into the trees. Finding grouse perched in the evergreen boughs is nearly impossible. Making a shot on a blue pitching out of the top of a 60-foot tree and weaving down through the forest requires twisting your spine into a corkscrew. On days like these, Sandy is more of a flushing dog, so I keep her within 30 yards. For other upland game bird hunts, see our Upland Game Bird Hunting page.

Bird dogs and shotguns aside, blue grouse are also camp meat on backpack trips. In the wilderness the grouse are fool hens and their meat makes a supper out of a package of chicken-flavored noodles. I always carry a small revolver or an arrow in the quiver with a .38 Special case glued on the tip in case I meet a grouse along the trail.

In late October some time ago, I headed into the mountains to scout for a Rocky Mountain goat for a friend with a tag. I pitched the tent in a pocket below a ridge top where the wind was howling. A shallow bank of snow from an equinoctial storm provided water. The first morning was spent climbing the lichen-covered rocks and patches of short grass above timberline. I found two billy goats standing lethargically on a north face of black rock. The goats’ horns grew thick and short, nearly touching at the bases. Their white coats hung from their flanks and knees and blew in the wind like tattered sheets on a clothesline. I left them, planning on returning with my friend in a week.

On the way back down the mountain, I saw four blue grouse at the edge where the short grass gave way to stunted trees. With the .22 revolver ready in my hand I killed one with a shot through the wing butts. The racket flushed the remaining birds. The birds sailed out over 1,000 feet of vertical air. I hurried to the edge and watched them glide into a hanging valley below to finally disappear into the thin timber.

I picked up my bird and felt its craw. The wad of evergreen needles said the cold nights had frozen the last green plants and insects of the year. The only remaining food was pine needles that would turn the meat to a leathery turpentine flavor within a week.

Back at camp I cut the meat from the bones, diced it, fried it over coals pulsing with the wind blowing down from the passes, then added the grouse to a pot of boiling noodles. The meal tasted of a northern wind blowing through the pines.

Even in late afternoon the sun was weak. Chanting shrieks came from sandhill cranes circling high in the sky. The cranes kept circling and screeching until more cranes from the valley below had joined the flock. The flock banked as one, then turned south on a front of northern air. Blue grouse season was over. For other Texas hunts, see our Texas Turkey Hunting page to find out more.

By John Haviland

This article and many more like it can be found by Successful Hunter Magazine. Visit them at www.successfulhunter.com