Dusky Grouse scouting trip/Blue Mesa fishing trip footage

kiva

kiva

Active member
Hello All,

With dusky season fast approaching I figured I would take a trip down to the Gunnison area and check it out/ do some fishing at big blue. After driving the back county/talking to locals/and doing some evening hikes my thoughts are as follows...

1) Gunnison makes a great home base for grouse hunting (food,lodging,grouse habitat in all 4 directions)
2) Know the difference between a Gunnison sage grouse and a dusky...they have been known to use the same habitat in late summer and the Gunnison sage grouse is a protected species
3) Take a lot of water for you and your dog...there is not a lot of water around the dusky habitat
4) When it rains the back roads get super slick!
5) Get yourself and your dog(s) in shape now. It is really big country and accessing prime habitat often means long hikes.

Hope this helps...below is some fishing footage from Blue Mesa.

Enjoy!
Kiva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McBx8PSWZLI&t=765s
 
#3 and #5 are rather important. Covered 12 miles before the first covey busted out. But if I’m correct this is what blue grouse look like.View attachment 9335
 
Nice work uplandhunter. Hunted two different national forest and founds birds everywhere we went but the brood sizes were small and young! I think the cool wet start to summer might have messed the nests up in some areas.
 
Thanks Frangler.
There were signs of large amounts of water where we were. I agree that the heavy winter snows and abnormally wet spring messed with the nesting season. Usually there is an abundance of rose hips as well but there were hardly any this year. Grasshoppers on the other hand were thick.
What concerns me was that those were all mature birds not a juvenile in the bunch. Not a good sign for next season.
 
Nice job uplander! I figured you would find the blues as usual. I got lazy this year and shot doves from my chair. Funny because even the doves seemed to have a late hatch this year...some of them were tiny.
Kiva
 
Guys, I am looking at taking the wife out for a hike this weekend from the Denver area, and was wondering if anyone could suggest anywhere to go that might possibly hold some grouse. I figure if I'm out hiking I may as well take the dog and gun and see what we can get into. Thanks for any advice!
 
You could go up to the Brainard Lake area near Nederland. There is a fair share of public areas up there along with trails. Only issue you might run into would be the number of people you’ll run into during the weekend. Archery season is in full swing so there will be other hunters in the woods. If you run into an archer ask about grouse. They tend to run into them while stalking.
Good luck if you go.
 
Thanks! I will definitely look into it. How about off of the top of Vail Pass, does that area hold any? Thanks again
 
They can be found there. You’ll burn a lot of boot leather. Main issue with Vail Pass is the trees are pretty tight and dense making shots difficult when birds flush into the trees.
Wear some blaze orange. The big game guys are there in force.
 
Hey guys,

New to this site. I'm looking for people to hunt with. I'm interested in grouse, pheasant, duck, goose, small game, really anything. Let me know if anyone is interested in meeting up for a hunt sometime. I'll be out in the mountains (off 70) hunting grouse tomorrow if anyone is around.
 
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