Grouse

I normally would be going through my gear already! but this year I am on a road trip through the NW and into Canada all of Sept., so... others will get my share of the grouse this year. Go get 'em !
 
I will be in MT that whole week...! Guess I will have to chase thembad boys second week!
 
Living vicariously through you all. Hopefully my friend and I will be making a trip to Colorado for grouse in the next couple of years. Actually we're hoping to go after as many species as possible in Colorado.
 
Yes! Thursday is my day off too! I plan to head on up with Louie and have some fun. Gonna try and find some new spots to try out as well.
 
Headed out in a couple weekends for my first try at some blues! If it's anything like my other "first try's", I won't even see any until next year ;)
 
Headed out in a couple weekends for my first try at some blues! If it's anything like my other "first try's", I won't even see any until next year ;)

Just tell yourself you are looking for Elk and Moose and all of the sudden Grouse appear!!!:D
 
Just tell yourself you are looking for Elk and Moose and all of the sudden Grouse appear!!!:D

Carry a Bow and it's almost guaranteed :)

I'm missing opener this year for the first time in a while. Last year was excellent, hope everyone gets into them next week! I always love the weekday openers.
 
I am going to give it another try as the mountains are great this time of year. But need to do a bit of scouting this weekend if I am to have any luck.
 
If anyone wants to meet up and get some hunting in I'd be down. This will be my dog's first hunting season @ 15 months old. So as long as you aren't expecting perfection off that bat let me know. Otherwise I'm usually hunting solo.
 


We went up Thursday morning and limited out in less than 2 hours. It was a hot one even at 8800 ft. Louie found a ton of birds and did a great job for his first hunt ever! I needed a bit of a warm up on my shots but got into the groove of things after a few missed shots. Pretty exciting to see 6 or 7 birds bust every time I went to flush. I think I'd say I saw somewhere in the 20-30s bird count which I don't think is bad for a little under 2 hours of hunting.
 
We went up Thursday morning and limited out in less than 2 hours. It was a hot one even at 8800 ft. Louie found a ton of birds and did a great job for his first hunt ever! I needed a bit of a warm up on my shots but got into the groove of things after a few missed shots. Pretty exciting to see 6 or 7 birds bust every time I went to flush. I think I'd say I saw somewhere in the 20-30s bird count which I don't think is bad for a little under 2 hours of hunting.

Nice work to the both of you! I'm headed out next weekend for my Britt's first grouse hunt - hope it goes half as well as your day!
 
Nice work primalphil! Hunted mountain sharptail for the first time and had a fun weekend. Bagged a few blues too which were bonus birds. Rained day and night on us though with brief clearings between storms.
 
Nice pic's!! SOB's eluded me. Bears and Moose but no Grouse until after I left.:(
 
Nice work primalphil! Hunted mountain sharptail for the first time and had a fun weekend. Bagged a few blues too which were bonus birds. Rained day and night on us though with brief clearings between storms.


Early season u can find them together foothills are wear the blue grouse brood not in mtn alpines most hunt way to high early season...
 
Early season u can find them together foothills are wear the blue grouse brood not in mtn alpines most hunt way to high early season...

You are right, I've seen blue grouse and sharpie coveys within 100 yards of each other. Makes for a unique hunt. I just don't think the birds in the area I hunted had a good breeding season. Biggest covey was 5 birds with some being too young to shoot.
 
Nice work on the coveys. Unfortunately I think you may have been in one of the few areas that had good young bird success rates for a variety of reasons. I have been out for two hunts and haven't seen any young birds. Both these areas were good quality early season habitat, one of which has always produced young birds near opening day, close to ten years running for us. Another group had similar experience in the same area after a 6 hour hunt.

I am going to go out later this week/weekend to an area closer to where you were and see if there were some successfully young birds there.

Cheers
 
The wife and I went out this past weekend riding our UTV up where I big game hunt and ran across a covey of about 7 birds down low in the sage and aspens around 6 pm. I took one with my pistol and cooked it up earlier this week, it was delicious. I wish I would have had my GSP and shotgun with me.
 
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