NORTHWEST GROUSE PROSPECTS

Oregon and Washington wingshooters will fan out into the woods and mountains this month in search of ruffed as well as sooty, dusky and spruce grouse. (USFS)

Northwest Forest Grouse Prospects

Coast Range looks good in Oregon, while Washington hunters will need to adjust to a new later start of season; fire danger will be key to access everywhere.

By MD Johnson

Contrary to my usual SOP, let’s not beat around the proverbial bush here, but rather get right to the nitty-gritty of what to expect as the door opens to grouse season ’21, courtesy of Mikal Cline and Sarah Garrison, upland bird specialists for the Oregon and Washington Departments of Fish and Wildlife, respectively.

BEAVER STATE BIRDS

Northwest Sportsman Let’s start with a recap of the 2020 grouse season, eh? Mikal Cline I was expecting grouse harvest to be down (last year), and that was true just because people couldn’t access some of their favorite grouse hunting spots. Now we really haven’t been able to get into some of those burned-over or inaccessible areas to survey the birds and see what the situation truly is. We just now finished our forest grouse wing survey. We had to delay that process because we couldn’t all get together

and sort wings due to Covid.

What was interesting about that (survey) was the pulse of grouse harvest much later in the season last year than we usually see. I think that was weather and snowpack related. If you’ll remember, the weather was mild, places were still accessible and people were still harvesting grouse in late December and into January.

NWS Winter survival? Do you anticipate winter ’20 having any impact on this season? MK Grouse are really good at winter. They’re kinda built like a football [laughs], and they’re pretty energy efficient. It takes a pretty drastic winter to have any impact on grouse populations. And we had a very mild winter in 2020. In general, there’s no concern about overwinter survival.

The things that would affect a population are poor nesting conditions – very cold or very wet conditions during the hatch. We had a little bit of that, but nothing that would cause me any concern.

NWS And the weather in the spring of ’21 was favorable for a good hatch? MK I think it was good enough for at least an average hatch. Certainly there were some patches of heavy precipitation around the hatch, along with cooler weather, but nothing that causes me concern, especially on a larger scale.

NWS So what about the excessive heat we’ve been experiencing during the summer of ’21? Bad news for grouse? MK I don’t think our Westside birds are going (to see) the same impact that our Eastside birds might regarding heat and drought. Yes, it has been drier on the Westside, but there’s just more standing water on the landscape in general. There are more springs

WILDFIRE, ACCESS INFO

Information about active wildfires in Washington can be found on Facebook on the Washington State Fire Wire page. Hell, this page often has updated information available to the masses even before we hear about it in the field or back at camp.

For fire information throughout the Northwest, Inciweb (inciweb.nwcg.gov) is a great resource featuring updated info, closures, maps and more. The US Forest Service Region 6’s website (fs.usda.gov/r6) has a front-and-center link to Washington and Oregon fire info, as does the Oregon-Washington office of the Bureau of Land Management (blm.gov/oregon-washington).

The Oregon Department of Forestry’s site (ofic.com/private-forestland-closures) includes info on fire restrictions, while info on private timberland access can be found through ofic.com/private-forestland-closures. And the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has a good roundup at wdfw.wa.gov/about/wdfw-lands/wildfire#resources. –MDJ

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For the first time in nearly five full decades, Washington’s grouse season will open on a day other than September 1, when hunting has otherwise kicked off annually since 1973. Before then it bounced around anywhere from

the 2nd to the 28th. (JACOB W. FRANK, NPS)

and streams. They might have been a little bit miserable when it was super hot, but they’re in habitat where they can find shade. And again, there is water on the landscape.

For the Eastside birds, the drought is very real and water is precious. It’s possible, then, the 100-degree days might have had an impact. So it does come down to, Is there water and sufficient food resources to keep them going? And it may have a delayed effect, where the drought affects the forage availability down the road.

Author’s note: I spent 28 days during July in Eastern Washington and around the Grande Ronde River near Troy in Northeast Oregon, and let me tell you, it was brutally dry. There was a surprising amount of water high above the Ronde, e.g. Grouse Flats, but elsewhere, water, as Cline put it, was and is at a premium. Grasshoppers also seemed spotty; lots of them in some places, very few in others.

That all said, I did see what I would call good to extremely good numbers of valley quail throughout the Eastside, along with countless mama turkeys with broods of all sizes. Never saw a grouse, but quite a few chukar along the Grande Ronde and the breaks above the Snake River.

NWS Wildfires. The Bootleg Fire alone was over 400,000 acres. Impacts on wild populations are a certainty. Grouse then? MK When you have a fire the scale of the Bootleg Fire, there will absolutely be impacts on the local grouse population. It’s just too large for them to escape. Yeah, maybe they

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can fly out of it, but there will direct mortality, for sure. And then you have to consider the long-term effects.

So it’s a fair assumption that that grouse population probably took a serious hit, and will have to be repopulated from adjacent populations. It may be a while before some of that is grouse habitat again. We’ll have to wait and see how severe the fire was. Sometimes fires will burn in a patchy way, leaving islands of habitat; we hope that’s the case. But that (Bootleg Fire) was a bad one, for sure.

NWS As we do, Mikal, let’s finish with a look into your crystal ball. What do you see for grouse season ’21? MK Using what I have on hand now, I think we’re going to be down a little bit from last year. We do hooting surveys for sooty grouse in the springtime on the Westside and down into Klamath. And those for the most part were fairly steady, if not down just a little bit. But you have to consider we couldn’t get into a lot of the areas we’d normally survey.

The Coast Range was down a hair, but they were (also) at an all-time high. So if I were to advise someone as to where to go, the Coast Range seems to be holding the highest density of forest grouse, according to our surveys. And the Coast Range is the least impacted by drought and wildfires.

The West Cascades should be similar to last year, again according to our surveys. Douglas County and that Roseburg area are often very popular and productive for grouse, but they have some fires burning now [midAugust] in some good grouse habitat. Hunters just need to know whether they can safely access their favorite spots before they leave the house.

EVERGREEN STATE GROUSE

In a sense of fairness and apples to apples, I asked WDFW’s Sarah Garrison the same questions I did Cline – with one notable addition, given the major change taking effect this month.

NWS A recap of the 2020 grouse season in Washington, Sarah? Sarah Garrison: Participation increased slightly in 2020 from the previous year – a 4 percent increase in hunters, and an 8 percent increase in days hunted – but harvest was down 13 percent compared to 2019.

NWS Winter survival during 2020-21? Good? Not so good? SG (WDFW) doesn’t run surveys or have other data to monitor winter survival, but it was a fairly mild winter, so I would expect survival was good.

NWS And then following the winter, what about the spring ’21 hatch? SG Washington had a warm dry spring in ’21, so hatchlings should have done well.

NWS It’s been undeniably warm across Washington during the summer of ’21. Effects on grouse due to the heat? SG Forest grouse have more reliable cover to protect them from heat stress than do prairie grouse. That said, they (forest grouse) are at risk during extreme heat waves, along with when the quality of their habitat begins to decline due to heat and drought. They need sufficient vegetative cover to protect them from the heat, but drought can reduce both this cover and their forage. Over the long term, we may see forest grouse moving to higher altitudes.

NWS Washington wildfires in ’21. A major influencer on grouse populations? SG Washington is suffering several large wildfires – author’s note: Cedar Creek, Cub Creek II, Dry Gulch/Lick Creek, Green Ridge, Twentyfive Mile, Walker Creek and Schneider Springs, to name but a handful in ’21 – which will impact local grouse populations in the near term. Long term, however, these burn areas will grow into excellent early successional habitat for grouse. I’ve heard that fire risk may continue into October this year, so it will be important for hunters to keep track of current conditions and take safety precautions during early fall hunting.

NWS So there’s been a bit of disgruntlement, per se, among some hunters regarding the delay of this year’s grouse opener two weeks from the traditional September 1. Thoughts? Comments? SG The 2021 season opens September 15 in order to protect breeding-aged females, since this demographic drives population growth or decline.

We’ve seen a long-term decline in grouse harvest in the data, so this season change is intended to increase forest grouse abundance and availability to hunters. Hens are being disproportionately harvested during the first two weeks of the season.

For example, in Okanogan County, breeding-aged females are approximately twice as likely to be harvested as (are) breeding-aged males. Forest grouse broods typically break up in mid-September, so the season delay will allow more hens to get to a point where they’re independent of their broods and can resume normal movements.

NWS Look in your crystal ball, Sarah – you have one, right? – and give us a prediction for grouse season ’21 based on the information you have. SG In most areas, I’m anticipating a good grouse season in 2021, though it will be important to keep track of the wildfire conditions and risks in the early part of the season. Some hunters will need to explore new hunting areas this year to avoid wildfires and recent burns. NS