A lyrical reflection on looking spruce grouse in Montana’s mountain landscapes from the winter 2025 subject of Mission Upland Journal.
This text initially appeared within the winter 2025 subject of Mission Upland Journal.
Spruce grouse are birds of many names, however solely a idiot would title one a idiot’s hen. The identical idiot, in a special time, known as the buffalo dumb, and look the place that acquired us.
A barely extra deranged idiot would name the birds Franklin’s grouse. The final time I noticed a spruce hen, there was no leash from her neck resulting in Franklin’s wrist. With him being lifeless so lengthy and the grouse nonetheless being right here, no chicken is Franklin’s now.
The final spruce grouse I got here throughout was within the thick band of timber draping off a mountainside to a creek. I went there for spruce grouse the identical means others drive to sorghum fields for pheasants and aspen clones for ruffies.
I parked the place the elk hunters parked and dove into the mess of moss-curtained, resin-jeweled forest, looking for a chicken that will not flush to announce its presence. Sometimes, one walks into spruce grouse, which, right here within the Decrease 48, often occurs when one will not be on the lookout for a spruce grouse however as an alternative mountain climbing a peak, selecting huckleberries, or climbing increased for dusky grouse, giving the phantasm that spruce grouse are blanketed throughout the panorama, ready for his or her demise.
But when one walks for spruce grouse by following ridgelines and timbered flats as an alternative of trails or driving roads, they seem scarcer. Due to their lack of flightiness, they typically behave like essentially the most savvy ruffed grouse, staying pinned to the bottom because the hunter walks previous. However the spruce doesn’t lay down with its throat to the fallen needles. It poses, watching the oblivious bipedal creature move by. The concern of our form hasn’t shaped of their brains, that are as an alternative occupied by hawks and owls.
I had stumbled my means via the blowdown to the place the solar struggled between the spruce boughs. I squeezed my means into the quilt, looking for a head or wing to interrupt the strains of standing and fallen bushes. In contrast to dusky or sharp-tailed grouse looking, the place a hunt may be measured in miles, a morning of looking spruce grouse is measured in steps—a gradual creep to, hopefully, tread right into a grouse.
As I crested an increase that will take me out of the spruce, I caught an eye fixed peering at me. So sudden was the chicken in its materializing that my breath caught behind my closing tooth in predatory response.
Regardless of widespread stereotypes, spruce grouse will flush, and can typically accomplish that into a close-by tree. That is to the disappointment of hunters on the lookout for a wing shot, as eight toes is hardly sufficient of an increase when unprepared. If a hunter owns a canine, they’ll often discover the chicken already within the tree once they strategy, for the reason that chicken understands that dog-shaped beings can not climb pines.
Nonetheless, as soon as the chicken is within the tree, the assured hunter strolls over to the seemingly apparent conifer to reflush the chicken and, until the department is naked, is stunned by the easy indisputable fact that the chicken has survived for millennia due to its potential to fly into bushes and disappear. The second and third guessing begins: Is that this certainly the tree the chicken lit into, or was it one other? Wouldn’t I be capable to see the chicken? The boughs aren’t that thick.
The hunter tries totally different angles at totally different distances, lies on the bottom and friends up, shakes the tree, shakes adjoining bushes, tries to climb the tree, and throws limbs. And as soon as the hunter has exhausted all endurance looking out, the grouse will probably exit from a special tree, flying farther than one would care to comply with.
Having lived that state of affairs, I attempted to shut the gap between the chicken and me rapidly. The cock chicken started to maneuver away towards the ridge and leapt onto a downed log, his purple eyebrow a blush within the shadowed world. The dexterous spruce limbs pulled at me as I superior, and as he lifted, I missed low, not capable of convey my gun all the best way as much as meet his rise. Even throughout the dome of sound my twenty-gauge discharge shaped, I heard the chicken’s wings making for the ridge. He disappeared earlier than I discovered him once more with my bead, and I scrambled towards the break.
For a short second there was sky above, however as I crested the lip and made my means down the far aspect, the forest once more swallowed me. I slowed as I entered the primary few toes of canopy, assuming the chicken would possibly wait on the rapid edge to see what had disturbed the morning. But I used to be unsuitable. With a fortunate look, I noticed him flush thirty yards past right into a tree. I approached slowly, as one would possibly a pronghorn down a dry gulch, hoping to see the creature earlier than the creature noticed me.
The grouse was on a unadorned limb. I needed to just accept the reward of a potential clear shot as he high-stepped his option to flush. Although, with a stumble and the loud crack of a downed department, he once more lifted on the inopportune time. The primary shell was behind, however the second was true, and he fell into the duff.
Being a canineless hunter, I adopted the floating path of feathers to the nonetheless physique the place it lay beneath downed limbs. I’m my very own canine. I discover birds, I retrieve birds, and I work burs and sap from my hair on the finish of the day. With the identical perspective as pondering the larger fish are out past the attain of my forged or the deer are over the subsequent ridge, I questioned how significantly better of a chicken hunter I’d be with a canine. What number of extra grouse would I discover? What number of extra birds could be delivered to my hand by an amenable associate?
Learn: The Artwork of Searching Sage Grouse With no Canine
The straightforward reality of my condominium lease rejecting pets eliminated a chicken canine from the realm of chance. Although I desperately needed to welcome a working pup into my house, it appeared that the part of my life by which a Brittany or Boykin would comply with me into the grouse woods would coincide with a mortgage. Fortunately, grouse may be hunted sans pointer or flusher, and what else can one ask from life than anticipation?
I hiked again to the opening within the cover to raised admire the chicken’s particulars. Darkish for the darkish understory the place he lived, with white dappling the feathers above the fan and collaring his neck like shafts of sunshine discovering the chinks within the cover. His saddle was grey, and the bars swirled like September smoke throughout his again. And once more, the purple eyebrow. The nice characteristic carried virtually a gravitational pull. Hardly thicker than a half greenback, it almost hummed.
I thanked the chicken and slipped him into my vest. From the clear vantage level, I might see the fold of the creek beneath and the mountains above. The band of timber knitted a skirt for the height earlier than the slopes rose naked above timberline.
The creatures of unfrequented locations have all the time drawn me nearer. Rising up, whereas so a lot of my buddies forged to bucket-mouthed bass in reservoirs or pulled state-grown trout from the pool the place the truck had dumped them the day earlier than, I looked for wild fish in small water that the majority would possibly think about nothing greater than a melancholy the place rainwater collected. I discovered the place blackcap raspberries grew alongside previous railroad beds, listened for hermit thrushes to announce spring, and stopped to see how a purple eft would climb a log in a deep hole.
Spruce grouse are fantastic members of this congregation. They’re disregarded and underappreciated by so many upland hunters, but they’re lovely birds that require sturdy legs, endurance, and a artistic thoughts—canine or human—to learn the land and discover them. What number of occasions have I walked for miles, for hours, and in a second discovered them? Like most looking, the time by which the prey is absent then current is lower than a second. In a sea of spruce, the absence of a chicken feels so massive, and the presence, additionally massive, however otherwise. The immediacy of their incidence, as in all chicken looking, is nearly a shock. The place did they arrive from? How did we not see them earlier than? In a land usually related to elk, lions, and bears, the grouse can also be endemic, and their innate wildness makes them thrive.
This wild land, the distant habitat that spruce grouse require, is the area by which I wish to spend my hours. In contrast to sitting in a duck blind or striding on a pheasant push, I’ll typically go a day chasing spruce with out listening to the heartbeat of an engine. I comply with trails made by animals for animals. The rationale for the trail’s route is dictated by slope and pitch, cliff and deadfall, and never the ability of a bulldozer. I discovered the area from those that crammed the area.
On the threat of sounding too valuable—and why not be valuable when celebrating a local chicken, which in our time is so rattling valuable?—I seek for the spruce grouse as a result of they maintain the fragile magnificence of putting up with wildness in a world the place the wild is dwindling.
Realizing the morning wouldn’t final eternally, I dove into the forest and continued my creep. The curve of the mountain took me north, the place the bushes grew even thicker and the scent of elk pulled me to the place they’d wallowed in a flat backside the place a spring collected. The mud was cleaved by their hooves, and the musk of their rut hung within the closed cover.
I adopted the spring down to a different bench, questioning the place a grouse is perhaps, and there a grouse was, a hen, standing tall fifty yards to my proper on the lip above the drop to the creek. With my step, she flushed down out of sight, however I heard her land in a tree. A chicken touchdown in a tree is the sound of deceleration, wings in opposition to needles, not the lengthy, quiet throw of a glide by no means to be seen once more. It is likely one of the sounds of hope.
Once I made it to the slope, I used to be greeted with spruce bushes that had grown so keen on one another that their branches had been entangled in a weaving embrace.
The routine started: I attempted totally different angles at totally different distances, lay on the bottom and peered up, shook the assumed tree, shook adjoining bushes, tried to climb the tree, and threw limbs with no ensuing flush. Above their attractiveness on the checklist of praises for spruce grouse is their fortitude.
I surrendered the day to the hen and commenced the hike towards the creek and finally the street. Once I handed simply past shotgun vary, I heard the chicken exit from down the road of bushes the place I had been looking out, confirming my miscalculation. The grouse flew farther than I’d care to go, and I smiled at being made a idiot.
The put up Ode to Spruce Grouse appeared first on Mission Upland.
