Hunter success ebbs and flows with the declining Eastern Washington ruffed grouse population
by Brad Trumbo
The arid lands of Eastern Washington don’t look much like grouse country on the surface. The seasons are long, comprised mainly of a scorching summer and an often mild, wet winter, particularly in the southeastern corner. Spring and fall are minor notions, like crossing a threshold between dichotomous worlds.
By September, Eastern Washington residents beg for a solitary raindrop and overcast skies. The north pole’s angle of obliquity increases quickly, bringing precious moisture and cool, lengthening nights. Higher elevation and coniferous forests stand just beyond the city limits in many places, offering a reprieve from summer’s oppression and the promise of ruffed grouse on the rugged ridges and creek bottom tangles.
Over the years, I’ve struggled to draw correlations between environmental conditions and good, bad or average grouse numbers. If adjacent upland bird populations are any indicator, 2024 was to be a good season. Pheasant, gray partridge and valley quail boomed in the agriculture and grasslands, sparking high anticipation as my Tundra clawed its way up the narrow mountain road toward a grouse opener escape.
As the truck door swung open, a comfortable 60 degrees greeted us. Three female Llewellin setters were abuzz in the backseat, trembling like the regulator jiggling atop a pressure cooker. They have little patience for the pre-hunt routine, particularly when we’ve waited months for the grouse season’s return. Clumsily, I relearned the steps, like donning the camera before the vest and strategically staging guns and gadgets before dropping a dog and starting the hunt. The girls came unhinged when the Garmin collar system signaled “go time.”
Senior dogs run first – not only because they’re the best, but also because they’ve earned it and their grouse cover days are winding down. Hence, 12-year-old Finn and 10-year-old Yuba took to our usual opening mountaintop with gusto.
Despite the heat and annual drought, vegetation flourished at elevation, displaying a semblance of the season like a painter’s palette. The sharp scent of pine hung in soothing humidity for the first time since June. Chokecherry clusters were full and red from a wet spring and early summer. Most deciduous plants were still green, paling slightly, making the evergreens statelier. Crimson snowberry, ninebark and brilliant rose hips speckled the ridgetops. A few straggler paintbrushes were scattered about the forest floor, and they popped like fiery embers of the dwindling summer heat.
Finn and Yuba cast toward the canyon’s edge. Years of my guidance and personal preference for the eastern aspect conditioned these two to assume the regular methods and covers – a reminder that all living things are subject to routine, which we would break this day.
A double collar tone sent the two across the mountaintop into the western and northern aspects, where dense stands of young fir, larch, chokecherry and Scouler’s willow flooded old fire scars, leaving mature timber pockets standing like islands among the shrubbery. Working the grassy edges mid-morning was bound to produce bird scent and provide a fresh perspective on the cover.
Making Contact
The setters weaved through the vegetation tapestry as I traversed an elk trail flanked with various forbs. Emerald alumroot reached through the grasses with finger-like flower stalks. Prairie smoke presented new, delicate, intricately patterned leaves encircled by last year’s burgundy, chlorophyll-drained growth. Chartreuse larch needles rained upon us and filled my vest pouches as vegetation transitioned across the contour.
The cover was perfect, but the girls found nothing in the first hour. Finn was slowing from traversing a scatter of deadfalls, so I called the girls for a water break. Given Finn’s arthritis and Yuba’s bad hips, a swap for seven-year-old Zeta was in order, but not before snapping a quick photo of the old girls with my much older C.F. Dumoulin side-by-side 16-gauge propped upon a weathered, moss-laden tree trunk.
Savvy critters recognize vulnerability and ruffed grouse seemingly recognize the camera as one of mine. While capturing the moment, a ruff blew its cover less than 20 yards behind us. The flush was unmistakable – quick, vibratory and palpable against the eardrum, like the “whopping” of a chopper flying overhead.
“I bet these girls have another 10 minutes in them,” I thought, releasing the duo to pursue the flush.
Grouse occur in pockets in this country, and we had serendipitously stumbled upon one. Several more flushes came and went in short order with no visual evidence of a bird, not even a flash or a single feather floating softly to the ground. One bird was close enough to kick. Its primary flight feathers slapped sharply upon branches as it flushed, yet the Scouler’s willow was so dense that it, too, sailed off into the timber unseen. I imagined its low, canting flight path above the willow as it glided to safety.
A five-grouse morning is the best I’ve experienced on the mountaintop – and this was only the second time in nearly 15 years of working this cover. Fortunately, this was just the beginning of the best ruffed grouse season I’ve experienced in Washington. But why was it so good? Speculation suggested recent mild winters and the wet early summer provided good winter survival and brood-rearing conditions. Curiosity and a scientific mind overcame the speculation, so I dove into the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) harvest reporting data.
Grouse Numbers
WDFW harvest data was available online beginning in 2013, but the data combines ruffed, dusky, sooty and spruce grouse into a single “forest grouse” category. Therefore, harvest trends are based on the total grouse taken across all forest-dwelling species, leaving one to assume that each species follows a similar trend.
Washington’s easternmost counties with grouse harvest reports include Asotin, Columbia, Ferry, Garfield, Lincoln, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Stevens, Walla Walla and Whitman. These counties comprise 28% of the annual Washington State Forest grouse harvest.
Among these counties, the percentage of the average annual harvest from each county ranges from 1.01 (Whitman County) to 37.03 (Stevens County). Average hunter days per bird are lowest in the northeastern counties, ranging from 2.84 (Pend Oreille) to 2.1 (Ferry), while the southeastern counties generally average three plus days per bird shot (range: 2.95 to 3.49). The overall trend for harvest and hunter days afield is declining, although the two don’t correlate perfectly.
The data represents a basic “catch per unit effort,” baseline abundance index and monitoring protocol. Harvest data doesn’t correlate perfectly to population status, but as an index, it suggested a population crash over the past 20 years, warranting a closer look at population demographics and hunting seasons. Thus, forest grouse represent one of few WDFW efforts across upland bird species to collect more than the annual harvest data.
Wings and Tails
To understand population demographics, WDFW places wing and tail deposit barrels at various locations across the state to evaluate the species, age and sex of shot birds. Samples collected between 2016 and 2020 showed that 35% were from birds taken within the season’s first two weeks. Additionally, samples showed a high adult ruffed grouse hen harvest. Therefore, in 2021, WDFW shifted the forest grouse season opener by 15 days to run from Sept. 15 to Jan. 15. The season shift was meant to protect adult hens by giving them a couple more weeks to raise and depart from their broods, and it aligns with the historic late September season opener in the 1950s.
In 2022, just a year after shifting back to a later season opening, the grouse wing data suggested the shift successfully reduced adult ruffed grouse hen harvest, at least in the southeast Washington Blue Mountains. What’s more, WDFW’s 2016-2023 data summary shows that ruffed grouse harvest has shifted as much as 15% from adults to juveniles since 2021.
“Wing data showed about 30% adult harvest,” said Mark Vekasy, a WDFW wildlife biologist. “A continuing trend around this percentage will lead to a slightly better long-term survival.”
Two plausible modes of population dynamics – “fitness” and “additive” versus “compensatory” mortality – may have been affected by the season shift. Fitness refers to an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce. Better-fit animals are more likely to survive and pass their genetics to offspring compared to others in the population. When highly-fit, reproductively successful adult hens are removed from the population, the reproductive loss may lead to the population’s inability to sustain itself long-term, as demonstrated by additive and compensatory mortality.
Additive mortality is the loss of individuals from a population beyond what is expected from typical life circumstances. Conversely, compensatory mortality is the loss of individuals from a population that likely would have been lost to life circumstances regardless. In other words, these birds likely would have died from predation or winterkill. An earlier hunting season start date may cause additive mortality in fit adults that would have otherwise survived to reproduce the following spring. A later season start date may shift hunting harvest to compensatory mortality on the young-of-the-year birds that would likely have died anyway.
A lower harvest rate on adult ruffed grouse hens persists following the later season start date, which may lead to a bump in Washington forest grouse populations. While good news, a shift in harvest management doesn’t replace the need for quality habitat.
The U.S. Forest Service and partners like RGS & AWS manage forest habitat in Eastern Washington. Fire suppression and minimal timber harvest have reduced habitat quality and quantity for forest grouse species over time. Disturbances, like fire, activate seed banks for many plant species that are important to forest grouse, like aspen and cherries. Poor correlations between grouse harvest data and environmental factors like annual precipitation and snowpack trends further substantiate habitat suitability as a likely limiting factor for Washington forest grouse populations.
A Banner Year
Theories aside, food sources and ruffed grouse were both abundant in Eastern Washington in 2024. Not Burton Spiller or George Bird Evans era abundant, but my setters found grouse every day afield for the first time in our Washington residency.
Finn and Yuba worked ridgetops and dipped through open timber into shrubby draws where birds held near blue elderberry that dangled lavender berry clusters. Young Zeta blazed through burn scars where deadfalls stacked five high rendered my thighs to mush.
Our final hunt of the 2024 season was simply magical. The mountaintop was cloaked in six inches of soft, glistening snow beneath a bluebird sky. Yuba pinned a small group of grouse dustbathing beneath the low branches of a sprawling fir. She stood staunch in an open shooting lane for the first time all fall.
A ruffed grouse was sitting in plain sight among the dirt and fallen needles, which flushed into the open and fell to my Ruger Red Label. A second followed on the gun’s report – one brown adult and one gray juvenile.
By the numbers, these birds fell within the long-term average hunter days per bird in my home county. They were worth every blind flush, every charley-horse leg cramp from hopping deadfalls, and a mere bonus to an eventful season of being bamboozled by the “King of the Woods.”
Harvest trends likely predict the future of Washington’s forest grouse, but with a dash of forest management and a little bit of luck, we just might see better grouse numbers.
