Palouse Outdoors: The Majesty of Mountaintop Grouse Hunting

Blue Mountain ruffed grouse hunting is hard on an old dog. Thick covers and fire-scarred timbers scattered and stacked like match sticks are challenging for me, let alone two elder setters that stand 18 inches high at the chest. Nevertheless, we find ourselves in the mountaintop covers every September, welcoming the upland bird season with the ruffed grouse opener, enjoying camp overlooking the Dayton area, and the remarkable sunsets that boast a palette from peach to lavender.

Brad Trumbo

A typical vibrant September sunset silhouettes Mount Adams.

Timbered edges of grassy and shrubby meadows are punctuated with crimson ninebark, snowberry, and rose hips. The elderberries cling to a hint of lime-green, accented by lavender berry clusters not quite ripe for the picking. The meadows transition into timber and thickening north-facing slopes sprouting whippy Scouler's willow, spindly buff larch that shed needles like snowflakes when bumped. The adolescent firs maintain their stately emerald hue, having none of that silly deciduousness. The forest floor along this transition is a carpet of forbs and grasses, a cache of grouse food, and cover easy enough for "old dog bones" to hunt with little consequence.

Brad Trumbo

Finn and Yuba were sitting for an obligatory annual photo just a moment before a grouse flushed behind us

Finn and Yuba traversed such a transition zone, weaving among the shrubbery with their vests zipping through the stems. Twigs crunched beneath my feet as I carefully stepped through and over the small trees. Sunlight streamed through the forest canopy, illuminating the litterfall and forbs like stepping stones. The morning was pristine, the habitat was prime, and anticipation ran high.

Ruffs rarely sit for a pointing dog, in my experience. Therefore, I hunt grouse by sound mostly, listening for those pounding wings and trying frantically to locate the bird. When flushing into the open, their wingbeats are quick, vibratory, and palpable against the eardrum, like the "whopping" of a chopper flying overhead. An hour of pushing cover moved not a single bird, so I called the hunt and staged a photo with the aging setters to commemorate another season in grouse camp.

Savvy critters recognize vulnerability, and mountaintop ruffs seem to recognize the camera as one of mine. While capturing a few fine memories of the girls and a beautiful 1951 Dumoulin side-by-side 16-gauge received from a good friend, a ruff blew its cover less than 20 yards behind us. The flush was unmistakable; no visual identification required. Spinning on my heels, I scanned the trees for a football-shaped figure sitting on a nearby limb, but the bird knew better than to show itself.

"I bet they've got another 10 minutes left in them," I thought, releasing the duo to pursue the flush still echoing in my mind.

Brad Trumbo

Zeta living her best life in the grouse covers.

The girls again vanished into the cover to find that we had inadvertently located a small brood. Several more flushes came and went in short order with no visual evidence of a bird, not even a flash or a single father floating softly to the ground. One bird was close enough to kick. Its primary flight feathers slapped against branches, yet the Scouler's willow was so dense that it, too, sailed off into the timber without moving a twig. I could only imagine the low and canting flight path as it glided away, triumphant. No birds for us, but is grouse hunting truly about killing birds?

A five-grouse day is the best I've experienced on the mountaintop, and it has only happened twice. The birds are wherever you find them. Creek bottoms often provide more predictable hunting and bird contact. Additionally, ruffs move around in their home range, which encompasses up to 100 acres depending upon the season and brood rearing.

Brad Trumbo

A flock of Clark's nutcrackers perched near camp before descending into the draw below and squawking until dark.

I've cataloged weather patterns, brooding conditions, fall food abundance, and time of day in the grouse covers for over a decade. The only weak correlation I can draw for consistently finding birds is overall bird abundance. I might see a few birds up high if the grouse had a good hatch and brood year. Otherwise, finding grouse on the mountaintop is a crapshoot. One clear correlation is the number of birds in the bag compared to the number of flushes in a given season. Because ruffs favor thick cover and are masterful escape artists, fewer than eight bird contacts in a season leaves me little shooting opportunity. But it's not birds that call us back to the mountaintop.

Grouse camp is about the early and late golden hours, the long shadows stretching across the ridgetops, and the chorus of warblers, chickadees, and nuthatches flocking into the ponderosas and meadow grasses to feed at dusk. There are vast views from the open ridges and the dramatic terrain where the earth seems to have fallen away. Chartreuse lichens punctuate the twisted, leaden skeletal limbs of fire-tortured ponderosas, and the sharp aroma of pine pitch on the air. The rare and piercing elk bugle that echoes through the canyons at daybreak and the raucous squawking of Clark's nutcrackers as the campfire burns down.

Brad Trumbo

The evening view in grouse camp.

Am I rationalizing my average bag of one grouse per year? Perhaps. But I know where to find birds, and numbers equate to birds in the vest. Still, I choose this area year after year for the tradition and scenery over all else, driven by visions of the first gray-phase ruffed grouse I had ever seen, diving off the mountainside and sailing deep into the canyon below. That moment educated this easterner on the fact that grouse have color phases and behave like chukar in the right circumstances. A scene that replays through memory as the sun sinks, the nutcrackers cry, and a setter frolics with grasshoppers around the campfire.