Hunting ruffs in the Northern Rockies
I follow the crease of the mountain waiting for the flush of a ruffed grouse. Here in the Northern Rockies, it feels as if I’m chasing a memory from my childhood in the Appalachians. Rose brambles scratch my arms as I push away brush. I trip on the downfall that gravity has dragged into the draw. The soft murmur of water tells me which line to follow.
The canyon rises around me. Exposed cliffs, lodgepole pines and grassy parks stretch into the sky beyond my line of sight as I work my way up the spring seep. But in front of me hawthorn and dogwood choke the depression, a deciduous vein in the semi-arid landscape.
Where the slope to my right softens its pitch briefly, I see where a bear has descended the hill and entered the seep. Its path is strewn with overturned rocks and a pile of scat filled with chokecherry seeds. From the size of the prints, I assume it is a black bear, which doesn’t raise the hair on my neck. But last year I came across grizzly tracks in the mud two creeks north of where I’m standing. Five miles is but an afternoon walk for a silver-tipped bruin.
More concerned with self-preservation than stealth, I yell, “Hey, bear! Coming through, bear!” before entering the cover. And in a moment, I realize I’m listening for not only the sounds of a fleeing grouse but also the crash of a larger animal, popping teeth or a low growl.
As I walk the same trail the bear walked, I don’t know exactly where my right hand should be—gripping the stock of my 20-gauge or on my bear spray . . . .
When hunting grouse in the Northern Rockies, it's wise to announce yourself before entering cover and to carry bear spray.
There is no North American gamebird more canonized, mythologized and revered than the ruffed grouse—sorry, Gentleman Bob. The celebrated bird has centuries of writing, sporting lore and tradition riding on its thunderous wings, which have shaped dog breeds, hunters and conservationists.
Growing up in Pennsylvania, I fished brook trout streams that followed old hollows and flushed grouse nearly every outing. Yet by the time I began to think about hunting grouse, their flushes had become rarer than bobcat sightings.
A combination of aging forests, shifting weather patterns and, even more devastating, West Nile virus had made Pennsylvania’s state bird a unicorn where I lived. Aldo Leopold understood the fragility of the North Woods’ autumn landscape, with the ruffed grouse at its heart: “. . . subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.” I have seen such a landscape die.
Still, I knew ruffed grouse country as pole-timber thickets of beech and birch, shuddering aspens, the soft boughs of hemlocks and hillsides of rhododendron. The quintessential grouse country was in my mind’s eye.
I had never even heard about hunting ruffed grouse in Idaho, Montana or Wyoming. Then I moved west, where the birds thrive from the valley floors to 6,500 feet above sea level. Where mule deer, elk, lions and grizzlies live, so do ruffed grouse. Some 2,000 miles away from the beaver ponds of Vermont and abandoned orchards of western Massachusetts, ruffed grouse drum on fallen ponderosa pines.
The ruffed grouse is a bona fide Western native—the same as the bull trout and sharp-tailed grouse—but hearing the mini-sonic-boom flush reverberate across slopes blooming with glacier lilies still surprises me. It’s as if A.B. Frost and Russell Chatham traded landscapes.
The grouse flies through the crown of a serviceberry and up the seep, settling somewhere I cannot see. My ears were working in two directions—as predator and prey—so when the bird flushed, my hand paused a moment on my gun.
Because there is no cover on either side of the draw, I know the grouse must stay in this gully. At the top of the ridge three-quarters of a mile away is an old logging road where birds seem to hang up before busting over the rise into a regenerating lodgepole-pine clearcut to disappear. I think I can catch the grouse there.
As I continue up, I realize that the bear I followed quickly turned down the seep to work its way to the creek below, leaving the same trail of upended rocks and clawed logs behind. The brush ahead appears free of bears . . . for now.
Grizzly and black bears are part of life in the Northern Rockies, and I believe the mountains are more alive with their presence. However, their being here changes how a hunter must move through the woods. Thoughtful preparation and planning must go into every trip. This isn’t a quick walk in the Back 40.
There are certain coverts that my friends will no longer enter until the second half of December from fear of bumping into a grizzly. The tangle of spring seeps and creek bottoms are highways and cool refuges for bears in the hot, dry days of September and October, and the same berries the grouse love are what the bears inhale as they pack on weight for winter. Big-game hunters are at high risk when they have bloody elk carcasses at their feet. Mountain grouse hunters share a similar risk by sneaking through the bush.
There is a calculated risk to everything in life, and I always say that getting in a car and driving to work can be pretty risky. But I know folks and friends of folks who have been charged, chewed on and mauled with scatterguns and fly rods in hand, and they all say the same thing: “It happens faster than you think.”
I always carry bear spray and am never shy to use my voice or a whistle when coming around a blind corner or entering cover. Birds are certainly spooky, but I’d rather give the grouse a heads-up than surprise a grizzly. Hunters with dogs sometimes feel more comfortable with their canines busting brush as loud beepers sound their presence. Many friends have shared that they feel surer moving through bear country with their pointers and Labs than they would alone, and I’m sure I’d feel the same way. However, a dog can also bring a bear back to you after casting for scent, which has been the inciting incident in more than one grizzly story.
Hunting with a partner or two is important, but sometimes no one can go on the one afternoon you have to hunt. Make sure that someone knows exactly where you are hunting, if you go alone.
The first grouse flushes and dives past me while the second banks up and away. I don’t remember shouldering my gun, but I do see the second ruff crumple in the air and crash into the snowberries.
I find the grouse below the white fruit and think for a moment it’s as if I’m reaching past a constellation of stars to the bird. A gray-phase, the female is beautiful in the way that every ruffed grouse is. She is this year’s bird—the fan molting inward and pin feathers stippling the neck. I pet the full cape, speckled like light filtered through leaves, and smell the bird’s nutty scent on my hands.
As with all native, wild birds I hunt, I take a moment to revel in the creature shaped by place. Born in the cold Rocky Mountain spring, grouse huddle away from hail and thunderstorms, endure late frosts and drought, and survive when so many mouths hope to grab them. No matter how many times a grouse comes to hand, I shake my head in thanks.
While Rocky Mountain ruffs can be found in lodgepole forests, stands of Douglas fir, alder thickets and aspen clones, they are still ruffed grouse, which means they need water. No matter what vegetation you find them in, there will be a river, creek, seep or even a small spring nearby.
Ruffed grouse and dusky grouse will inhabit common areas at higher elevations and share a similar diet above 5,000 feet. In my experience you are more likely to find duskys in ruffed grouse habitat than ruffs in dusky habitat. Dusky grouse—particularly hens with broods—possess a higher tolerance for increased stem densities, whereas ruffed grouse have a lower tolerance of open ponderosa stands.
Just like that of its Eastern cousin, the diet of the Western ruff is wide and varied; yet because the West’s biodiversity pales in comparison to the East’s, there is simply less selection. Ants and small grasshoppers are often found in crops along with an assortment of fruit from mountain ash, kinnikinic, wintergreen, chokecherry, western teaberry, rose hips, snowberry and elderberry as well as a smorgasbord of buds from willow to aspen. While aspen is an important forage and cover for Western ruffs, don’t view this tree as the grouse magnet it is in the East and Upper Midwest. You will find birds there, but don’t hop from clone to clone. The grouse are in far more places than those isolated pockets.
Snowberry bushes are great to hunt as the berries ripen and hang on the plants through December. Most of the ruffed grouse I kill in September and October have crops bursting with the pale, white fruit akin to wet Tic Tacs.
As fall turns to winter, look to south-facing slopes where the sun will keep the snow off the kinnikinic berries that are still red in the cold.
Because of the elevations Western ruffs occupy, tens of thousands of acres of national forest land offer a lifetime’s worth of exploring and good hunting. But don’t be afraid to knock on doors if you see a good covert on private land. Unlike asking permission to hunt big game—or even pheasants or prairie grouse on the plains—grouse aren’t widely valued in the mountains, so finding access is often much easier.
I near the turn of the logging road and can hear birds ahead. The brush is too thick to shoot or see through, so in an effort to cut off the birds, I scramble up to the road and jog to the pinch point.
One grouse goes, and for an instant I see a break in the Douglas firs. My shot is behind.
Another rises from a patch of alders and makes for the opening and the hill beyond. A clean shot. Not a single branch in sight. Just as the grouse begins to crest the rise, I fire and watch the bird sail away. Could I have shot the crest off the top of its head?
In case a pellet did connect, I follow the flight path for 150 yards—not a feather—until I meet the old clearcut and stand staring at the wall of 12-foot-tall lodgepole. I could be three feet from a bird without it needing to move.
There’s light enough still for a short walk into the next draw.
Like all grouse, Western ruffs can be hunted with and without dogs. Classic pointers will work well, while many hunters like versatile Labs that can bust cattails for roosters and work in the mountains for grouse. Because of the long history of commercial forestry in the Northern Rockies, there are thousands of miles of closed and abandoned logging roads following creeks and spring seeps. These allow hunters to cover ground easily while their dogs work off the trails.
One quality of Western grouse that Eastern hunters might find surprising is the birds’ affinity for flushing into trees instead of speeding out and away. In my experience, this occurs more when hunting with dogs than without—with somewhere around 30 to 40 percent of points. So when you’re walking in on a dog, also be looking in the branches for a bobbing head.
Hunters without dogs must move through cover slowly and listen. I’ve killed more grouse because of my ears than my eyes. Whether it’s because of the birds running through leaves, their short flushes or their anxious peet, peet, peet before exiting, it is easier to hear them than parse their perfect feathers from the detritus. Snow on the ground helps tremendously when it comes to tracking and seeing grouse in the underbrush.
Bear-thirty”—the moment that evening beats the day—has arrived, and I’m 20 minutes from the car. I keep to the logging road, quickly eating up the distance with long strides while scanning the ground for birds.
An elk bugles a half-mile above me, faint but distinct—the bull finally comfortable in the coming dark and cooling air.
Where a line of willows marks a spring, I ready myself for the possibility of a grouse. It’s the last good cover before the road breaks open into bare hills.
And there is a grouse, almost miraculous in its sudden presence, that flushes left to right, trying to reach the seep below. The bird folds with the echo of the shot, and I follow the sound like an invisible line to where I saw the bird fall, hoping my memory is quick enough to catch every detail even here in the low light.
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