Growing up in northern Wisconsin, it was always a treat to
find a Sharp-tailed Grouse. At one time they were rather common in the
Cheesehead State but the combined tragedies of fire suppression and conversion
of grasslands to human housing and endless strip malls, took a substantial toll
on Sharp-tailed Grouse distribution.
The first Sharp-tailed Grouse I ever saw was on April 10, 1968, at the Crex Meadows Wildlife Management Area near Grantsburg, Wisconsin. With my freshly minted permanent Wisconsin drivers license in my wallet, I drove over to Crex very early that morning. It was a Wednesday and yes, I skipped school and not for the first time. I had heard about a dancing ground (a display ground) for Sharp-tailed Grouse there and I wanted to see the birds displaying. Arriving well before sunrise I heard the mysterious hooting and pattering of Sharp-tailed Grouse displaying males. There were six males on this lek and I watched them trying to get lucky. Later that morning I saw my first Sandhill Cranes. It was a memorable day.
During my remaining 11 years as a Wisconsin resident, I found Sharp-tailed Grouse very sparingly. I remember a pair in a Douglas County jack pine barren in 1971, displaying males at the Mead Wildlife Management Area in Wood and Portage counties on April 30, 1977, and additional birds at Crex Meadows on several occasions. Most surprising was a pair (probably hatch year birds) on the Oakridge Waterfowl Production Area near New Richmond, St. Croix County, on October 15, 1977. Historical records suggested these were the first Sharp-tailed Grouse seen in St. Croix County in nearly 80 years. To my knowledge they have not been seen in St. Croix County since that freak encounter.
Until 1979, finding a Sharp-tailed Grouse was a major accomplishment and something that didn’t happen every year. That scenario changed on January 20, 1979, when I moved to the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, North Dakota. There I found myself in Sharp-tailed Grouse nirvana. Staff at the Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge near Pingree, about 20 miles north of Jamestown, set up a viewing blind on a Sharp-tailed Grouse lek and in April 1979 I watched grouse dancing on several brisk prairie mornings.
I was an avid hunter in those formative years. It all began with a Gray Squirrel I shot in Barron County, Wisconsin, from the side of a butternut tree behind my grandparent’s barn on October 1, 1960. I was a month shy of 9 years old, a mere three years too young to be hunting legally. There were very few things my grandparents looked the other way on, but one of them was a grandson's age and his ability to handle a gun. From that morning forward, I was fanatic about hunting and would start in June counting down the days until the opening day of duck hunting season in October.
For hunters in the 1970s and 1980s, North Dakota was paradise. Name something you wanted to hunt and you could usually find a season for it somewhere in the Peace Garden State. I still remember a day in October 1979, when I began the morning on Sibley Lake, Kidder County. Hunting was legal at 7:00 a.m. and by 7:11 I had a limit of four male American Wigeon and a male Redhead. I then set up decoys on the south shore of the lake and quickly shot a limit of five Snow Geese. Beginning my trek home, I harvested a limit of 3 Sharp-tailed Grouse and 10 Gray Partridge and I was back in my office by noon. Days of hunting success like that one were not uncommon.
Although waterfowl hunting was the main focus every October and November, what I enjoyed the most was hunting Sharp-tailed Grouse. I shot my first one just after sunrise on this day, September 17, in 1979.
The Mount Moriah Waterfowl Production Area (now renamed in memory of my famous colleague Bob Stewart) is one square mile (640 acres) of native prairie and an abundance of wetlands. There are 105 wetland basins on that one-square mile patch of ground – one of the highest wetland densities in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Dakotas, Montana, and adjacent Canada.
Chester, my Chesapeake Bay Retriever, and I stepped onto the grassland of Mount Moriah shortly before sunrise on September 17, 1979, the opening day of Sharp-tailed Grouse season. I had extensive experience (but not extensive luck) hunting Ruffed Grouse in Wisconsin but had no idea how to hunt Sharp-tailed Grouse. Chester and I began our quest in the southwest corner of the Waterfowl Production Area, then walked toward the center of the area before turning right and walking east into the rising sun.
Chester sensed the birds before I did. His ears always perked up in a certain way when he found any bird for me, and he showed the same behavior on Mount Moriah. I took a couple steps forward and three Sharp-tailed Grouse erupted at my feet. I leveled off on one bird, shot, and watched it tumble from the sky. Turning on the other two I fired two shots in desperation because they had already flown out of my range. Chester very excitedly bounced over to the grouse’s resting place, and with the bird in his mouth, returned to me.
I was quite proud of myself and placed the bird in the game pouch of my hunting jacket. Chester and I continued walking over the prairie for another hour flushing seven more Sharp-tailed Grouse of which two didn’t see the sun set that day. With my first limit of grouse in my pocket by 8:30 that morning, Chester and I returned home. It was the first of many times my dog and I returned home with a limit of Sharp-tailed Grouse in my game pouch.
There, my daughter Jennifer, who then was two years old, couldn’t take her hands or her attention off the birds as I prepared to clean them. This continued to be a pattern on subsequent hunts when I carried her in a kid-pack on my back as we tromped across the prairie waiting for Chester to flush a grouse. Invariably when one did, a tiny hand would jet past my right eye and I would see a tiny finger shaking as the voice in my ear yelled “Grouse, Daddy!” When I missed a bird, she was as disappointed as my dog was but when I scored Jennifer instantly called it “my grouse” and insisted on carrying the bird for the rest of the hunt and many times in her arms the entire way home after we finished for the day. Three years later her sister Dana reacted the same way as Jennifer used to now that Jennifer was walking beside me and Dana was in the kid pack.
Sharp-tailed Grouse remained my most preferred quarry for hunting during my remaining time in North Dakota. When I lost my dog in 1983, however, my desire to hunt evaporated and I have not picked up a shotgun or rifle since that year.
After leaving North Dakota I lived in Georgia, the Bahamas, Nebraska, southern California, northern Virginia, and now in retirement on the west coast of Florida. Only the six years of that period spent in Nebraska were in Sharp-tailed Grouse range and I have seen this species only three times since I moved from Nebraska in February, 1993. Twice when I returned to Nebraska to watch migrating Sandhill Cranes, I ventured north of Grand Island to the Taylor Ranch where both Sharp-tailed Grouse and Greater Prairie-Chicken display alongside each other.
The last one I saw erupted at my feet while walking across the tundra of Denali National Park, Alaska, in September 2017. When that single bird flushed in front of me, I instinctively pulled up an imaginary shotgun and fired an imaginary shot just like I did for real 41 years ago this morning. The Alaska bird flew away unharmed. The North Dakota bird wasn’t that lucky but its demise made me a feverish advocate for protecting habitats where Sharp-tailed Grouse continue to survive.
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