They are hard to find but locally plentiful. The season , bag limit and location are well regulated. Sage grouse need sage , when the sage is ripped up or burned , the habitat is lost. We hunt where they are plentiful. Some years we see many , other years none. This year has grasshoppers everywhere so the bird population climbed significantly .
Many people do not know where in the vast sagebrush sea the birds may be found. Others have difficulty hunting them . Many people consider them a prize as one of the North American grouse species . We killed three out of two
groups totaling 40-50 birds . Even so it was a 10 mile walk in rolling terrain . I believe they had not been hunted this year and the season is short and closed now.
Many hunters struggle with the difficulty of this sort of hunt. I have taken some folks out who are done after a couple miles.
The first year birds are palatable , the older birds not so much.
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