By Craig Springer
U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- While science helps us understand why the dusky grouse’s baffling behavior is counter-intuitive, the research is made possible through Wildlife Restoration funding from firearm and ammunition excise taxes.
There is a bird migration underway right now, but it is not what you may think. It’s late August. National Shooting Sports Month is coming to a close. And I am thinking about my shotguns and shot patterns, bird dogs and coming bird seasons. I throw a few clays at a shooting range near my home, hoping to restore “muscle memory” in case that is a real thing. My daughter who studies kinesiology says it is bogus – muscles cannot remember squat. But I remember missing more than a few birds on a chaotic flush, and practice does lead one toward perfection.
Dusky grouse are native to the mountains of the western United States and Canadian provinces, from the Yukon to the Arizona-New Mexico border. They have a curious way of making a living. They migrate as winter approaches. But not to the south. They move uphill – up steep mountain slopes where it is colder, snowier, windier, and more inhospitable – where, for humankind, living out winter at timberline would be undesirable if not nearly impossible. It is counter-intuitive and on the face of it, a bit baffling that a big bird behaves in such a manner.
With the use of Wildlife Restoration funds (Pittman-Robertson), Colorado Parks and Wildlife researched the dusky grouse diet and habitat use and revealed that come winter, the bird lives in a virtual grocery store. They take up residence in dense stands of spruces and
