Hot Tip Off: Packing a Grouse Arrow

Stoning Grouse: A Traditional, Legal Conundrum

Out West, one of the oldest traditions of big game hunting is harvesting the occasional grouse when hunting for antlered game is slow. You could say that grouse are an elk hunter’s consolation prize. Previously, I never thought much about how I went about killing those birds; I just used whatever weapon was at hand—often just a rock or stick. So, imagine my surprise when I learned I had been breaking the law ever since I moved to Montana decades...

A Guide to Hunting Sharp-Tailed Grouse

Sharp-tailed grouse are best known for their “leks,” or traditional breeding sites, whereas many 15 males will congregate on the wide open prairie to compete for female attention by strutting, cackling, and stomping their feet in a strangely synchronized dance. The spring breeding season isn’t the only time when sharp-tailed grouse will gather into large flocks. During the late fall and early winter, it’s not uncommon for hunters to flush flocks...

How to Hunt Grouse Without a Dog

We’ve all seen the magazine covers: A thin creek trickling beneath a grove of aspen, the grouse flushing toward their crowns, a tweeded hunter with a double gun, and the setter pointing the ground where the bird just burst from. Like most magazine covers, that’s not how it usually happens. It’s a fantasy. For those of us without the income, allergy resistance, or space for a dog, that picturesque scene seems about as reachable as stalking...