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I was able to take advantage of the light snow so far this year and Utah’s new extended blue grouse season the other day and get out and shoot a limit of duskies. Most years by this time the high country is locked up with snow and the season blue grouse season closed at the end of November. It was still a long hike in and once we got to the highest elevations where the grouse were there was six to twelve inches of snow. Some of it was hard enough to walk on; otherwise it was post-holing all the way.
Sometimes late in the season once there is snow on the ground the blues have all taken to the trees and you don’t flush any from the ground. When this is the case I’m sure you walk under a lot of grouse and they just hold still and let you walk right by; those that do dive out of the tree tops, usually from the backside going 80 mph downhill. They make for a very sporty target.
This time I caught about half of the birds on the ground and half in trees. The highlight of the day was when Lilly, a young French Brittany I am working tracked and retrieved her first bird, a bird I barely hit through a narrow window in the pine boughs. I watched Lilly work down the air-born scent cone along the flight path of the bird, and then disappear over the edge. She showed up about two minutes later with a big cock blue grouse in her mouth looking very proud of herself.
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