Submitted Photo: North Dakota is fortunate to have a small population of sage grouse. Photo by NDGF Ashley Peterson.
I have three North Dakota OUTDOORS calendars on the wall in my office. When I look up and see a darkly shaded day, I know it’s pretty significant. A season opener or application deadline is reason for a second look. As I glanced at September, I remembered that years ago there was a three-day stretch in the middle of the week that marked the beginning and end of sage grouse season.
I think back to 30 years ago when the hunters and I suggested “We should go west and hunt sage grouse.” The mutual understanding was twofold. How lucky we were to have a hunting season at all in North Dakota, even if for us in southeastern North Dakota it was closer to Denver than Minneapolis (look at the numbers, it’s pretty close). But even more than that, we knew that the future of sage grouse and an open hunting season was like the Vikings’ Super Bowl ambitions — not too promising.
As a group of biologists and science teachers, football fans and coaches, we knew that hunting was not the cause of the population decline. We didn’t blame the fans for a football loss. It was about what was or wasn’t on the field. The habitat of players and coaches was in the same vein as the habitat, or lack thereof, of the sage grouse.
“I know some people have said the sage grouse population in North Dakota is in a hospice, and I think that’s probably an accurate statement,” said Jesse Kolar, upland game manager for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Dickinson. “I think our only saving grace is that there are still sage grouse in Montana and South Dakota that are associated with our population, so we can hope that these birds will move into our population. But in recent years, those populations have not done so well. South Dakota, like us, has closed hunting seasons due to declines, and Montana has seen similar declines across the border.”
North Dakota had its first sage grouse hunting season in 1964. It was closed only once, in 1979, before being suspended indefinitely in 2008. The hunting season, which lasted three days in most of those years, never attracted a wide audience, perhaps about 100 hunters per year. Since 1980, the highest number of birds harvested in a season was 71, in 1983. In 2007, probably the last hunting season, only 21 birds were harvested.
“Unfortunately, we only know of two mating sites today,” Kolar said in southwestern Bowman County in early April. “Last year there were 23 males at these two breeding grounds. This year our preliminary counts were even lower. The breeding ground where we saw 13 birds last year has had about three so far. It’s still early, maybe we’ll see more later in the season, but it doesn’t look promising.”
North Dakota lies at the eastern limit of the bird’s range, where habitat and climate factors limit the sage grouse’s success and spread, so its population has never been particularly large in the state.
The last time more than 100 males were counted on mating grounds in North Dakota was in 2007, when there were 199. Since then, their numbers have declined considerably, and there have been years when the total never reached double digits.
“Between 2006 and 2008, their numbers declined quite sharply, and we believe this is due to the emergence of the West Nile virus,” Said Kolar. “But by and large, there are many reasons for the decline of sage grouse. We’ve lost sagebrush, we’ve seen fragmentation from oil and gas development and other human developments in its core habitat. Sage grouse like huge areas of mostly undisturbed sagebrush and grasslands. And there’s not much of that left in their core range.”
Capercaillie search the sagebrush for food, protection from the weather and predators, and nesting and breeding habitats.
“Sage grouse are not as productive as sharp-tailed grouse, partridges or pheasants. They are definitely slower productive and live longer,” Said Kolar. “Some of our wild animals reproduce very quickly – they produce many young, which often die. Sage grouse are better adapted to produce fewer young.”
Game and Fisheries Department wildlife managers have not sat idly by as sage grouse numbers have slowly declined. For example, over the past 20 years, the department has been involved in habitat improvement and restoration projects to bolster the sage grouse population.
“As for the possibility of another sage grouse hunting season in North Dakota … I think I’m pretty pessimistic,” Said Kolar. “Never say never, because all wildlife populations fluctuate and sometimes we experience unexpected spikes. But it doesn’t look like we’ll be opening our hunting season anytime soon.”
And when you think about it, it’s not that different from the Vikings and the Super Bowl.
