by Doug Leier

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 to hunt sage grouse.” The mutual understanding was twofold. How lucky we were in North Dakota to have a hunting season, 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

“I think that’s probably an accurate statement,” said Jesse Kolar, upland game management supervisor for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Dickinson. “I think our only saving grace is that Montana and South Dakota still have sage grouse that are associated with our population, so we might hope to have those birds feed into our population. But in recent years, those populations haven’t done so well. South Dakota, like us, has closed hunting seasons due to declines, and Montana has seen similar declines just 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 breeding grounds today,” Kolar said in southwestern Bowman County in early April. “Last year, there were 23 males at those two breeding grounds. This year, our preliminary numbers are 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 dropped pretty steeply, and we think that’s because West Nile virus came into the landscape,” Kolar said. “But by and large, there are many reasons for the decline in sage-grouse. We’ve lost sagebrush, we’ve seen fragmentation from oil and gas development and other human developments in their core habitat. Sage-grouse like large areas of mostly undisturbed sagebrush and grasslands. And

We don’t have much of that in our core product range anymore.”

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 definitely have slower reproduction and longer life expectancy,” Kolar said. “Some of our wildlife reproduce very quickly – produce many young and die frequently. 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 far as the possibility of a new season for sage grouse in North Dakota … I’m pretty pessimistic,” Kolar said. “Never say never, because all wildlife populations fluctuate and sometimes we see unexpected spikes. But it doesn’t look promising that we’ll be opening our season anytime soon.”

When you think about it, it’s not much different than the Vikings and the Super Bowl.