Teaching Moments
District Game Warden Connor Folkers
Sharp-tailed grouse season opens about a month before pheasant season opens.
With the grouse opener, many folks out west like to get out early in efforts to chase wild birds.
I personally enjoy grouse hunting to get my dog out exercising in September before we start to hunt pheasants the rest of the year.
Some days are warmer than others, but we make it work early in the mornings.
For sharptails, the appearance between the males and females are very similar so you are allowed to shoot both to count toward your daily limit of three per person.
Ring-necked pheasants, on the other hand, only allows for a season on males (roosters), as females (hens) are illegal to shoot.
Sharp-tailed grouse
For this, the daily limit for roosters are three per person.
This fall I was driving around during the last week of September when I came across a father and son who were hunting along the Lewis and Clark Wildlife Management Area south of Williston.
They had just finished walking with blaze orange on and shotguns.
I was intrigued to check the two because I knew the area had a lot more pheasants than it does grouse and of course the pheasant season was not yet open.
I watched them load up in their vehicle and start driving when I met them down the road.
I rolled down my window to perform a quick check to see if they got lucky enough to find some grouse.
By surprise, the driver stated they shot three grouse.
I was in shock but wanted to check them out.
I asked to take and look and the driver walked back with no hesitation to open the tailgate to see the birds.
The second the tailgate dropped I knew exactly what I was looking at.
Two hen pheasants and a young rooster pheasant.
I stood there trying to figure out how to break the silence because at that moment I knew they had no idea what they had shot.
I asked them what they were hunting again, and the dad said grouse.
I then had to let them know they did not shoot grouse and were in possession of illegal birds.
The father and son had no idea, so I tried to have a teaching moment to describe the characteristics on what to look for and the differences.
The rooster was very young but had little red color around his head to differentiate from a hen.
Up close differences would show that grouse have hairy legs and white bellies.
Hen pheasants are typically all brown even under the belly.
While the birds are flying it can be tough for some inexperienced hunters that have never hunted pheasants or even grouse before.
The noise they may make when they get up and fly away will be different.
Hen pheasant
Even though sharp-tailed grouse are named the way they are, they have very tiny tails compared to those of rooster and hen pheasants.
The son showed me some pictures of grouse on his phone from the week earlier and I was able to confirm they were grouse.
He said he went with some friends who were a lot better at identifying birds than he was.
There were some citations issued out that day and the birds were seized but hopefully there were some teaching moments for them.
They were not the only ones this fall who made mistakes.
During opening weekend of pheasant season this year I received a call from a guy who said he accidentally shot a hen pheasant and wanted to report himself.
I asked if he could send me a picture of the bird and asked where he was.
I wasn’t very close so I was trying to figure out when I could meet up with him.
While still on the phone he was able to send me a picture.
I looked at the picture of a single bird and was confused.
I asked him what he had sent me.
He said he shot a hen and sent it to me.
I told him I was looking at a picture of a grouse.
The guy self-reported for shooting an illegal bird that turned out to be completely legal and I told him he could shoot two more if he knew what he was shooting at.
The man was relieved and so was I, so I went back to checking more hunters in the area and let him know he was all good.
Wardens enjoy seeing people outdoors hunting and fishing, especially people who are new to it.
We do understand the challenges of people not knowing every single species that you may see in a day.
Hopefully some can take away some education from this story for the future.
