MT Greater sage-grouse pics

[mtmiller]

I contracted a pilot to check for sage grouse and he located a new lek last week. I hit the road early this morning for a good count and found 28 birds. Feel a little better after seeing over half the leks no longer holding birds (land conversion, roads, gas development, etc.. |oo ).

 

[1_pointer]

Awesome pics! Strutting 'chickens' are one hell of a sight! Lek counts in No. UT are way up this year. One lek had over 250 males on it!

 

[Washington Hunter]

Nice pics mtmiller. Thanks

1 pointer, any idea why the numbers are up in Utah?

 

[Delw]

Great pics as usual

Delw

 

[1_pointer]

A couple. One is that there's still quite a bit of snow in the upper sage flats, so I'm wondering if the birds 'migrated' in to lek. They've also limited the hunting to a permit system and only a 9 day season. There's been a few fires in some over mature sagebrush stands, that are doing well for producing grass/forbs. It was a pretty good year up that way water wise last year.

 

[mtmiller]

Tyler, 250 males on a lek is amazing. The most I have seen was closer to 100. Curious, are there any new leks associated with the openings created by fire? How large of openings were created? Did you try any mechanical treatments or strictly fire?

BTW, 5 short months to Kodiak.

 

[1_pointer]

No new leks due to fire that I'm aware of. Most of the fires weren't in be lekking areas, but in the nesting/brood rearing habitats. A couple of the fires were a couple hundred acres to one maybe in the thousands (before my tenure). They are doing some mechanical treatments this spring and the univ. is catching and collaring birds for the study.

5 months! I almost forgot... Actually I need to get my gear laid out and see what I need to try to talk the wife into buying for me.

 

[Wyodeerhunter]

Awesome pic mtmiller!

The biggest lek i've seen this year has around 75-100 males. Last year it had about 1/2 as many.

 

[D4570]

Sagehens

Way cool pics!!
Love to hunt them. Do you think there numbers will be down this year? We hunt around Winet."D"

 

[mtmiller]

Nearly all of my leks are in Blaine County and have not been accurately counted in over a decade, so no trend data here (other than the loss of many leks during that same time period, as I mentioned earlier).

Prelininary out of Phillips County, birds numbers look pretty good, although I have been told the birds on the Matador (TNC) apppear to be a little lower so far.

D4570, are you sure you weren't slaughtering sage grouse there last year? If I remember correctly, you and some buds killed a pile of those vile tasting critters.

 

[Elkhunter]

Fantastic pics!!!!!!!

 

[D4570]

We did get a few last year, it's just we only found them in some small remote pockets, not widely dispersed ares.Many miles in between flocks.