This looks fun

I want one.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ee3jMgidOVk

That would make for a fun little backpacking grouse gun. I have a Henry AR-7 that works well, it's just a pain to setup and take down.

For a backpacking grouse gun, consider a either stock Ruger Mark IV 22/45 or adding some aftermarket love to one. The old SS Mark II target filled many horse-camp pots of arroz con pollo de trueno....

Pro Tip: Head and neck shots only boys. Have heard too many stories of watching a ruff or big blue fold after making it well out over a steep canyon before succumbing to being perforated. Don't feed the 'yotes....

Do you need a stamp to get one of those binary triggers? Not that you'd want one for grouse, but still cool. Surprised I'd never heard of one with all the bump stock fuss.

I like that you can put a brace on the charger and break down the barrel personally over a straight up pistol.

illegal to own or possess a binary trigger in WA state....

Had one take an arrow over the hill on a broadside middle mass shot years ago....after that it was head shots only, they can flop around for a few ....but never had another one get over the hill.

Lesson learned here as well. Zipped a fatty right square in the tits with a .17 HMR and over the hill it went. BOOO!

I hardly see any grouse anymore when I'm out, but I'm probably in the wrong neck of the woods.

Annual Grouse brood recruitment varies area by area - year over year. If you have a lot of song dogs, foxes and other predators, they'll hurt the population too. Predator prey cycle and all that.

To add, most Grouse hunters in WA hunt from the road. Get down into mixed habitat creek bottoms away from roads and you'll see more thunder chickens. One last tidbit...don't shoot at the first Grouse you see on a road or in an open area. They tend to send the dumb ones out first and if you can sit tight for a moment, the others will come out to play too.

Good luck,

I don't think there are many predators anymore where id see them other than man. Lots of logging roads. Few cats and bears, but not many coyotes. I live in the ouskirts of Kelso. We use to see Pheasant, Elk etc in our back yard. Now rats are showing up in the garden. Maybe it's a sign, but they get trapped then shot.

Hunted the WA blue berry patches at around 6000' with my bird dogs and had many days of limits on blues back in the day.

It was like high country pheasant hunting.

Sorry we killed em all.
It was wrong, but in our defense they were stupid.

Sounds fun

Did a similiar hunting style, but on the east slopes with talus/sagebrush on the edge of the huckleberry fields. Blues LOVE grasshoppers...and when it warms up during the day the grasshopppers would become active on the bald talus slope/sage faces. It was like extreme chukar hunting. Really beat up on them, and you might see a toad muley as well.

One hill had over 100 Blues (3 covey's) we jumped one year. We'd just keep working them over. It was a pretty good hike in from all the blowdown from the 88' fires, but once you got to the ridgetop, and spread out on the slope it was a kick!

Loved going up on that one Mt and picking huckleberries. I need to explore it more. Hear there's some ufos up there, lol.

UFO's. Never seen any, but one year hunting up in the Manatash, I came across what looked eerily like a landing site. Really weird. I had found wide and deep trail that obviously had not been used for quite a while. It was the middle of the day and it headed out from a landing through the thickest and oldest growth in the area, so I decided to see where it went. After about two miles it just disappeared. It was weird, as it obviously had been well used at some point but did not appear to lead anywhere. Any ways, I headed straight ahead from where I last saw it hoping to find something. About a 10 minute walk further I came out on a round, cleared area. It looked like an old logging landing, but there were no roads coming into it. Just this this mostly cleared, level (one a slope) round meadow. What made it really weird was that there was a full skeleton of a cow elk laying in it, with no scattering of the bones. Looked like nothing had touched it. Then a short distance away was another similar clearing, with another similar skeleton. All surrounded by fairly thick woods, and from what I could tell, no roads within 2 to 3 miles in any direction. Some day I think I will try to find the site again and see what it looks like now.

Manastash...maybe you were getting close to "Mel's Hole"?

I alway's liked listening to the wing-nuts call in during late night drives when that topic came up on whatever radio station (pre-Xm/Sirius) we could conjure up in the middle of nowhere heading hunting/fishing back in the day,