Subject: Hi Roger,
Date: Mar 30 20:22:17 1995
From: STEPNIEWSKI at delphi.com - STEPNIEWSKI at delphi.com


Re: Spruce Grouse on the Olympic Peninsula.

I suggest you treat WA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife data on grouse with
hefty skepticism.For example: I looked over Dept. data on grouse kill in
the Yakima area a few years back and it showed a "harvest" of 350 Spruce
Grouse in a season. Well, upon questioning Dell Peterson of the Dept. here
in Yakima, I learned the survey methods would be seriouisly open to
question. It turns out even he (the grouse guru of this area) has seen but
a handful on the easty slopes of the Cascades this far south and none
recently. He agreed with my perception that these hunter surveys are often
conducted by those who really don't know their birds and that hunters may
label their catch wrong. If similar methods are at work on the Olympic,
you might want to investigate! It seems odd to me that Spruce Grouse would
occur on the Olympic Peninsula, yet be absent on the west slopes of the
Cascades and the entire coastal slope of British Columbia's Coast
Mountains from 49N-54 N latitude.

Andy Stepniewski
Wapato, WA