Greetings from almost Canada!
Sadly, last year's incredible population "high" seems to have completely departed. From my observations of things after several days in the woods (even starting almost a week before the opener) I'd say that we're pretty much back to what has become "normal" here for the last 10-years or so.
It rained steadily (& hard) over the critical nesting period here (late May/early June) and very few broods of chicks (if any) seemed to have made it to greet the Fall. All the birds we're seeing so-far are mature birds (with 1 exception, a bird with tail feathers so short it couldn't fly well). Oh well....these birds should be earned anyway, right? It's far-more comfortable to walk down a trail without all the weight of a bunch of dead ones in your gamebag...
Moreover, the weather here has been unseasonably warm. Eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit isn't much fun to deal with in the woods (because all the local bugs still think it's summer and you're a meal ticket). Hunting in the mornings only now and waiting patiently for the 1st real freeze (which shouldn't be too-much longer). None of this, of course, will much help the hordes of RV campers (glampers!) I'm seeing all over the place right now. There are folks set-up in places I didn't even know existed for camping a few short years ago. Clearly a post-Covid thing (you've got to use those wildly-expensive playthings somehow I guess?). I'm also fairly certain they were mostly here for what they had perceived would be a fairly-dramatic "opener" that never materialized, and that they will be departing shortly, leaving me to puddle along at my own pace, in my old throwback hunting camp and my old(er) domestic pickup truck.
Anyway...conditions can change here fairly quickly. I'm guessing all the heat, green, and insect life has altered the behavior of the general grouse population in a way that isn't entirely condusive to my form of walk-up hunting. I suspect that the birds remaining are mostly fat, dumb, and happy back in their thick and food-rich cover (other than for the occasional raid by one of the huge numbers of raptors I'm seeing here this year). When the understory starts to open-up a little the game could change considerably. The greatest beauty of it all is that I have the great luxury of time these days. I won't even think about departure here until early November (unless the weather completely goes sideways).
