One of the most fascinating upland game birds I’ve ever witnessed is the sage grouse. My first look at them came many years ago during my first mule deer hunting trip to the Badlands in the far southwest part of North Dakota. I’ve never forgotten it.

While big mule deer were on everyone’s mind, mine too, I was easily distracted by the large birds that I saw in sagebrush country. They were special birds, living primarily on high-bush sage in a dry land. I was struck by their size too, much bigger than the more common sharptailed grouse.

North Dakota once had a sage grouse hunting season. The season spanned only three days, weekdays only as I recall, and the limit was one bird per hunter per season. The Game and Fish Department always had extra personnel working during the sage grouse season to insure compliance and to gather additional data on sage grouse.

The season was treated like a trophy hunt for those who participated, sometimes coming from the far corners of the state for the opportunity. I loved it. Hunters treated the sage grouse with the respect they deserved. And anyone who has hunted Badlands-type terrain knows how special the experience can be.

This past week a story came across the Associated Press wires that got little or no play in the media. Sad, but a sign of the times? A federal judge ruled in favor of sage grouse in a livestock grazing case in Nevada but, of greater note, Judge Harvey Sweitzer accused the government of deliberately misleading the public by underestimating the damage cattle could do to the land, sagebrush land imperative to the survival of the species.

Sage grouse numbers are one-fourth of what they were just 50 years ago with dramatic declines documented across 11 western states, including an area of southwest North Dakota where sage grouse hunting is no longer allowed and some sage grouse have been brought in to help re-establish this state’s population.

While the southwest part of the state is on the very edge of sage grouse range, what has happened to sage grouse in North Dakota is comparable to what is happening elsewhere. Sagebrush habitat is disappearing from what the Interior Department says is decades of forces “ranging from wildfires to energy development.”

In the Nevada ruling Sweitzer said the United States Geological Survey ignored the assessments of their own range experts and that grazing allotments “are not currently meeting the seasonal habitat needs of sage grouse.”

A beef or birds issue? I don’t think it’s that clear cut, but I don’t have an answer either. It makes me sad to think about losing both unique habitat and the sage grouse that are dependent on it. Furthermore, the USGS’s own report reveals a more dramatic decline in greater-sage grouse numbers than previously believed.