Nevada · UplandDusky grouse

Nevada regulates dusky, sooty, and ruffed grouse together as one "Blue (Dusky and Sooty) and Ruffed Grouse" group across 13 named counties (Carson City, Douglas, Elko, Eureka, Esmeralda, Humboldt, Lander, Lincoln, Lyon, Mineral, Nye, Washoe, White Pine), but the three species occupy genuinely different mountain systems within that shared regulation. Dusky grouse is the interior Rocky Mountain-type species of the group: it occupies Nevada's isolated Great Basin mountain ranges in the central and northeastern part of the state, described in the peer-reviewed ecology literature as central Nevada from around Austin east to the Nevada/Utah border and north to the Idaho/Nevada border, representing the southwestern edge of the species' entire North American distribution. This is a genuinely separate range from sooty grouse's Sierra Nevada-fringe distribution to the west, though independent hunting-press sourcing places dusky grouse generally in the eastern part of the state, the same region as ruffed grouse's Jarbidge Mountains pocket in northern Elko County, making that corner of the shared zone the one place a hunter could realistically target both species under the group's combined bag limit (3 daily, 9 in possession, across all three species combined).