Washington · UplandSooty grouse

Sooty grouse is the west-side half of Washington's legacy 'blue grouse' joint-reporting issue: split from dusky grouse in 2006, but still sharing one combined WDFW 'Forest Grouse' harvest statistic and a joint 3/day, 9-possession sub-limit within the overall 4/day forest-grouse cap. WDFW's own forest-grouse hunting page places sooty grouse in higher-elevation (above 2,000 feet) conifer forests of the Olympics and on the western slope of the Cascades; independent species-comparison sourcing sharpens the eastern boundary further, noting sooty grouse also occupies the east slope of the Cascades in Yakima County and points south (overlapping dusky grouse's range at that southern margin, per the same source). Because WDFW's harvest reporting cannot itself speciate sooty from dusky, the geographic split above rests on that description, with combined 'Forest Grouse' county totals for the matching western counties (Grays Harbor 1,575, Lewis 2,371, Clallam 2,172, Mason 1,316) used only as a general density proxy for that western range.