To assemble an upland bird chick from starlight and dew is a major miracle. To graduate that hatchling from a thimble-sized puff of down into a twitchy, elegant, fully feathered adult protected by fear and instinct is a near-impossibility requiring an astonishing combination of details to go just right.

Because the fabrication of an upland bird happens mostly out of our sight, we hunters are stunningly oblivious to the improbable product of organic chemistry, meteorology, botany, and entomology flushing to the sky at the business end of our shotgun beads. But in 2024 we swung those guns at a frequency well beyond our expectations. From the Dakotas to the Great Basin, and from the Southwest’s Quail Belt through the western Corn Belt, we bagged a disproportionate number of roosters, sharptails, chukar, and Huns.

Across all these regions and habitats, rains came in the right quantities and at the right times, temperatures generally stayed within a narrow range, plump and tasty insects metamorphosized to feed wee hatchlings, and grasses and other vegetation grew tall and dense enough to hide not only nests but adult and juvenile birds from predators.

This is a wild generalization, of course. There were sizable pockets of upland poverty across the West last year in regions that didn’t receive this generous combination of inputs. But in most places, biologists and hunters reported “epic” numbers of birds in the places seasoned hunters expect them, but also in secondary habitats where every flush was a gift and a surprise.

While we shouldn’t expect 2024’s combination of just-right dynamics to occur every year, it’s worth looking at each as a window into the factors that together build not only a single upland bird but a memorable season.

What are carry-over birds?

A banner bird season starts with strong populations of carry-over adults.

“That was the case with pheasants in North Dakota, even though we didn’t document huge brood sizes or juvenile-to-adult ratios,” says Jesse Kolar, North Dakota Game & Fish upland bird program manager. “We suspect it was due to a good ‘capital investment’ of many young breeders in the population to start the year.”

The adult survival was itself a result of a fairly mild winter of 2023-24 across much of the Northern Plains that followed a blistering winter the previous year. That dynamic points to another contributor to perceptions of an “epic” upland season: sometimes, abundance is relative. A return to average after a year or two of depleted populations can sometimes seem like a bumper crop of roosters, grouse, and partridge.

Overwinter survival is generally detected in breeding-bird surveys, and 2024 produced good numbers of male sharptailed grouse observed on leks.

“On our sharptail blocks, the statewide counts were up by 51 percent compared to 2023,” reports Kolar. “During pheasant crowing counts, observers documented 37 percent more pheasants heard statewide compared to 2023.”

Nesting conditions can be an important bottleneck to production. Across the Northern Plains, a wet snowstorm in early to mid-May can cause hens to abandon early nesting attempts, and research indicates that clutch sizes of renests of pheasants and sharptails are often smaller than initial nest attempts. Habitat conditions—generally dense thatch to hide and provide thermal protection to nests—is an important component to nest success.

“The two drivers that impact upland bird density and reproduction are weather and habitat,” notes Montana upland bird biologist Ken Plourde. “One way to look at it is that while weather drives fluctuations in annual trends, habitat combined with weather patterns drives long-term trends. The big-picture reality is that grassland habitat has continued to decline since the peak of CRP in the early to mid-2000’s, so long-term trends remain down despite our short-term peaks. The takeaway? Enjoy these bountiful seasons when we have them, because unless we start to reinvest in upland habitat, they’re going to be the exceptions.”

The Importance of Chick Survival

The next hurdle that birds have to clear is the vulnerable window from the egg to the wing. This is the long month to six weeks between hatching and flight, and survival depends on generally balmy temperatures without skull-crushing hailstorms or grassland fires. Chick survival also depends on good cover to hide these vulnerable hatchlings from predators like raptors, skunks, feral cats, foxes, coyotes, and snakes. But survival also depends on the early availability of insects and other soft mast, since juvenile gizzards aren’t yet ready to digest seeds and other hard foods.

Across much of the prairie, but extending into foothills, pressed not only vegetation but insect abundance. But 2024 was wet in just the right places and at the right time to produce plenty of crickets, ants, and especially grasshoppers.

“Drought is generally bad for upland birds, but one product of drought conditions—grasshopper abundance—has been driving prairie grouse and Hun populations,” says Bryce Daviess, owner of Western Prairie Outfitters in Helena, Montana. “But it’s a fine line, because you don’t want so many hoppers that they eat all the cover that the birds require.”

A recent study found that sharp-tailed grouse chicks’ diet is primarily composed of insects until 2-5 weeks of age. Another study indicates that spring diet items of older juvenile grouse include clover, dandelion, alfalfa, smartweed, western yarrow, mule ears, and grass and grass seeds.

The availability of this green vegetation is a product of timely rains, which is the annual wild card in terms of upland bird production. Savvy Southwest quail hunters watch the rain maps months before planning a desert bird hunt. They also follow Bob Corley’s Arizona Quail Hunting Camp website, which serves a rich stew of first-person perspectives, field notes, and regular rainfall reports. Corley, looking back on conditions that established nest success and chick survival, noted that he expected much better bird populations with good over-winter precipitation.

“My only conclusion is that our extremely hot summer and lack of decent monsoons led to poor chick survival” in the 2024-25 season, he notes. “In general, reports from the western side of the state were better, while reports from the south wereworse.”

Conditions During Upland Hunting Seasons

While biologists monitor upland bird populations and conditions much of the year, hunters have a skewed perspective of abundance based on our few weeks in the field each fall. Because most of our observations are anecdotal, they can be shaped by the time of day we hunt, hyper-local conditions, or even access windfalls or difficulties.

Then there’s the matter of expectation. One hunter’s “epic” day or week in the field might be a disappointment compared to another based on a combination of past experiences and outlook. But across the Western upland range lin 2024, more hunters had remarkable days last year than they had in several previous seasons.

South Dakota pheasant hunters, for example, bagged some 1.3 million roosters, the highest harvest in 13 years. That averages about nine birds per hunter for the season.

Daviess hunts across the West, guiding upland hunters starting in September in eastern Montana’s Hun-and-sharpie fields, then through chukar country, and he finishes the season in Arizona’s deserts and mountains. So, his perspective covers varied habitats, species, regions, and seasons, and his conclusion resonates with most seasoned hunters.

“2024 was one of those seasons that makes all the investment in dogs and gear and websites and advertising worth it,” Daviess says. “Across the board, it was great. And we needed it, after a couple of disappointing seasons.

“In Montana, we were due for a good Hun year, and they responded with a little more water on the landscape than we’ve seen in the last couple years,” Daviess details. “It’s still overall pretty dry, but we got some good rains at the right time. Nevada had water like crazy, which boosted chukar numbers something like 120 percent over normal. And in Arizona, you could go by the rain map to determine where you were going to find birds or not find birds.”

It’s important to recognize that different species, even those that share similar regions, have different habitats, diets, and even climatic conditions.

“Our partridge populations remained high last year, even though their brood size dipped below the phenomenal rates we’ve been seeing for the past five years,” says North Dakota’s Kolar. “We had a banner year for pheasants. But sharp-tailed grouse, prairie chickens, and greater sage grouse all declined from the year before, and overall, 2024 was not a banner year for any of our native grouse species.”

For DIY hunters, who are influenced by access as much as they are by habitat, 2024 was memorable because they found birds in habitats that weren’t particularly visited by other hunters. They not only put roosters, cocks, and drummers in their vests, but they had that rare and remarkable experience for a modern upland hunter: solitude.

“It was refreshing, because after 2021, 2022, and 2023, which were all characterized by more hunters in the field and fewer birds, 2024 had more birds and fewer hunters in the places we hunted,” says Jess Bothell, an Idaho hunter who makes annual pilgrimages to both eastern Washington and Northern Nevada.