Rimfire for Grouse.

Hello all.

I am wondering, is it legal to use rimfire for Grouse down there?

I has occurred to me that your habitat may make a rim fire inadvisable or even impractical. And it might even be illegal.

It is legal here and it's my go to choice. But I seem to be in a minority here, A lot of people I know use shotguns and shoot birds on the ground, not in flight.
To me that seems too costly and therefor impracticable.

We only have two species of upland birds common in the area, Ruffed Grouse and Sharptail Grouse. Both can be successfully hunted with rimfires and without dogs.
Further south they have Hungarian Partridge that I imagine would be very difficult to hunt without a shotgun as they flush very easily where our birds are much less prone to flushing.

As I understand it Hun's are hard to hunt without a pointer and no one I know up here has any bird dogs.



That's my first Grouse of the day and my Anschutz 1415 .22

BTW I'll be away from home for a few days so won't get to see what the answer is until later in the week.

No wild grouse here in Texas

No grouse, but I suppose one could hunt chachalaca with a rimfire.

I haven't seen any grouse in Texas where I hunt.

I knew one person that used to hunt quail with a pellet gun, a little milo on the fence line would bring them in, the pellet gun would drop them in their tracks. This was at his place in the country.

He also hunted dove the same way. It was odd, because this took place in town, so the pellet gun was illegal, but he also would not shoot them out of season.

Was he legal to use the pellet gun? I have no clue, but in his mind, since he only shot them in season, and did not go over his limit, the only law he was breaking was baiting them. His rationale for that was simple, he was allowed to bait deer, so dove should also be legal.

Reminds me of an old quail hunting tale. Don't shot them while they are running on the ground. I'm not. I'm going to wait until they stop.

Quail yes dove no. I shot a ruffled grouse with a .22 in WV. Good eating that evening after packing in to a trout stream. Where I hunted grouse in WV preferred method was a shotgun.

I had no idea there were so few upland birds down there!

I thought the further south a fellow went the more upland birds there would be. I'm not sure where I got that idea, Maybe just from visiting the south half of this province.

I had never heard of chachalaca before. I had to google them. LOL

They sound interesting.

I knew about dove hunting but expected they would be shot on the wing. We don't have a huntable population of dove up here. And until recently we only had Morning Doves.
In recent years Eurasian Collared Dove have moved into the area and are increasing rapidly. But so far there is no season on them.

But we have tons of Ruffed Grouse, a huntable population of Sharp tail grouse and some Spruce grouse, witch are a sub species of Ruffed Grouse.
Some years we even have enough Ptarmigan to hunt them as well, but they don't live here, they only come down from the far north on really cold winters.

Plus thousands of Ring Necked Pheasants are raised and released here every year, to provide additional hunting opportunities.

A pellet gun is all we used to shoot quail where I grew up. I guess I should add, that my first exposure to “hunting” was stepdad shooting out the window of my mom’s car so there is that. But pretty much all the kids in our little floodplain shot quail with a pellet gun by the baseball field, lol.

Non-migratory game birds can be hunted in texas with any legal firearm with the exception of Turkeys in certain locations, and fully automatic firearms. (Some areas you must use a shotgun for Turkey.)
My guess is the majority of Chachalacas taken are with .22s. ---Hardly anyone hunts them, it is quite likely more of them are shot by gardners than hunters. Chachalacas native habitat is heavy, very thick thorn brush and you would have to crawl thru thornscrub to retrieve wounded birds. However, over their range, they will move into suburban areas with suitable stands of brush nearby for roosting and hang around feeders and raid gardens. I've lived in Chachalaca range for 40 years and never encounted someone intentially hunting Chachalacas in the U.S. However, I've known of a number of folks who have shot them after they raided tomato plants.

You may hunt blue grouse, dusky, and ruffed grouse in Wyoming with a rimfire. We take many a blue grouse with a .22 rifle or pistol.

While elk hunting in Idaho, I asked a game warden what the legal caliber or weapon for taking one of the many grouse I was seeing. His reply was “ I don’t care if you kill them with a stick”. I took a couple with a .22 pistol.