Most of the sage-grouse leks in our area have been monitored for years by local biologists. The longer the list of known display sites has gotten, the more effort goes into monitoring these leks, and the less time there is to go out and search for new ones.  With our crew able to pick up some of the slack over the past few years, Stan has had a bit more time to find some new leks. We’ve been wanting to do a bit of searching ourselves. We’re several miles into the sage from town, and although we sometimes see grouse along the roads much closer to Hudson, there aren’t many leks known from that side of our camp.

The "unexplored" valley of Coal Mine Draw, complete with a lek

I’d searched around the Preacher lek area earlier this season but didn’t have any luck. Yesterday I took an ATV northwest from camp, north of Monument Draw. I came across one male displaying right along a two-track- I didn’t want to disturb him so I headed for a ridge to have a better look around. As soon as I crested the hill, I saw two females flying up the draw towards me. This was the time of the morning that hens might be leaving a lek, so I thought this might be a promising sign. I went further out onto a promontory with a great view of the whole draw, and saw a few males displaying near a bare patch in the sage. Further scanning revealed a total of 11 males and another female still on the lek. I headed out that afternoon

The morning's overlook, seen from the lek

to get a GPS point, and the lek definitely had a lot of sign (i.e. poop), so I was pretty sure this wasn’t just an ephemeral aggregation of males following some females. Just to be sure, I went out again this morning a little earlier, and got the same count of males on the lower lek. Even more surprising, the solitary male was joined by another male this morning and a third bird that might have been a female. This might end up being another new lek as well!